Response to interpellation 2024/25:202 on fair compensation for home guard soldiers
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns fair compensation for home guard soldiers. M considers the home guard to be an important part of the total defense and that the current compensation system is fragmented and unclear 1. M argues that the government has a responsibility to review the regulation 1 and that the investigation of personnel supply is a high priority 1 2. M emphasizes that the construction of the total defense must be accelerated 2 and that investments in the home guard will occur through the upcoming total defense decision 3. S considers the current system to be unfair as it does not provide full compensation for lost work income 4 and that the system hinders the home guard's development 4 5.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Försvarsministern Pål Jonson (M)
Madam Speaker! Lena Johansson has asked me if I intend to take measures to reform the compensation system for home guard soldiers so that volunteers are given fair economic conditions for their important commitment to the home guard.
The Home Guard and the voluntary defense organizations fulfill important functions for the collective capability within the total defense and the public anchoring. They constitute a strong contribution to the Swedish will to defend.
The interest in making a contribution within the Home Guard and the voluntary defense organizations has increased as the security situation has deteriorated. This shows a strong will to defend among the Swedish people that needs to be taken into account at all levels.
Initiatives are underway to review the conditions for increasing personnel availability and resilience within the military defense. The Home Guard constitutes a significant part of the war organization, organized into war units with high availability.
The Armed Forces has taken measures regarding the work environment, equal treatment, and personnel planning to ensure that home guard soldiers in both soldier positions and specialist positions continue their service for a longer period. For example, the authority has developed a personnel supply strategy that includes home guard soldiers. Work has also been initiated to review compensations for home guard soldiers regarding service beyond the contract period.
Furthermore, the government has tasked a special investigator to analyze how access to personnel within the military defense can be improved in order to strengthen its resilience (dir. 2024:2). The investigator shall, among other things, analyze whether there is a need to change the benefits for those subject to total defense duty. The benefits include, among other things, compensation during service. The assignment is to be reported in July 2025.
I follow the Armed Forces' work closely and look forward to taking part in the results of the investigation.
Lena Johansson (S)
Madam Speaker! I believe that the Minister for Defence and I are of the same opinion that home guard soldiers - both women and men - are important for Sweden. We wish them well and want them to have the best conditions, because the home guard is a very large part of the Armed Forces' deployment organization.
The Home Guard consists of modern, mission-ready military units with high readiness. From the moment an alarm is received, they must begin performing their military tasks within 6 hours, and within 24 hours they must be fully mobilized with their capability and have an endurance of 90 days.
The development within the Home Guard as it looks now means that more people are seeking to join. This is against the background of the current security situation. The Home Guard is also changing as a result of having more advanced equipment. The tasks are of course also changing and becoming more advanced.
All these volunteers who, through agreements with the Armed Forces, commit to serving, have agreed upon a certain number of days dedicated to exercise and training. My question concerned a review of the compensation and whether one would look at the system that exists today, which I perceive as quite unfair. For example, it does not provide full compensation for lost work income.
The Minister answered that an investigator shall, among other things, analyze whether there is a need to change the benefit for those subject to total defense duty. I want to point out that such a thing takes time. In July 2025, they are supposed to have looked at whether there is a need for change. But we can probably see that already today, and this could cause it to take even more time. Can the Minister clarify the answer? Have I perhaps misunderstood it?
Försvarsministern Pål Jonson (M)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Lena Johansson, for a truly important interpellation!
The system we have today for compensation levels for the Home Guard, I do not think is good. It is too fragmented and unclear. There is a wide flora of compensation levels. I am therefore in complete agreement with Lena Johansson that there are reasons to review it.
There are two parts to this. One is a regulation from 1997 that governs compensation levels for home guard soldiers, and the other is the regulation that I believe Lena Johansson is referring to regarding benefits for those subject to total defense duty. The latter governs the compensation level which is 90 percent of SGI, and the highest compensation level a home guard soldier can receive is 1,413 kronor. It is quite complex. There are also a lot of different levels depending on whether one is an instructor and so on.
The system is not good. The government has a responsibility to review the ordinance. Alongside that, the Armed Forces carry out work when it comes to compensation for instructors. It is therefore partly up to them. We are following that work. There are truly strong reasons to review this.
We appointed Roland Ekenberg as the investigator. He is a former chief of the Home Guard. I think he is a very suitable person as he has good insights into the Home Guard's activities and can review the availability of all of the Armed Forces' personnel. This naturally includes, among other things, how we could use conscripts at different levels of conflict. It also concerns the availability of reserve officers and employed soldiers and why they terminate their contracts and so on. It is a matter of reviewing the entirety of the personnel supply system.
Roland Ekenberg has the important task of reviewing the ordinance on the conditions for those subject to total defense duty. I hope that when the investigation is complete in July, Roland Ekenberg will address the area we are discussing.
Let me also say that the home guard units are very important, and I believe that Lena Johansson and I are completely in agreement on that. They should have the ability to support during mobilization and protect and guard military objects, base objects, and critical societal functions. It is also important in various types of hybrid operations, which we are increasingly exposed to. The home guard's local connection and voluntary base create high availability, and it contributes, not least, with public anchoring in a quite unique way, which we really must nurture.
It is naturally not the case that NATO membership in any way reduces the importance of the Home Guard. Even though we primarily see that the Home Guard should operate in Sweden, they will also be very important for host nation support, protection, and surveillance when we receive foreign units.
Madam Speaker! I want to specifically highlight one thing that I think the Home Guard has done fantastically well during the past year, and that is the training of Ukrainian soldiers in the United Kingdom - what is called Interflex. There, instructors from the Home Guard have participated in a number of rounds and trained Ukrainian soldiers. Very fine evaluations have been received, both from the Britons who lead the whole thing and from the Ukrainian soldiers.
When we bring home those who have been trained, we also bring home skilled instructors who have trained Ukrainian soldiers 12 or 16 hours a day. This is again a reminder of how important the Home Guard is and what great work is being done, but also of what Lena Johansson is requesting, namely that there should be good, fair, and reasonable compensation terms for Home Guard soldiers.
Lena Johansson (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer!
We are so in agreement that there isn't actually much more to add, but I still have two questions.
One is about the time aspect. Sometimes one must strike while the iron is hot. This iron is hot, and it is low-hanging fruit to have our defense capability grow by having our home guard grow and do well. For me, it is about the time aspect. How long should one wait?
Just as the minister does in their office, I speak a lot with and meet many home guard soldiers, and what is said to me is that there are two or possibly three things that are tough when one is a home guard soldier. One thing is that one is away from one's family during periods when one is actually supposed to be off, because one also has a civilian job. Another thing is that one actually has to pay for one's commitment, that is to say, the part of the salary that is not compensated.
In light of the situation we have in the world with the security policy situation and the fact that we need to increase our defense capability, I believe it has taken a bit too long. Then one can blame many things. There have been more governments, but now that it is as it is, we need to hurry up.
The Minister for Civil Defence is urging both municipalities and civil society regarding what must be done now, if it was not started yesterday. I want to make such a joint message that it conveys urgency. I would also like to hear if the Minister for Defence has any time frame for when the replacement issue can potentially be resolved.
The second question concerns what the Minister for Defence says in his answer, that there are initiatives underway to review the conditions for increasing the availability of personnel and the endurance within the military defense. What are the initiatives that are underway? Who has been given the assignment, and by whom? It may be that I have missed something, but I would like to have this explained. What are the initiatives that are underway?
Försvarsministern Pål Jonson (M)
Madam Speaker! When it comes to the current order of things, it has been so for a long time, even during the eight years when the Social Democrats were in power. I did not see much movement in the issue during those parliamentary terms, but what is important is what we do moving forward.
As I have said on other occasions, time is a cost, and it is an underestimated cost.
If it was the case in defense policy previously that we were short of money but that we, according to many, had plenty of time as the security policy situation was different then, it is precisely the opposite now. We have doubled the defense investments between 2020 and 2024, so there is significantly much more money.
However, time is a factor. We must take into account Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and that Russia has repeatedly shown that it takes great political and military risks. It is good that we are members of Nato. Then we become safer and Nato stronger. But Nato is not the solution to everything, but we must also hurry the construction of the total defense.
With this said, I have, in connection with the investigation, had conversations with the investigator about how we could, for example, receive a partial report. It is a rather broad investigation - I believe there are 17 different points - and we are having a dialogue with the investigator about this.
What is difficult to speed up are the parts of the investigation that concern legislation, where there is, in some cases, a constitutionally protected requirement that one must have a reasonable basis for preparation. I believe the investigation will be completed by the summer, and then we, from the government's side, will of course do everything we can to speed up the process.
It is about the Armed Forces' most important asset, namely the personnel. We will never achieve any growth if we do not get higher availability in the personnel. I can promise Lena Johansson that the work is highly prioritized by the Ministry of Defence and the government.
It was an initiative to appoint this investigation, which also concerns a number of other issues, not least the compensation levels for conscripts, which I think is important. We have raised the compensation levels for officer candidates. That is good, because we need to recruit more officers.
I also do not rule out the possibility of raising the compensation levels for conscripts, for example. These are things that we will work intensively on during the coming year.
I believe I also mentioned something in the response linked to part of the activities that the Armed Forces carry out regarding this and linked to a personnel supply strategy that includes the Home Guard's personnel staffing. They work with the work environment, equal treatment, personnel planning, and so on, so a great deal of work is also being done on the personnel side within the Armed Forces, I want to emphasize.
Let me also say something about what Lena Johansson was touching upon. There are many more people now seeking to join the Home Guard, and this is a fantastic asset and an expression of a strong will for defense. We saw this after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine broke out. Normally, it is 4,500 who seek to join the Home Guard every year, but in a few months, 29,000 applied.
What we must ensure now, as we receive a large influx, is that we do not have bottlenecks in our system. This is not least about things such as security screening taking far too long, so that people get discouraged, and that there are no good replacement levels.
Just as Lena Johansson said, we must strike while the iron is hot, and there is a great interest among the population to build up a stronger total defense. It is a great asset for our country, and we will, of course, do what we can to address bottlenecks.
Lena Johansson (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer!
Exactly! Today's system hinders the Home Guard's adaptation and development since many volunteers simply cannot afford to participate in position training, for example, or training activities to gain increased operational capability.
Today's system also excludes many specialists, who have previously undergone valuable military specialist or leadership training, from service. I am therefore pleased that the Minister and the Armed Forces are on the ball.
I understand the Minister for Defence when he refers to the fact that legislative changes have their own pace. Some things cannot be rushed; they must be allowed to take time. On the other hand, I argue, one must hurry as much as possible, because it is an extremely important issue. We do not only need to attract, recruit, train, and develop personnel, but also retain personnel, according to the well-known ARUBA model.
I thank you for the answer. I will follow the development of the question as intensely as I am approached by home guard soldiers and volunteers.
Försvarsministern Pål Jonson (M)
Madam Speaker! I would like to thank Lena Johansson for the debate. I appreciate all members who are deeply committed to the Home Guard, because the Home Guard is well worth it. So please continue to pressure me and the government if we do not do what we are supposed to!
I want to mention a few things that are somewhat linked to compensation levels. The first is that the Home Guard is to grow from approximately 22,000 today up to 26,000 and that we are to have 40 Home Guard battalions. They constitute, as said, an important part of the war organization.
The second thing I want to add is that there will also be a considerable amount of investments in the Home Guard in connection with the upcoming total defense decision, which I hope the Riksdag will adopt in December. This is needed, and it concerns everything from vehicles and boats to sensors, thermal sights, image intensifiers, tactical radio, and not least that they shall retain grenade launchers in order to be able to meet qualified units.
I also believe it matters for the attraction that there are resources for the material allocation. It does not mean that we should not review the compensation levels; we shall, and we have tasked Roland Ekenberg with doing so.
One last thing that is also linked to the Home Guard's activities is the voluntary organizations, in that they train many of the instructors and specialists. Lena Johansson surely knows that we have also increased the appropriations for the voluntary organizations' work quite significantly. There is a very close cooperation between the Home Guard and the voluntary defense organizations, and they are also worth highlighting as a strong part of the public anchoring and, ultimately, the will to defend Sweden.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.