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Defence in the United Kingdom

I have given the ones that are doing well—[Laughter.] No, we must be realistic about this. The deterrent factor is not uniform. The extent to which numbers are up for the Royal Highland Fusiliers is significant, but the situation is more difficult in other areas. I am conscious of something that the regimental sergeant- major of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers said to me not too long ago. I will not go into all the graphic details of it, but he said that the change had to be made, even though he wished that that was not the case. He is a proud member of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, but when he goes back to his village, he finds it almost impossible to encourage young people to join up. He is a prime exemplar of whom people should be proud, so that is not right. The highlands is another area in which it is difficult to recruit, and there are a lot of reasons for that. However, I am painting a picture of a situation that is not uniformly adverse. What we are doing is not working against recruitment. Those who say that the situation is a disaster and that we will never recruit again to the Royal Regiment of Scotland must take account of the raw information. I think that the same situation will apply throughout the country as the new regiments begin to bed down. We have sufficient members of the reserve forces to meet our current requirements. None the less, major efforts are under way to increase recruitment. It is also important to ensure that we retain the skills and expertise of those already in the reserve forces, which is why we have made a number of improvements to the support packages available. They include improved financial support for reservists and employers, greater access to training courses, intelligent selection for mobilisation, improved redeployment training, improved welfare support and a new reserve forces pensions and compensation scheme. They are just some of the measures that we are implementing to deal with the difficulties of recruitment into the Territorial Army and the reserves.