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Reserve Armed Forces

My Lords, I thank and congratulate my noble friend Lord Attlee for initiating this valuable debate. I also pay tribute to the work of the Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations and the National Employers Advisory Board in which my noble friends Lord Freeman and Lord Glenarthur play such key roles. I declare an interest as a recent commanding officer of a Territorial Army regiment. Indeed, not much more than a year ago I returned from a visit to Iraq to see my soldiers on operations there, territorial soldiers who themselves were involved first-hand in combat with the enemy. I ask your Lordships to forgive me for constantly referring to the TA instead of the Reserves. As you will understand from my background that is what I know, and to a large extent the expressions are probably interchangeable. The Strategic Defence Review set out among many other things to make the TA more integrated, relevant, useable and capable. This was broadly enthusiastically welcomed by the Reserves, as evidenced by the many soldiers who subsequently came forward to go on operations. In that context I would like to associate my words with those of the Minister when he answered the Question of my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever on 12 January, when he paid tribute to the great contribution that the Reserve Forces make. He referred to the two MCs, a George Cross and a number of other medals earned. I should like to talk about the future in a moment. Before I do so—and I apologise for talking at such a low level after the contributions of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, and my noble friend Lord Freeman—I should raise some problems that arose in the first two years of Operation TELIC while I was commanding my regiment. Although many if not all of them have since been given a great deal of thought, it is worth mentioning just a couple of them as there is a real risk that they may recur. After all, some of them arose due to a lack of understanding of reservist issues combined with insensitivity, especially among those responsible for the mobilisation process—principally regular staff officers, as my noble friend Lord Attlee mentioned. Given that those sorts of officers change jobs every two or three years, there is a high risk that the lessons learned may be forgotten. The first and perhaps single most frustrating issue that I encountered was the continual short notice for mobilisation. Despite the fact that this problem was well aired from early on in the piece in 2003, we were still encountering compulsory mobilisation at no more than a week’s notice to the individual concerned in the autumn of 2004. That is absolutely unacceptable and unforgivable. The Army by then had several months’ notice of their requirements—or ought to have had. Not only did it give the individuals mobilised unnecessary problems in organising their lives, it also completely undermined the efforts that commanding officers and regional Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations were making with employers. I understand that the Government’s intent is that there should now be four weeks’ notice of mobilisation to individuals. However, I emphasise that inflexibility in the system could still mean delays, with the period of notice to the mobilised soldier himself being the bit which inevitably gets squeezed. The noble Lord, Lord Truscott, pointed out that there is no legal requirement for such notice. When we were given more notice, we were able to give extra training to the soldiers to be mobilised, getting vastly better performance from them as a result, including—in response to the Question of my noble friend Lord Attlee on the point—junior TA officers commanding sub-units in action. The second concern that I want to raise is our relationship with employers. I visited employers of my soldiers being deployed on operation TELIC 5 in mid-2004. Although those meetings were friendly, in the vast majority, employers were by that stage beginning to show concern that compulsory mobilisations were becoming accepted by the MoD as routine and that they might continue indefinitely. Despite their willingness to help on a personal level, several of them mentioned that they saw compulsory mobilisation as yet another of many additional recent burdens on business. I concluded that there was evidence that, if compulsory mobilisation of sizeable numbers of TA soldiers was maintained at those levels, TA soldiers would begin to be forced to choose between the TA and their preferred civilian career. Clearly, in the medium term, that could have serious effects on sustainability. That all sounds as though I have nothing but complaints to give the House, but that is not the case. I will therefore not dwell at length on some of the other problems, including soldiers being underpaid or not paid and the lack of information for the chain of command. That created problems: we were unable to brief our soldiers on what jobs they were going to do when they got to theatre—vital preparation that could have taken place. Also, when the soldiers were in theatre, wives would ring my headquarters and know more about where their husbands were and what they were doing than I did, given the wonders of mobile telephony and the Internet, which undermined my attempts to sustain their morale. Despite all that I, and I know the vast majority of reservists, were, and I am sure remain, pleased and proud that they are able to participate alongside the Regular Army on operations and perform to a high standard. The message I would like to send is that with a little more detailed thought and plenty of notice we could do the job so much better. I turn to what is happening now and what will happen in the immediate future. I want to talk about two things. The first is the so-called ““TA rebalancing””. We know that we are expecting the outcome of a review shortly. The purpose of the reshaping is, we are told, to make the reserves ““even more effective””, ““even more professional”” and ““even more useable””. Although I think I understand what is intended, I counsel caution in expecting even more from a part-time force which has already provided, according to the Minister when he answered a Question recently, 20 per cent of the forces, for example, on Operation TELIC 2. Will the Minister reassure me that ““even more effective””, ““even more professional”” and ““even more useable”” are not going to involve the reserves providing 30 per cent, 40 per cent or 50 per cent of the force on future operations? My second topic is that of manning. I acknowledge that the worrying decline in manning levels does appear to have slowed and even bottomed out. However, the deficit, which everyone in the Reserve Forces is addressing as their main effort for 2006, is, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, said, a colossal 7,000. I cannot say whether part of the cause of that goes to concerns—much discussed in your Lordships’ House—in the minds of soldiers that they might be sent on operations and then charged for murder for simply doing their job, but there is no doubt that, on the current strength of about 32,000, this will require a superhuman effort. It will take money and lateral thinking of the sort not necessarily associated with Army staff officers. As to the money, will the Minister make any sort of commitment as to the amount of money that he will be able to squeeze out of the Treasury for this? It needs to be new money. Squeezing any more out of the existing budget will mean other key objectives being put at risk. Without it, it will fail. As to the lateral thinking, can the Minister give us any indication of the original ideas being contemplated actually to find those extra people? Because in 29 years I have personally tried most of them, and I know that to be successful they will need to go in the opposite direction from that in which we have been sent in the recent past, when we have been forced to consolidate into fewer TA centres, closing off whole areas to recruiting and crucially, reducing what is known as the footprint. We have to go where the people are, which, given that many of the conurbations have already been fished out, means we have to look at having more, smaller detachments spread around in smaller towns. That does not need to involve a huge cost—there is scope for sharing premises with cadets and users who need the premises in the working day but not in the evenings and at weekends when reservists need them. I understand that there are indications that currently there are fewer TA soldiers coming forward to fill operational posts than is required. That must be a concern. I also understand that Headquarters Land Command intends to mobilise 600 reservists every six months for enduring operations globally. While it is important to continue to exercise the mobilisation machine to prevent it atrophying, I urge the Minister to require the MoD to be sensitive in the amount of pressure that is exerted to achieve this. We must not lean too heavily on the reserves in the quest for smaller regular forces. In summary, many good things are happening to the reserves and many changes that have happened have been beneficial, but future change must be managed carefully, with expectations on the MoD’s side matched with imaginative and sensitive handling of individual reservists and their employers.