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Reserve Armed Forces

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their kind words. It has been a great privilege to introduce the debate. I agree with nearly everything that has been said and, where I do not, it is probably because I am wrong or inaccurate. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, talked about insurance. When I was on operations in Iraq, I received a letter from my insurance company telling me that I was not insured for war risks; so, if I was killed, my family would not get the benefit of my house, and my mortgage would not be paid off. That is pretty outrageous. My noble friend Lord De Mauley suggested smaller, more numerous detachments. He is right. Some units are now too widely dispersed. Small detachments in towns adjacent to the unit’s headquarters would be rewarding for a junior officer, because he would have his own bit of real estate. My noble friend Lord Shewsbury gave further insight into the problem of junior officers. He is right about unnecessary training, but we should never rely on pre-deployment training being available. On Operation TELIC 1, I received negligible pre-deployment training but, in my TA career, I never expected to get much in the way of pre-deployment training, because Ministers never make decisions early enough for the military. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers. Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.