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Territorial Army Rebalancing

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and the representations that he and his local authority have made. I knew the deep feeling in the community and understood the strength of the argument, which, in a sense, was why I did not need a meeting. However, if there had been an overriding defence argument for not proceeding with the unit, I would have done that in the interests of defence. The hon. Gentleman is right that the unit is small. I think that it is 19 strong, with two civilian and one uniformed support personnel. It is their role to assist, but the hon. Gentleman has a role to play, too. I know that he will be only too willing to help the unit to grow in strength. I am sure that the decision will be seen as good news in his constituency, so let us play on that and encourage others. When I said earlier that there will be re-roling, I should perhaps have better explained that we will examine that to make it more consistent with what is happening in Orkney and the rest of the structure. I can give a ““might””, rather than a ““definite””, but I see the benefit of re-roling, although we must take into account what we are recruiting for and why people are recruited. We will deal with all that sensitively.