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Armed Forces Personnel

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because he has only just arrived, unlike those of us who have sat through the debate for the entire afternoon. We are short of time, and I want to allow some of my hon. Friends to speak. During the Conservatives’ time in office, there was something called MARILYN, which stood for manning and recruitment in the lean years of the nineties. At that time, it was predicted that a drop-off in population numbers would prevent us from recruiting enough people into the armed services. Perhaps that should now become MARTINET—manning and recruitment in the now even more terrible years of the twenties. Some serious manning and recruitment problems are coming our way. With 103,000 Army personnel, we now have the smallest Army there has ever been. If that figure falls below 100,000, we will no longer able to call it an army in normal nomenclature. We have the smallest Army since the battle of Waterloo, yet it is being asked to do more and more. The same applies to the Royal Navy and the Air Force. I am especially concerned about the Territorial Army and the reserve forces in general because they were significantly cut in the strategic defence review. At the time, it was said to be a good thing but we have subsequently discovered that we could not have carried out operations in Iraq or Afghanistan without our reserves. I suspect that current figures for the number of reserves available to us are probably substantially misleading. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton made an interesting point about that. When a soldier returns after serving six or eight months in Iraq, it is unlikely that any other than the unemployed Territorial Army soldier will volunteer to go a second time. The nature of the TA soldier deployed on operations has changed significantly since the day when I had the honour of serving in the TA. I suspect that several people will return from operations overseas, remain a member of their regiment for a time—especially, I am ashamed to say, to collect their annual bounty, which provides important financial help—and move on. I therefore suspect that the number of people available to the services from the TA and the other reserve forces is significantly smaller than the figures suggest. The Government must, therefore, consider carefully how we can increase the number of soldiers, sailors and airmen in our reserves and how we can prevent that number from falling further. If a truly fundamental strategic defence review were to take place again and we were to set out our purposes and how our armed forces would carry out those tasks, the number of servicemen available—from memory, it is 185,000 in the three services—would be too small. If we are to undertake the war against terror alongside the United States, the world’s policing and the homeland defence tasks that face us now, any sensible and dispassionate observer will say, ““The number is too small.”” The elastic is stretched to its limit. Can it be stretched further? One former Prime Minister of our great nation told me that, when he was Prime Minister, he went to see the teachers and they listened to him, but, after a time, they told him to get lost. He visited the doctors and nurses and they, too, listened carefully, but again, after a time, they told him to get lost. Then he went to see the generals and, time and again, they turned to the right, saluted and got on with what they were told to do. All Prime Ministers and Governments increasingly love the military because the military carries out their instructions in a way that no other public servants do. In a sense, the trouble with the British forces is that they have a can-do mentality. No matter what they are asked to do, they will get on with it—and they have been doing that in spades in recent years. At what stage will British forces be asked to do too much? When will the elastic snap? Several of us are worried that, at this moment in our strategic outlook on life, we are very near to that point. I hate the thought that something might happen, around the world or onshore—let us suppose that, heaven forfend, three explosions take place in different town simultaneously—and our armed forces have to say, ““I’m sorry, Secretary of State, but we cannot do it.”” I am horrified at the thought that a point may come in the history of our nation when that happens. The debate is, therefore, important. It is vital that the Government—no one else can do it—consider carefully what they ask our armed forces to do and the resources that they give them to do it. My instinct tells me that they will conclude that the resources are woefully inadequate. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must face up to it and spend significantly more on our defences.