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Territorial Army

I am delighted to have secured the debate, which gives us an opportunity to discuss the report ““Recognising the Opportunity””, which was recently published by the new all-party group on reserve forces. I should start by passing on the apologies of the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry), who has had to pull out of the debate at the last moment because of another defence engagement of which the Minister will be well aware. In the course of putting the report together, we took testimony from sources ranging from the commander of regional forces, Lieutenant General John McColl, to some Toms in 4 Para. I thank the Ministry of Defence and most particularly the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr. Ingram), for all the help and support that we received from the MOD and, indeed, individual units. We were delighted to have the Minister of State address the group and that we had such a frank discussion with him. We also took evidence from Richard Holmes, the first reservist to be director of reserves and cadets, from the chairman and chief executive of the reserve forces and cadets associations, and from Lord Glenarthur, the chairman of SaBRE—Supporting Britain’s Reservists and Employers. Our visits to 4 Para and 256 field hospital, both of which are excellent units, provided valuable insights. Members of the group keep in touch with many units up and down the country on an individual basis. Much has changed in the 10 years since the Government came to office and carried out the strategic defence review. On the downside, there has been a huge cut in establishment numbers—proportionately it is much larger than that for the Regular Army. On the positive side, the group welcomes the way in which reserve forces have been used on active duty. Starting with the Kosovo war, substantial numbers of troops from the Territorial Army and its sister bodies have been deployed to war zones, and they have performed admirably. In Kosovo, almost 10 per cent. of those deployed were from the reserve forces, and reservists made up one fifth of the Army in Iraq and one eighth in Afghanistan at the peak in 2004. Lieutenant General McColl told us that the situation has now stabilised with about 1,200 being called up each year for duties in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a very large continuing commitment for a very small force—barely 30,000 troops are deployable—with full-time civilian jobs. Praise has come from all quarters. One REME—Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers—commanding officer from the Kosovo campaign commented:"““Thank goodness for the Territorial Army!””" The CO went on to say that TA personnel"““have been quite excellent. To a man, they are enthusiastic, cheerful and willing…the additional skills some of them have brought from their civilian occupations have already been an extra bonus.””" That ability to provide value added has been seen in our more recent conflicts. We report on the experiences in relation to Iraq of Major Andrew Alderson, a former director of the merchant bank Lazard and a long-serving TA officer. He was appointed at very short notice to take charge for a year of the entire economic planning and development brief for all four provinces of the British sector. I have been encouraged by reports that I have received from units that have sent soldiers—including, in April, from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment in Canterbury—about how quickly reservists were able to reach Regular standards. The reservist mobilisation centre at Chilwell played a pivotal role in that. 4 Para, which the group visited, has had two highly successful deployments. One involved sending a formed company to Iraq and the other, more recently, involved sending a large group of individual reinforcements to Afghanistan. Next year, despite the fact that almost all its trained soldiers have been on one deployment or more, it will once again manage to send a formed company to Helmand province, where I am sure that 4 Para will distinguish itself again. We were told on our visit to 256 field hospital that from next year TA medical reserves will be running our medical effort in Afghanistan, sending out two TA field hospitals at a time on three-month rotations for the whole year—a remarkable challenge. However, that success story hides a deeply worrying fact: the TA is becoming smaller. In all but one of the past six years, recruitment numbers have fallen below those for resignation and retirement. The reserves are considerably below their official establishment; the TA is almost a quarter down on what it should be. The problem is even more acute in respect of junior officers, although the figures for them are masked by a tendency to promote much older people to fill the gaps. Without good officers and non-commissioned officers, the whole operation is in danger. They are needed to provide leadership for the men and women under their command. The problem can be tackled, but to do so the TA needs to focus on a way of doing things that takes account of its inherent strengths and recognises the inherent difficulties in volunteer service. Throughout the report, we stress the advantage—the key factor—of the TA being local. That is its greatest strength. Indeed, at a time when fewer and fewer people have any uniformed experience, the TA and the cadet forces with which it works so closely are now the only active link to the Army in many parts of the country. The advantages of the TA’s diffused structure and links into the community are many. The reserve forces and cadets associations know best where to advertise and which employers are positive, which can make a huge difference to recruiting. That is why the group was concerned to hear that Regular brigade headquarters has just taken charge of recruiting. Such a move took place in Australia 10 years ago, when regular and reserve recruiting were regionalised and integrated. The recruitment rate of reservists halved almost overnight, and a Senate inquiry was set up, but the numbers have never recovered there. The new system can be made to work, but only if brigade HQs work closely with the RFCAs and, crucially, with the units themselves. The signs so far are not encouraging. Let me take Kent as an example. The Kent county committee of the RFCAs meets in Maidstone in an office very close to the offices of the Kent Messenger Group—one of its longest-serving reporters, who still works with the group, was also a long-serving TA officer—and the studios of Meridian Television, with which it has links. Its membership has good links with local employers, but its recruiting task and budget have been moved to 2 Brigade headquarters and to 145 Brigade, which is on the other side. However, let us focus on the eastern side. 2 Brigade is based in Dover, and there is already a feeling in TA circles that the recruiting effort has gone off the boil and is now focused almost entirely on the Regular Army. Who can blame Regular recruiting teams, given the problems in the Regular Army, for focusing on the Regular Army? However, even if that were not the case, it is very difficult to see how a group of people who change posts every couple of years and are based in Dover, which is far away from all the media and centres of power, can possibly do as good a job as the local team.