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Territorial Army

Yes, I share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend, who, of course, has been a distinguished serving reservist in the past two years in Iraq with the Royal Naval Reserve, which the group hopes to consider in its next report. It is interesting that the measures that have been most successful in preparing reservists for operational service are those whereby they are handled separately. I am thinking particularly of the situation at Chilwell. The scheme to which my hon. Friend refers appears to be throwing up various problems because there is an attempt to consider reservists simply as part-time regulars. That brings me neatly to the nature of a volunteer reservist. Unlike a Regular soldier, who has, of course, also volunteered, a member of the TA will have volunteered on top of his full-time civilian career. Like those who work in charities, youth groups, sports clubs and even, dare I say it, political parties, TA volunteers have full-time jobs and, in most cases, families, which take priority in their lives, except when they are mobilised. Given their outside interests and experiences, TA volunteers bring a huge amount to the services at a very low cost, but they are also prone to leave the TA if the service ceases to be challenging and fun. That is why some things work best for the TA when they are designed with the citizen soldier in mind—I have just mentioned Chilwell. The challenge of TA officer recruitment can be addressed, although it is not so much of a local issue in an era when such a high proportion of potential officers go to university outside their own area. Many serve in university officer training corps, which train personnel to a high standard, and setting up a central system to contact those people a year of so after they have left university and settled into their civilian jobs would make an enormous difference and would cost almost nothing. Similarly, like the Americans and Australians, we should co-ordinate officer development courses and university vocations so that students who are short of money but keen on officer training can accelerate their training programmes and do their special-to-arms training during their time at university. That would enable them to become first-class troop and platoon leaders when they leave.