---

Armed Forces Personnel

It gives me great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster), who has made an important and impressive contribution to the debate. I am delighted that the Minister responded in the way that he did. I shall come to the question of budgets, as my hon. Friend’s speech was a microcosm of the great debate about budgets and the way in which that is affecting personnel policies in the Army. I start, as everybody else has started, by taking this opportunity to pay tribute to our armed forces, their professionalism and dedication, and especially to those serving on operations. I also extend my sympathies to those who have suffered injury or been bereaved, and I honour our fallen. I wish to explain to the House the reason for the absence of so many members of the Defence Committee. Once again, somehow, one of the key armed forces debates has coincided with a long-planned visit by the Committee. Today, the majority of my colleagues on that Committee are visiting the military unit at the Selly Oak hospital. I would not dream of suggesting to the House that there is any intention on the part of the Government to hold these debates while the Committee is on a planned a visit, but it does seem to happen remarkably often. We cancelled a trip to NATO for a debate earlier this year in order perhaps to wrong-foot the Government. I suggest that the House authorities could take a little care when planning these debates and liaise with the Defence Committee. We know quite far ahead when we will be abroad or on a visit. We have a heavy programme of work, and it would assist us and the House if greater co-ordination could be achieved. I appreciate that that is not a point directly for the Minister, but I hope that my remarks will be noted in other quarters. This debate is about armed forces personnel. I was most impressed by what I heard about Combat Stress from my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) and the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey). I should like to join them in expressing concern about the future of a charity that undertakes very important work. Just last week, the Defence Committee took evidence from representatives of Combat Stress and of other service charities including the Royal British Legion, the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association, and the Army Families Federation. They all welcomed the fact that the Government had appointed a Minister for Veterans, but they expressed some disappointment that that had raised expectations that have yet to be delivered. I make no criticism of the Minister for Veterans, but I agree with the right hon. Member for Islwyn, who is no longer in his place, that the MOD should have a department for veterans that can deliver something. In contrast, a Minister with that responsibility is just a conduit for information. It would help recruitment and retention if we could help people who have served in the armed forces to feel that they remain in that wider family. I do not think that that happens at present. I want to concentrate on three main issues: overstretch, training and morale. As the hon. Member for North Devon remarked, no one can deny that our armed forces are overstretched. Indeed, when pressed, the Chief of the Defence Staff admitted to the Defence Committee a short while ago that the armed forces were stretched to the point that the elastic could stretch no further. Perhaps the elastic has to break before the MOD’s definition of overstretch is reached, but he was pretty blunt and forthright in saying that the situation could not be allowed to continue for more than 12 months. If that is so, my sense is that the Government are gambling on being able to contain the overstretch by drawing down some of our present commitments. However, unless the new Prime Minister introduces a dramatic change of policy, I do not foresee that there is much prospect that we will be able to reduce our commitments. If we do so in Iraq, I fear that we will use the slack to increase our commitments in Afghanistan. Indeed, I understand that a further battalion has been deployed to Afghanistan, with not so much as a whisper of an announcement to this House. If that move is planned, or if the battalion has been deployed, I should be grateful for a response at the end of the debate. Overstretch, of course, impinges on armed forces personnel. Earlier today, and at very short notice, I obtained what I believe to be the MOD’s latest monthly manning statement. Why cannot this report be placed in the House of Commons Library automatically and as a matter of policy? I have asked that question before. In a written answer of 24 June 2002, the Minister of State told me that ““UK Armed Forces Trained Strengths and Requirements””, which is a tri-service publication, was placed in the Library on a regular basis. The raw figures in the monthly manning statement are more useful, yet this morning I was told that I had to table a written question before the Ministry of Defence would put the information in the Library. When I asked the Library to point out to the MOD that there was to be a debate on armed forces personnel today so it might be quite useful to have the information beforehand, the MOD generously relented, but there is a degree of formality about the process that we could dispense with if the Minister ensured that when the statement is published a copy is placed in the Library. I am sure that would assist the librarians. I shall refer only to the Army figures, but the same patterns are reflected for all three forces. The monthly manning statement shows that the whole trained Army strength stands at 99,030, which is 2.7 per cent. below the target of 101,800. When the strategic defence review was published, it was supported by the Adjutant-General who gave evidence to the Defence Committee that the target trained Army strength was to be 108,500. That figure was never achieved, and armed forces personnel are taking the strain of manpower shortages—in undermanned units, undermanned battalions, shorter tour intervals and curtailed or cancelled training exercises. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Milton Keynes discussed the cuts in the Territorial Army. It is ironic that the situation is exactly the same as in the regular Army. My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring pointed out that although it has been implied that the SDR was duly funded, that was not the case. We know from the biography of the former Chief of the Defence Staff, now Lord Guthrie, that he never received the money that he felt had been implicitly promised at the time of the SDR. He even went to see the Chancellor about the matter—the language was florid, we understand. As the Government make more commitments for equipment programmes, operations and support for operations, manpower suffers, so unfortunately I am not surprised to learn that the TA suffered yet another cut with no complaint from any of the service chiefs. They all have budgets to protect. If one of them were to complain about the TA cut to which my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Milton Keynes referred, the first question would be, ““What other cuts will you offer?”” Our defence policy is determined not by what is required to support military operations but by the limitations on resources. That is why the manning statement shows that the soldier strength of the Territorial Army stands at 30,550, which is a shortage of 6,300 men and women—a shortfall of 15 per cent. It obscures the fact that the SDR target strength for the TA was between 41,000 and 45,000, which is considerably more than the current target. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring pointed out, we are spending less on our defence than our commitments demand. The budget is determined by spending limits, not by the military requirement. In particular, whatever increase in budget has been delivered, it does not reflect what is widely regarded to be the inflation rate for defence costs. The Select Committee received evidence that the defence costs inflation rate is somewhat in excess of 8 per cent. per annum. Therefore, given less-than-inflation increases in the defence budget year after year, alongside a heavy equipment programme that looks as though it cannot be funded and which escalates in cost as the years go by, the only way to fit our defence activities into the budget envelope is by cutting personnel. The headcount is such a high proportion of the cost in the armed forces; that is why the target size of the Army, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy is reduced year on year. The graphs presented in Ministry of Defence briefings to Members of Parliament show sliding, declining numbers of personnel employed in the armed forces year on year. They show those numbers declining below the actual target. I do not think that we shall ever see fully trained, fully manned armed forces under this Government, even according to the target figures that they now give us. This is a serious situation. It is quite obvious that all three services are extensively deployed on operations and all three are suffering the kind of overstretch that we have been talking about—that is as much true of the Army as any of the other services.