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Territorial Army

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. Speaking as someone who has been mobilised on three occasions, I firmly believe in the one Army concept. I am unsure about the details of my hon. Friend's point, but if that is indeed the case, it sounds as though it needs to be sorted out, as it is simply unacceptable. The relationship between the Regular Army and the Territorial Army has been a problem for many years. It goes back to the first world war, which I was about to come on to before she intervened. More than 100 years ago, despite limited opposition and with a few compromises, the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act was finally passed in 1907, but its real test was seen at the outbreak of the first world war. The initial establishment was to be 314,000, but that proved to be highly optimistic. The combined hostility of elements of the Regular Army and employers and unions alike meant that by 1914, at the outbreak of war, the Territorials had fallen a long way short of Haldane's original vision. Alas, as the years have passed, that appears to have been a common theme. Whenever a review of the TA has been carried out—be it as a result of the strategic defence review of the late 1990s, when the TA failed to get up to its establishment of 44,000, or, indeed, as recently as last year, when the National Audit Office reported that the TA was operating at some 16 per cent. below the new lower establishment of 36,000—the TA always ends up understrength. That is a lesson that we must learn; I hope that the current review will not fall into the same trap yet again by planning to cut TA numbers to a level that, as a result of over-weeding, we are destined to fail to achieve.