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Reserves (Review)

It is traditional to thank the hon. Gentleman for his response. He is right about Op Tosca; I am sorry that I did not mention it. He is, however, totally wrong about my omitting other reservists. I mentioned the reserve throughout. Obviously, I concentrated on the TA because the measures that have been taken in the spending round apply to the TA. He should not be surprised that I majored on that issue and did not try to hide it from the House. The hon. Gentleman asked about the establishment. There are no plans to take any further cuts in the establishment. Indeed, the report proposes increases in the establishment of the other services—the naval and air reserves. However, the figures for the deletions that are being made in the Signals Regiments amount to around 2,000 individuals. Of course, that would come off the establishment—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) is right: there will be more than that in terms of posts, but in terms of individuals in place, about 2,000 people will be affected. With regard to welfare, paragraph 3.5 on page 21 of the report says that we must recognise the needs of reserves during their deployment and through into their period with the reservists. We have made commitments in the service personnel command paper to improve welfare provisions, and those will apply to regular forces as well as to reservists. The hon. Gentleman mentioned money and I wondered whether he would. He knows that I am trying desperately to help him at the moment by getting information out of the shadow Chancellor that might be of use to him, and I shall continue in those endeavours. He is right to say that the review does not print money, but it does spell out a strategic framework against which the reserve will have an opportunity to bid for defence resources more effectively than it otherwise would. On the civil contingency reaction force, the important thing is that we keep the command and control mechanism in place so that people can be called up when they are required. We need to relieve the reserves from burdensome training that they do not really need to do, and which they do not welcome, in order to give them more effective, higher level training that will make them better reserves and more able to augment our regular forces.