---

Reserves (Review)

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement, and may I ask him to pass on my personal thanks and appreciation to General Cottam and his team for a job that I am sure was extremely professionally and well done? I have not had the opportunity that the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) may have had to read the whole report; I have not seen it at all, but I shall study it carefully and I may have further observations to make. I agree with the points that have been made, and I am sure will be made by those on both sides of the House, about how our admiration for our reserves increases by the day. From my experience in the last year in which I was Secretary of State for Defence, I know that increasingly, on every operational visit that I made, it became impossible to tell the difference between the regular members and the reserves of any of the three services. That is the highest compliment that I can pay reservists and, indeed, it was the compliment paid to them by regular members of all three services in my presence on many occasions. The strategic review's strength was that it was wanted by the reservists; the loudest voices of welcome for it came from reservists themselves. That strength was augmented by the way in which General Cottam conducted the review in a transparent and inclusive fashion. I just wish to ask my right hon. Friend two questions. First, can we continue that inclusiveness and transparency by developing an implementation group, as we did in the Department on other occasions to ensure that those who were consulted were included in implementation? The second is a plea on behalf of the south-west of Scotland, which gives a lot of people to the services, but has very little footprint of the reserves in its communities. Can we have some please?