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Armed Forces: Reserves

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I join the Government in paying tribute to Britain’s reserves, who make an important contribution to current operations, as well as helping out in emergencies. Maintaining strong reserves is vital to our country’s safety both at home and abroad. I also join the Government in thanking the employers who play such an important role in delivering and supporting our reserves. I declare an interest as an honorary colonel of a TA Royal Engineers regiment. As the Statement says, the review flows into more than 80 detailed recommendations. There is a lot to digest and, frankly, we have had little time to consider it all. Through the usual channels, I will ask the Government for a debate in government time on the reserves review. This is an important issue. There is great concern in the reserves as to where it will all go. On this side of the House, we have been bombarded with approaches from all ranks. We welcome the restructuring of initial training. I imagine that this also applies to officers’ training. It is particularly relevant for officers where recruiting has suffered because of the cumbersome process of interviews, pre-AOSB, training, AOSB and then Sandhurst. There is no doubt that that is putting off some potential officers from joining. We also welcome the fact that the TA will be better integrated with the Regular Army. I was in Afghanistan in February and spoke to a lot of reserves out there, including representatives of my own regiment. On the whole, they already feel pretty well embedded in the Army. The regulars of all ranks to whom I spoke were very complimentary about the work that the reserves were doing and felt that they were fully embedded. I was enormously impressed by their courage and professionalism. General Cottam was not asked to produce an implementation plan. Half his recommendations will be implemented immediately, but who will take forward the other half? How long will the scoping work take? When will an implementation plan for these recommendations be produced and within what timescale will they be implemented? How will progress be reported to Parliament? Can the Minister expand on the proposal in the Statement to, ""have more flexible terms and conditions of service, which will allow a range of different forms of reserve service"?" What is meant by a "range of different forms"? We accept that reserves are needed to augment expeditionary operations, but little information or thought appears to have been given to their role in homeland security and resilience. This is important when, as we saw in Mumbai, the terrorist threat is evolving. The Government must also justify the cuts to 2 (National Communications) Signal Brigade. The Statement says that its tasks can be achieved elsewhere in defence and that some are not needed because of improvements in wider national resilience. It is imperative that the Minister should provide evidence to support this assertion. The brigade is tasked with the provision of emergency and post-disaster recovery communications infrastructure for government, the Armed Forces and the emergency services, by deploying and operating a variety of communications systems. It is on 12 hours’ notice to deploy. This is an important role. How will the CCRFs be rationalised? Has this been done in consultation with first responders? I understand that first responders—the police, the fire service and the ambulance service—want predictable support from the military and clear lines of authority, command and co-ordination. The main focus of the Statement is on the TA; little if anything was mentioned about the Royal Naval Reserve, the Royal Marines Reserve or the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. How will this report impact on these forces? It also surprised me that there was no specific mention of the welfare issues impacting our reservists and their families. What measures in the recommendations will improve the welfare of our Reserve Forces and their families? Finally, in 1997, the establishment figure for the TA was 59,000; today it is 38,500, even though the current strength is 28,920. What will the establishment figure be in light of today’s Statement, given that the TA has been funded to only 83 per cent capacity?