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Armed Forces: Reserves

My Lords, I shall first respond to the opening criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Lee. I am very sorry that he did not receive his copy appropriately and, while I thank him very much for noting that I am not the Minister, I shall take personal responsibility to ensure that we review those procedures and ensure that principal spokesmen have a clear expectation. Of course, I am embarrassed to find myself in the situation in which the noble Lord is not properly briefed. The noble Lord, Lord Astor, asked an awful lot of questions, and, not surprisingly, I shall not be able to answer them all, but I shall do my best. First, I thank him very much for his general support for the reserves and the issue of training. I do not have to hand specific figures relating to officer training; I will write to him on that issue. He asked, very reasonably, about who will take this forward. The MoD will set up a small team to take it forward. I do not have the name of the head of the team. The plan is to take it forward in three phases. The initial phase will introduce about half the recommendations straightaway. The other operational and organisational recommendations will be considered in the normal planning process as part of the total development of defence. That will take us about two to three years, through to April 2012. The estate will take a number of years, and we will set up a team to rationalise that. On the issue of how it will progress, I would expect it to progress and to be reported in the normal way. We will make statements about plans, and the essence is that we will be talking about the reserves in the context of the forces as a whole, rather than specifically referring to the reserves per se. That is the theme that runs through this Statement: we are looking for more flexibility. When it comes to resilience, the civil contingencies reaction force, which was developed in 2002, has not been used. The review recommends that the current structure should be abandoned, maintaining only the command and control framework, with all reservists declared available for UK operations and resilience tasks. This finding has been adopted by the Army as part of the ongoing review. It is important to note that the contingencies that have happened have actually been addressed by Regular Forces, supported by reserves. We think that this is a much better way for reserves to be used in future. On the issue of signalling tasks, I will touch on one or two points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lee. There are two areas where we are rationalising in the light of budgetary and planning preparation, but consistently with the use of reserves. The first is the Ptarmigan trunk communications system which supports the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters communications, command and control suite operated by members of TA signals. This is now obsolete. I do not have data on how long it has been obsolete, but support is now provided by the newer Falcon system, run by regular elements of 1 Signal Brigade. Therefore, as part of the department’s normal annual planning round process, it has been decided to delete, as I said, Headquarters 12 Signals Group and 33, 34 and 35 Signals Regiments. The Cabinet Office work on resilience has called for a more up-to-date and technologically advanced national resilience network, and it is important that 2 (National Communications) Signal Brigade will be removed—it will be a regular-only operation from now on, because it is able to operate with more up-to-date, efficient and capital-intensive procedures that are less manpower-intensive. There will be no reduction in signals capability provided by the Royal Signals to support either the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps or national resilience communication. In areas other than the TA, recruitment is taking place in all four reserves—the Royal Marines, the Navy, the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and the Army. Over time, those numbers will become part of our planning round and concerns, but the MoD is looking to see them rise if possible. The noble Lord, Lord Lee, gave us some of the numbers involved. As we know, the numbers are about 10,000 down between establishment and strength. I think that that is common between us. What I am announcing today regarding signals will not directly address the numbers on strength. TA personnel will be offered posts in other TA units with regular personnel being returned to other posts in the Army structure. I admit that a small number of civilians, including some non-regular permanent staff and TA soldiers employed on timed reserve contracts—these are small numbers—may be made redundant if alternative employment cannot be found, but what I am talking about today is a structural change. It is about taking resources away from obsolete units and assigning them to active reserve units. By accident, I seem to have answered all the questions put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Lee, that I am capable of answering. I hope that I have at least given a feel for how we are taking this important review forward.