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Armed Forces: Reserves

My Lords, no, I cannot give the first assurance because I cannot pre-empt the Treasury rules which will be in place at the time. The Government constantly reassess how they rationalise their estate and I simply cannot predict how the property sales will be treated. On the matter of care, yes, I should strongly say that we will rationalise the estate with great care. We are putting together a team to look at this. As noble Lords will know, the estate consists of some 2,000 sites. The review confirmed the importance of the volunteer estate, but noted that it was old, expensive, underused and located to serve the population centres of the 19th century, as opposed to those of the 21st century. To ensure that the reserve has an estate that is modern, provides value for money and is correctly located to match changes in the demographics and national infrastructure, the review recommended that the Ministry of Defence conducts a detailed requirement-based review. That will be done.