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Armed Forces: Reserves

My Lords, I certainly know that this Government have cut the size of the TA in half during their time. However, there appears to be much that is good in General Cottam’s report. The Minister says that all seven principles have been accepted; I should dearly like to see the general’s first draft. On the reserves estate, I hope that it does not mean that we are going to sell off the TA centres that happen to be in prime town centre locations, very close to railway stations and ideal for supermarkets. Many of us look forward to examining the detail of the review. It identifies room for improvement in training. My noble friend Lord Astor of Hever touched on the training of officers and the fact that we have very few of them. The Statement suggests that new recruits will take part in their units’ collective training within six months of joining. Noble Lords will be interested to hear that I took part in battalion-level internal security exercises well in advance of attending a recruits’ course. I was cadet-trained but many TA soldiers join the TA from the cadets. The success of training and the speed at which TA soldiers can be trained are crucially dependent on the money available and the number of man training days allocated to a TA unit. However, we do not have any money. Our national public finances are in a mess and the MoD budget is unsustainable.