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Armed Forces Personnel

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Three quarters of the US National Guard's fast-jet pilots are ex-regulars, so they are not wasting several million dollars in training when they leave, and the remaining quarter have to be very experienced pilots to be allowed to join. As we stand in silence at war memorials up and down the country, let us remember that the vast majority of those who served and fell were not professionals, and that the volunteer reserves were the key link between our brave but small professional forces and the wider community. They also provided back-up that was immediately available and, crucially, a framework for expansion into a national effort. In the great war, the Territorial Army provided almost half the combat units, winning 71 Victoria Crosses. The Royal Naval Reserve won 12. In the battle of Britain, the Auxiliary Air Force squadrons comfortably out-shot their regular RAF counterparts. Although those forces were trained in peacetime at a fraction of the cost of their regular counterparts, they were available when they were needed to fight—and fight they did. When overstretch peaked in 2004, our small volunteer reserves provided a fifth of our forces in Iraq and one-eighth of the number in Afghanistan. Yet over the next two years, they were awarded with a cack-handed reorganisation, recruitment ceilings and a demoralising freeze on collective training. Despite all that, they continued to achieve some remarkable successes. In 2007, when commenting on a company from the London Regiment, its commander Brigadier Lorimer—now General Lorimer —said:"““Somme Company was an outstanding body of men: well trained, highly motivated and exceptionally well led.””" More than 25,000 reservists have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and 28 have given their lives, including the young man yesterday. Yet, in 2009, all formed deployments to Afghanistan apart from field hospitals were stopped, and the use of reservists has degenerated into the backfilling of regular units, unlike what happens in the countries of our English-speaking counterparts. Not surprisingly, the strength of the reserves rapidly dwindled, with the greatest deficiency among young officers. As the House knows, I was recently privileged to serve under General Sir Nicholas Houghton on his review of reserves. Two or three units I visited had no young officers left at all. While we were carrying out our study, the unhappiness among TA officers was compounded by the truly disgraceful announcement by the Military Secretary's branch in July that an unprecedented four-fifths of TA commands were to go to regular officers, despite there being 25 Territorials in the frame who had all the necessary qualifications. Our study recommended that we should move towards a better balance between regulars and volunteer reservists in the Army, with 30,000 trained reservists by 2015, and that they should,"““no longer simply be used as individual specialists and augmentees, but as formed units and sub-units””." The Royal Naval Reserve has plans to expand several areas, including its highly cost-effective air branch, which took over the training pipeline for some months in the overstretch crisis of 2004. It also has imaginative plans for the Royal Marines Reserve. The commission was disappointed with progress on the RAF, which has a pool of flying volunteer reservists that is only about a quarter of the size of that of the Royal Navy. Although there were some more imaginative ideas in the background, the recommendations it actually put forward were all rather expensive and seemed to be very modest in their actual value. That is why we recommended an independently-led follow-up study on the RAF. There are three keys to rebuilding our reserves: first, we must get out and recruit officers from the thousands of young men and women passing through our university officer training corps and restore the proposition. If we reintroduce demanding collective training for units and sub-units, it will restore the capability of the TA to deploy formed bodies and provide those leadership opportunities that are so vital for the commitment of young officers. On a recent visit to 7 Rifles, I was told that four regular officers had just applied to join. I was astonished to hear, however, that some of them were stuck waiting to receive security clearance. Why on earth do we have security clearance for regular officers transferring to the TA? That brings me to my second point. We need fit-for-purpose administrative systems, so that people can enlist, have their medicals and be fed into training without the endless delays that characterise the current dysfunctional system. My local unit, 3 PWRR, has had more than 100 recruits in a few months. Yet, the sheer incompetence of the MOD personnel administrative systems has already put off a large number of them. Some regular officers are claiming that the TA cannot reach a trained strength of 30,000 by 2015. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces, who made an excellent speech earlier, not to listen to them. It is the dysfunctional system and the blockages in the regular-dominated training pipeline that is holding our reserve numbers back. Hence, my third and final item on the shopping list is this. Let us reintroduce regionally based phase 1 training, so that Territorials are not scrabbling for a place at the back of the queue in the regular establishments. In July, the former Secretary of State announced a £1.5 billion investment in the reserves over a decade. I am certain that my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State is still committed to that. May I advise that it must be spent on rebuilding viable and usable structures to meet the 2015 deadline, not siphoned off to meet shortfalls elsewhere while that crucial date is allowed to slip? Rebalancing our armed forces will enable Britain to afford more capacity within tight budgets—to expand the pool of talent available for defence, to increase the footprint for national resilience and, above all, to reconnect our excellent but increasingly remote regular forces with the nation they serve so well.