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Armed Forces Personnel

I entirely agree, and I am sure that the Minister does as well. We must get that under control. Someone told me—again, the Minister probably has the figures at his fingertips—that the Army has some 1,700 lieutenant-colonels. If that is the case, they could man three battalions, and we have only 38 of those. I will not go into the same details about the Royal Air Force, but the principle is the same: it remains quite top-heavy. I know that the Government intend to have a crack at reducing the problem. What we want in our armed forces are people coming in at the bottom—that is, people who actually do the business, rather than those who are in the background sitting behind desks.