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The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Bayley, not least because you yourself come from a constituency with strong military connections. I am sure that you have some empathy with some of the points that we are debating this afternoon from both sides of the argument.
I want to congratulate the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on securing the debate. I assure him that the Government place a high value on the quality and dedication of Welsh recruits who join our armed forces. I want to pay tribute to members of the armed forces from Wales who have made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the security of the United Kingdom—a sacrifice that we will never forget.
I am delighted to be joined in the Chamber by the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). I know that he takes a keen interest in the matter, and he has discussed the issue with me before the debate.
Mr Francois
The Whips Office, in which I, too, have had the privilege of serving, is a noble estate. Remember our corporate motto: “We are from the Whips Office, and we are here to help.”
Wales and the Welsh people play a large and important part in our armed forces. From a population that represents just under 5% of the total UK population, Wales has consistently provided between 6% and 7% of total recruits to the British Army each year, so it is fair to say that Wales punches above its weight. Additionally, 10 of the 22 local authorities in Wales have already shown their support for the armed forces and veterans by signing up to community covenants, and the remainder are expected to sign up this year. I am sure you would welcome that as much as the rest of the House, Mr Bayley.
We ask a great deal of the men and women who join our armed forces, and we need the right young men and women to join up. Although the regular armed forces are reducing, they are still very much open for business. The Army, for example, continues to require 7,500 new recruits a year, yet over the past decade the Army has missed the recruiting targets necessary to meet its operational requirements. To address that, the Army has entered a partnering arrangement, known as the recruiting partnering project, with Capita, which seeks to improve Army recruiting by exploiting the expertise of the private sector while retaining a strong military interface with potential recruits at key stages. The contract covers the entire recruiting and selection process for both the Regular Army and the Territorial Army and will transform the way the Army recruits officers and soldiers. In doing so—this is an important point to stress—the contract will release more than 1,000 military recruiters back to the front line, where they are needed, and deliver some £300 million in benefits over 10 years.
The recruiting partnering project will also provide a centralised recruiting operation delivered through a five-region structure using 73 Army careers centres, of which 38 are embedded within tri-service armed forces careers offices. The five current selection centres, including the Army Officer Selection Board, will be retained. To co-ordinate all recruiting activities, a national recruiting centre will be set up in the headquarters Army recruiting and training division, which is based in Upavon, Wiltshire. The centre will provide an initial point of telephone and on-line contact for early inquirers and will provide recruiting teams to co-ordinate and control recruiting activity and liaise with regional recruiters. Importantly, the centre will take on back-office administration tasks, such as reference and security checks and arranging medical screenings, thereby removing the burden of much of the administrative activity from front-line military recruiters in the regions, leaving them free to concentrate on face-to-face liaison with potential recruits.
Over the years, the Army has continually reviewed the location of its recruiting offices, and the number of offices has ebbed and flowed to meet the changing demands of the recruiting environment and the needs of the armed forces. However, the approach that is now being introduced marks a major change in our marketing methods. Following extensive consultation with the Army, the number of recruiting offices will reduce by about half to 73, which reflects that times have changed since the hon. Member for Islwyn and I left school and began looking for work. Experience tells us that today’s young people are much more likely to look online for careers guidance and advice using the many electronic devices available to them.
The UK Government have provided the Welsh Government with almost £57 million to help bring broadband to everyone and super-fast speeds to 90% of homes and businesses. The figure is more than double the amount Wales would have received had the measure been a Barnett consequential. Considerable resource has been invested to try to increase broadband capability in Wales.
Wayne David
That is an important point, but a tremendous number of people in Wales are still not connected to the internet. In the Caerphilly borough, for example, 37% of households have no access to the internet, which is a real problem in some of the most deprived communities, and it will not be solved overnight.
Mr Francois
I listen to what the hon. Gentleman says, but the programme is due to accelerate in 2013, and we will continue to work closely with the Welsh Government through the Wales Office and Broadband Delivery UK so that sufficient and appropriate measures are in place to ensure the funding is ring-fenced and monitored in order to try to achieve the objective. Further progress is needed, and I hope by referencing those points I have demonstrated that we are determined to make progress where needed.
The alternative ways in which potential recruits may now gain information about joining the Army, coupled with the national recruiting centre, will to some degree reduce the reliance on a high street presence. Capita will introduce a wide selection of contact channels to Army careers centres, including access to digital communication through social media, to meet that need.
Of course, at times there is no substitute for a face-to-face discussion, particularly for a life event as significant as choosing a military career in the service of one’s country, which is why the 73 Army careers centres will be retained. The centres will be spread across the United Kingdom to ensure that more than 90% of the population is within reasonable travelling distance, which is assessed to be less than an hour by car.
The hon. Member for Islwyn asked how we will address particularly rural locations, which is a fair point, but each of the Army’s regional brigades will have its own mobile recruiting unit to provide additional cover for rural locations in situ if there is assessed to be a particular need. So we are not relying purely on modern IT and the fixed Army careers centres. As part of the package there will be mobile teams that can take advice out to potential recruits, rather than asking them to go online or physically go to a centre. I hope he accepts that we have thought about that in some detail.
Army careers centres will be used for walk-ins off the street, for nurturing and supporting personnel as they proceed through the recruiting process and for formal interviews for both Regular Army and Territorial Army candidates.
Nick Smith
I hear what the Minister is saying about recruitment via the internet. Blaenau Gwent in the heads of the valleys is a good recruiter for the Army in particular, and it is about an hour’s drive down to Cardiff, depending on the route, I seek assurance that there will be a sustained campaign from the mobile units to ensure that young people in the heads of the valleys get a good chance to join the services.
Mr Francois
I believe we will still be able to give people a good chance to join the services, which, after all, is what we want. We will have what one might call modern IT methods for gaining information and registering interest. There will still be fixed Army careers centres where people can go to talk about recruitment face-to-face, and there will also be the mobile teams. Where those mobile teams are deployed will be partly down to the experience of recruiters, but the capability is available to go out to people where we believe that that would benefit both them and the Army. If we did not have that capability, the hon. Gentleman might rightly criticise us for not having it, but the fact is that we have it and we intend to deploy it to good use.
The fixed Army careers centres will be manned by a mix of military and civilian staff, whose combined roles will include visits to education establishments and other local liaison activities. That will allow military personnel to spend most of their time face-to-face with potential recruits, rather than on administrative tasks that can be best managed on a centralised basis. Service personnel will continue to be at the front end of the recruiting process. It is less an outsourcing of recruiting, as some have characterised it, and more of a partnership between the Army and Capita. The Army will still be an integral part of the process.
We have heard during this debate that offices in Abergavenny, Pontypridd, Bridgend, Carmarthen, Haverfordwest, Aberystwyth and Rhyl will all be closed by the end of next month. Indeed, some of them have already closed, although not all the closures were due to the recruit partnering project per se. Army careers centres will continue to exist in Bangor, Wrexham, Swansea, Cardiff and Newport to provide guidance and advice as required.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that all the closures have been managed properly and in accordance with best practice. About 300 civilian staff employed in the old offices across the United Kingdom had the opportunity to transfer to Capita, and many chose to do so. Others chose to apply for the Ministry of Defence’s voluntary early release scheme. Full and proper trade union consultation took place throughout the process. As I know that he has a background as a trade union official, I am happy to assure him, before he asks, that TUPE applied.
Members will know of the Army’s intent to raise the trained strength of the Territorial Army to 30,000 by 2018 as part of the Army 2020 transformation. I have a particular interest in the process as the Minister who will effectively be in charge of it on a day-to-day basis and because I served in the Territorial Army in the 1980s as a young infantry officer. We trained for a different war in those days—really for one scenario, world war three—so I was never mobilised for active service, I was never shot at other than in training and I have no medals, but I have the Queen’s commission on my wall at home, I have worn the uniform and I understand the ethos. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that it is personally important to me.
The recruit partnering project is key to success, and I assure hon. Members that I have been taking a personal interest in how the Army are gearing up to meet the challenge. I am keen to ensure that all measures are taken to create the right conditions to grow the Army’s reserve. On Monday, I met with the Adjutant-General and his team at Pirbright as well as with senior officials at Capita, including Shaun King, its business director, to be briefed on how the process will operate. I spent some hours going in detail through how it is intended to work, so that we can meet our objectives, including having 30,000 trained members of the Territorial Army by the target date of 2018.
Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)
I fully support the reform programme that the Minister is describing. It was good to have him in my constituency at Pirbright for that meeting the other day. It is important not only to get money to the front line but keep it in top-notch training. Can he reassure me that the Army training camp at Pirbright will continue to train young soldiers from across the country?
Mr Francois
As my hon. Friend knows, a basing review is under way at the moment; that might underlie part of his question. We hope to make the conclusions of that review available soon, but speaking personally, I was very impressed by what I saw at Pirbright. It is a good facility delivering high-quality training to members of our armed forces, and as the local MP, he has a right to be proud of it.
I recognise the concerns of the hon. Gentleman, but I assure him that although the changes that we are making will deliver efficiencies, they are also appropriate to how society is changing and how young people communicate and access services. I am sure that many young people of Wales will continue to choose a career in the armed forces and will serve with the same bravery and distinction that generations from Wales have shown before them.
Question put and agreed to.