Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Gray and Julian Brazier

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

I cannot confirm what the hon. Gentleman asks for about RAF Leuchars, but if he waits until half-past 3, he should hear some excellent news for Scotland.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

There can be no question but that the retreating ice provides significant commercial opportunities, and that will lead to military stresses if we do not handle it correctly. The UK has a fantastic offer—namely, the Royal Marines who are trained in the Arctic; I have seen their work—so can we expand that capability? Secondly, we have not used under-ice submarines for a number of years. We have that capability so is it time that once again we used our submarines to operate under the Arctic ice?

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, but he will have to wait until half-past 3 for confirmation of the future of our amphibious capability. I take on board his point about under-ice submarines, and I will write to him about that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Gray and Julian Brazier

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

The target of 30,000 Army reservists—indeed, 35,000 trained reservists across the three services—was firmly in the Conservative party’s manifesto, and this Conservative Government are committed to delivering it.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the maintenance of that target, and I congratulate the Minister on what has been achieved so far. He will recall that the purpose of the target was to enable the reserve and regular forces to be interoperable—change backwards and forwards between each other. A reserve force was to do precisely the same job as the regulars who, in the case of the Army, we were then cutting by 20,000. Will he confirm that the excellent plan that he laid out before the last election—and which has been laid out consistently in the House since—will remain? Will there be any change in that way that we use reserves?

[Mr Brazier]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Government do not accept that the expansion of the reserves was a direct swap with regulars in the way that he describes. The purposes of the reserve forces were set out in the commission—which, as he says, carried my signature—and were threefold: to provide extra capacity at slightly lower readiness; to provide skills not available to the military; and to rebuild the connection between the military and society. We are committed to all those things, and the commitment of £1.8 billion over the next 10 years for reserves, which was recently reaffirmed by the 2% commitment to defence spending, further underlies that.