Report of the Iraq Inquiry

John Baron Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I agree with a great deal of what the right hon. Gentleman has just said. Although it is not a matter of primary concern to us now, the fact is that Saddam Hussein was the author of his own misfortune. We must remember that, apart from being a brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein had invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990. He chose to try to convince his own people that he had not given up these weapons, when either he had given them up or, as the right hon. Gentleman said and as rumours persist to this day, he had spirited them away, possibly to Syria. However, although I see a degree of agreement with me from those on the Labour Benches over this issue, they may find it a little harder to accept the next point that I wish to make.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I have great respect for my right hon. Friend, as he will know. However, I suggest that, on this issue, it was not just about intelligence sourcing from here. The United Nations inspectors at the time were pleading for more time because they could not find the WMDs upon which premise we were going to war. We should have listened to them as well. Ultimately, the reason they could not find the WMDs is that they did not exist.

[Dr Lewis]

Yes, but the problem that the inspectors and we would always have faced was summed up by something that was said at the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly. I was going to quote this later, but I shall do so now. On 21 August 2003, I attended the Hutton inquiry. In the course of giving evidence, Nicolas Rufford, a journalist, made a statement about a telephone conversation that he had had with Dr David Kelly in June 2003. Dr Kelly was, of course, a weapons expert, and knew all about the difficulties of detecting weapons stockpiles if they were hidden. In the course of that telephone conversation, Dr Kelly said to Mr Rufford that

“it was very easy to hide weapons of mass destruction because you simply had to dig a hole in the desert, put them inside, cover them with a tarpaulin, cover them with sand and then they would be almost impossible to discover”.

So the question that we come back to once again is: if Tony Blair had come to this House and more honestly highlighted the question marks against the reliability of the intelligence, would he be as excoriated today as he has been? Let me be counterfactual for a moment. Let us suppose that some stocks of anthrax had been discovered and there had been a secret cache. Would we still be saying that the people who took the decision in 2003, on the basis of what clearly was an honest belief that Saddam Hussein might have deadly stocks of anthrax, were wrong? I have no hesitation in saying that although the Government may have exaggerated—and probably did exaggerate—the strength of the evidence they had, I believe that they genuinely expected to find stocks of these weapons.

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[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I suggest that Iraq 2003 ranks with Suez in a catalogue of British foreign policy disasters. It cost the lives of more than 200 British nationals and many tens of thousands of Iraqi nationals and citizens, and set in train a terrible sequence of events, including a vicious civil war and a fundamental alteration in the balance of power in the region. Thirteen years later, we are still living with many of those consequences.

Given that I resigned from the shadow Front Bench in 2003 to vote against the war, I suppose it could be said that it marked a pivotal point in defining my political career, such as it has been, so for me it has been of rather more than passing interest to observe the progress of the Chilcot report. I defended the time that Sir John Chilcot took, and I want to take this opportunity to thank him and his team for the thoroughness of the report.

As a former soldier, I believe that, whatever has been said previously, war should always be the measure of last resort, to be taken when all other possibilities have been exhausted. We should never lose sight of that simple fact. Of course there is such a thing as a just war, but at the same time we owe it to our citizens, to our Parliament and, above all, to the soldiers whom we are committing to battle to recognise that it must be the measure of last resort. In my view, the overriding, the most important and the most damning conclusion of Sir John’s report was that Iraq was not, in fact, that last resort and that other possibilities had not been exhausted.

The report made other points. It said that the premise on which we went to war—the existence of weapons of mass destruction—was oversold and that there was a discarding of caveats attached to the intelligence. It referred to a lack of preparedness in respect of our armed forces, to deficiencies in equipment and to an absence of post-war planning, all which have been touched on before. That litany of errors was compounded by an overestimation of our influence over the United States. We could not, at the time, believe that it could be in our interests not to be on the frontline. I think that one of the proudest and best moments for Prime Minister Wilson was when he said no to the Americans over Vietnam. That did not fracture the so-called special relationship, which, within 15 or 20 years, was on a very firm footing indeed.

I do not intend to look back at all the errors in that litany, but I suggest that there are two key lessons from this episode on which we would do well to reflect. First, Parliament should have done more to question the evidence put before it. That was a failure at almost every level. If the legislature does not examine the evidence and question the Executive at times like that, when is it going to do so? There was also the failure of those in the know—at all levels, in my view, but particularly in the Cabinet—to challenge what was being presented to the public. I think that the one figure who stands proud among that select group of people in the Cabinet is Robin Cook. Everything that he said during that eventful debate in 2003 has been proved right. I contributed to that debate as well, but his was one of the best speeches that I had heard for a very long time.

We should have questioned more. We should have examined the detail. I was told to stop asking awkward questions, but we, the official Opposition, were asking so few awkward questions that it was suggested to me from the other side that we were trying to play political games with the issue, perhaps hoping that, if it blew up in the Government’s face, we could take advantage of the fact. That is how bad it got during that debate in 2003. We were simply not asking enough questions, and we should have done so.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I was here in 2003, and I was one of those who rebelled against the leader of my party and voted against action in the Iraq war. I think that the hon. Gentleman is being disingenuous, because it was one of the biggest rebellions that there had been against a Government from that Government’s side.

I remember how difficult it was to make that judgment against the leader. When someone is being led by a party leader whose judgment they respect, it is a tough call to say, “I am going to disagree, and vote against action of that kind.” I had a difference of opinion, and I have had no cause to change my mind about the decision that I made, but can the hon. Gentleman not accept, as I do, that the people who made those decisions did so believing that they were doing the right thing?

[Mr Baron]

I do not think that we are saying different things. I am not suggesting that there was intentional deceit. What I am suggesting is that many of us in this place did not question sufficiently the evidence that was before us. The report from the Joint Intelligence Committee was full of caveats and holes, yet we relied on the Prime Minister’s interpretation, which was given in his foreword to the report.

I fully respect Members’ views as expressed on that fateful evening itself. If one cannot trust the Prime Minister, standing at the Dispatch Box making the case for war and, perhaps, privy to intelligence that we have not seen, it is a sad turn of events. However, I must return to the fundamental point that we should have questioned more, because there was a firm lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and such evidence was the premise for war. We must not forget that central consideration.

The reason the United Nations inspectors were pleading for more time, by the way, was that they could not find any weapons of mass destruction, and they could not find them because they did not exist. We should remember that it was the UN that was asking us to give it more time. The problem was that, at that point, we were marching to a military timetable.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman and you, Mr Speaker, will indulge me for a second. My speaking time was reduced to four minutes yesterday, so I did not have an opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, Robin Cook. Had it not been for his untimely death, I would not be in this place, and he was my Member of Parliament when I was growing up. I wanted to say that we might have disagreed on many things, but on Iraq we did agree. I know that he is missed very much by his family, his friends and his party.

[Mr Baron]

I thank the hon. Lady for what she has said. I am sure that it will be taken on board by all concerned.

I am conscious that time is pressing on, Mr Speaker, so I shall try to wrap up my speech in the next few minutes; I know that many other Members want to speak.

The second important lesson that I think we should learn from Iraq is that we need a properly functioning, properly funded and well-sited foreign policy apparatus. There is no doubt that Iraq revealed clear deficiencies in that apparatus, and subsequent interventions suggest that, in large part, we have still not put them right. Helmand is one example. While most of us supported the initial invasion, or rather intervention, in Afghanistan to get rid of al-Qaeda, we made a massive mistake in allowing that mission—a mission that was wholly under-resourced—to morph into one of nation building. In Libya, we did not understand events on the ground: we could not believe that once we had knocked the door down, which was the easy part, we would lay open all the tribal rivalries.

As for Syria in 2013, there was a suggestion we would be arming the rebels, not realising that lurking in the shadows was ISIL-Daesh and how that would eventually play out. There was a clear deficit of strategic analysis, with a loss of expertise at all levels of the machinery of foreign policy. That is a problem particularly felt within the FCO. In this country, we have quite a narrow pyramid in foreign policy making. In the States, it is much more open and diverse; there are lobbyists and political analysts, and the politicians and experts can buy into and influence the system. In this country, it is much more narrowly defined; it is the preserve of the select few, and the FCO is part of the few, which is why it must be firing on all cylinders, but it has not been doing so.

That is why we need proper funding of the FCO. Its budget has been continually eroded, with a hollowing out of expertise and staff. Traditional skills like languages and knowledge of events on the ground and of peoples and places have all been downgraded, as illustrated by the closure of the in-house language school and the gutting of the venerable library.

How did we get to the point that when Russia intervened in Ukraine we did not have one Crimean expert in the FCO? How is it that when the Arab uprising took place we had so few Arabists that we were calling them out of retirement? How is it that we have a DFID budget 10 times the budget of the FCO? This does not serve us well. We need to increase the budget and have long-term investment to make sure we are as well-sighted as we can be, which is not the case at the moment. There is a continual pressure on the FCO budget, and we need to put that right.

It is no surprise that Parliament—the legislature—has raised the bar with regard to interventions. It expects to be consulted. That is one of the positive developments from the Iraq intervention. The rationale is straightforward: if we believe there is a loss of expertise at the heart of our foreign policy apparatus and if there is a lack of trust not just because of Iraq, but because of Helmand, Libya and Syria, the bar needs to be raised, but this is not a healthy position in the longer term. In this increasingly challenging international environment, we need a knowledgeable Executive to be firing on all cylinders. A well-informed and resourced FCO is essential to that, both to act as a better counterweight to the impulses of No. 10 and possibly to help us avoid costly errors and conflicts in the future. There must be within the system a readiness to speak truth to power, and I am not sure we are quite there yet, but that is one of the key lessons from Iraq.

The UK and the west face enormous geopolitical challenges. The world’s population will rise to 9 billion by 2050, with changing distribution—which is particularly of relevance to Africa—and urbanisation and the consequent strain on natural resources. Today, 1 billion people lack access to sufficient potable water, and by 2050 three-quarters of the world’s population could face water scarcity. A whole array of security and environmental challenges is caused by economic and political uncertainty. In today’s global information world, success will depend not only on who prevails by force but on who wins the story.

One of the lessons from the Iraq failure is that it is symptomatic of a wider malaise: the deficiency of strategic analysis at the core of our foreign policy apparatus. The greatest challenge for policy makers is to ensure we embrace flexibility and foresight. This is perhaps diplomacy’s greatest challenge. We must restore our foreign policy and defence capabilities, otherwise the country risks being left behind. This is happening at a time when the international community is failing to produce co-ordinated responses to many of the challenges facing mankind, including poverty, organised crime, conflict, disease, hunger and inequalities.

We must have a properly resourced and respected foreign policy apparatus and investment in soft power and old friendships and strong defence, because diplomacy and soft power cannot succeed by themselves. We must have this proper funding in place for our FCO, because if we are not well-sighted, the next intervention challenge— there will be more—might not be as local in its ramifications as these past errors have been. The costs of getting it wrong might be much greater next time.

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[Michael Fallon]

I shall talk about the lesson on the importance of planning for reconstruction in a moment. I just want to finish this important point about the machinery of government.

The Ministry of Defence has revamped its strategy and policy making with the institution of an annual defence plan that reflects the outcomes of the strategic defence and security reviews, with senior leaders in the Ministry being individually held to account for their role in delivering it, and a defence strategy group, chaired by the permanent secretary and the Chief of the Defence Staff, to address how Defence can best contribute to delivering defence and security policy objectives.

[Mr Baron]

I am listening carefully to what my right hon. Friend is saying, but this is not just an issue of how best to encourage communication and expertise within the system; Chilcot was also saying that there was a lack of investment and proper sighting of events on the ground. That can be put right only through long-term investment to ensure that we are better sighted, so that we have a better idea of what is actually happening on the ground and the consequences of our actions. Does he agree that that is another important lesson to take from the Chilcot report?

Counter-Daesh Quarterly Update

John Baron Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We have made progress in reducing the dependence of Daesh on illegally traded oil across its borders and also internally in Syria. We have made progress in cutting down the sale of antiques and artefacts in international markets. We have had the strike that I referred to on the cash stockpiles that Daesh has been using to finance itself. Of course, it draws other revenues from the areas it controls, but one illustration of the progress has been consecutive reports that Daesh has begun to cut the pay rates to its own troops.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Nevertheless, Daesh remains the best funded terrorist group in history, despite the fall in the oil price. How confident, therefore, is the Secretary of State that Daesh can no longer access the financial infrastructure and resources of the Iraqi state, given that the Foreign Affairs Committee is still waiting for answers from the Iraqi banking authorities as to Daesh’s ability to make a turn on the state’s currency markets?

[Michael Fallon]

That is one of the areas that we are working on. When Daesh originally established its caliphate so rapidly, it was able to access finance from the central bank in Mosul and other areas in Iraq, and it levies taxes on the towns and cities that it controls, but I want to assure my hon. Friend that the work is in hand and we are making progress in restricting Daesh’s financial support.

Reserve Forces

John Baron Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has identified a real issue, and hope that the Minister will respond to those figures. We want to ensure that ex-regulars join the reserves. We also need to retain the reservists who are recruited. Retention is a key issue. All too often we focus on how well recruitment is going, and do not spend enough time on retaining reservists.

I am pleased that the Government have an employer recognition scheme. It was launched by the Prime Minister in July 2014 and is intended to recognise employers through a scheme with bronze, silver and gold tiers. I understand that 10 employers received gold awards last year.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that the original plan was to hold the regular forces and not let sizeable numbers go until there was clear evidence that the plans for the reserves were working? That original plan changed because of financial considerations, which is the reason for the present large capability gaps. Perhaps it is also the reason for the problem with recruitment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for securing the debate. When he was serving in his trench in Germany in the 1980s, I was even further east during the cold war, in Berlin, surrounded by the enemy. We were always told that quality would see us through, but some of us also knew that quantity has a quality all of its own, and that we stood very little chance. Our job was just to slow the progress of the advancing forces in time for when they met my hon. Friend, who would obviously put a stop to them.

I start by making the obvious point: the plan to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists was born out of financial pressures, not strategic logic—let us be absolutely clear about that. As was described to me and others by the then Secretary of State for Defence, the financial logic was very simple. In peacetime, reservists cost a fraction of regular forces; they are easier to maintain on the Ministry of Defence budget, but when the balloon goes up and they need to be deployed, the cost of deployment, which is far higher for reservists than it is for regulars, gets transferred to the Treasury. It was an accounting exercise designed to save money. There were no strategic grand designs with this plan. That is not to say that there are not advantages from having a more flexible reservist force available to hand, or that one does not have a deep regard for the Territorial, now reservist, forces—I served with them myself in Berlin, Germany, Cyprus and Northern Ireland back in the 1980s—but the bottom line is that the plan was born out of financial pressure, not strategic design.

The plan was criticised by some of us at the time. The criticism manifested itself most starkly when we tabled amendments to the Defence Reform Bill, later the 2014 Act, in the last Parliament. I managed to secure the support of the official Opposition and the Scottish National party for an amendment, but unfortunately I could not carry quite enough Members from my side, although I am very thankful to those who did support me in that amendment, including my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering.

For us, the problem was that replacing 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists would create capability gaps and false economies in the longer term. The original plan was to hold those 20,000 regulars in situ until we had clear evidence that the reservist plan would work—in other words, until we had geared up on the reservists’ recruitment. There were clear indications that we could plug that gap—that, by the way, was confirmed by the previous Defence Secretary, who stood up during the debate on the amendment to the Defence Reform Bill and said that that was the case and that was the original plan. However, in addition to the cack-handed plan of replacing 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reserves, simply on the grounds of financial pressure, we then compounded the problem by saying, “We’ll let the regulars walk out the door, and no doubt we won’t have any problem with reserve recruitment.” What madness that turned out to be. We let the regulars out the door and the Army is now, I think—no doubt the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—below 82,000 on our regular strength, and meanwhile we are struggling to recruit the reservists, as my hon. Friend has clearly outlined.

The problem is not just numbers. My hon. Friend rightly pointed out that we are perhaps 9,000 or 10,000 reservists short, but, as has been alluded to in this debate, it is not just the numbers that are the problem; it is the age profile of the existing reservists. Answers to written questions more than a year ago highlighted that the average age of an infantryman in the reserve forces was in the mid-30s, and that going up the ranks, whether senior NCOs or officers, it was heading into the 40s.

We all loved “Dad’s Army”—great series—and there is a place for a home reserve, but Dad’s Army was not on the Normandy beaches. In addition to the numbers being recruited into the reserve, we need to look at the age profile of the existing reservists. The figures I quoted are for infantrymen, not the other arms of the reserve. Infantrymen have to be of a certain age to be at their peak capability on deployment.

[Mr Brazier]

My hon. and gallant Friend is generous in giving way. Dad’s Army was not on the Normandy beaches as it was a home defence force, but the Territorial Army most certainly was there. A division helped to hold the line at Dunkirk and, indeed, a national guard division on its own took Omaha beach.

[Mr Baron]

I do not deny all that, and the Minister will not be able to deny that the Government have made it clear that they intend to deploy reservists much more frequently in overseas operations. He gives us only half the truth. If the plan is to deploy reservists much more regularly, not only will that be more costly than deploying regular forces, but we will have to address the demographic issue within existing reservists and the TA.

In the time remaining, let me return to false economies. No one can deny that capability gaps have occurred as a result of the change in plan, but the Minister must address the false economies resulting from that. Letting regulars go prematurely and the problems with reservist recruitment highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering have resulted in extra spending. It is not just the IT fiasco, which cost £10 million, but the extra spending on incentives for both employers and employees —£500—pension equalisation and advertising.

I have asked parliamentary questions about whether the Government can quantify those extra expenses, which were not foreseen when the original plans were put in place. We have not had answers. We keep being told that there is £1.8 billion, which should cover those expenses, but that £1.8 billion is over 10 years. We need detailed answers from the Government on what those unforeseen extra costs have been. When will we have those answers? Either the Government do not know the answers, which would be worrying, or they do know and will not disclose them. That would be equally worrying and may suggest to some that they are trying to hide something.

I look forward to answers from the Minister, and if he does not have time to provide them today, perhaps he will write to me and others who have raised the issue and say what the extra costs are. Our two central concerns are capability gaps in the short term and false economies in the longer term. At the moment, the reservist plans seem to have both problems.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Julian Brazier)]

What a pleasure it is to respond to the debate under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing the debate and on his remarkable, predictably thoroughly researched and self-effacing speech. The debate takes place as we remember the first world war, in which the then Territorial Force won 71 Victoria Crosses, and the Battle of Britain, in which two of the three highest-scoring squadrons were from the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.

I will try to pick up as many points as I can in the short time available. My hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who had to leave to attend the Defence Committee, know that I am not allowed to respond to the points they made about special forces, beyond saying that my heart goes out, as I know theirs do, to the families of the three young men. I share my hon. Friend’s pride in the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross he referred to, which is the latest in a series of decorations won by the unit we both served in.

The expansion of the reserve forces is critical to our ability to deliver defence on a sustainable financial basis and to maintain the Clausewitzian trinity of the armed forces, the Government and the people. It will enable us to ensure that the armed forces are structured and resourced to meet the challenges of the 21st century. After many years of neglect, the Government are restructuring and revitalising our reserve forces and investing in new equipment and support.

The programme is not—my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and I have debated this many times—about swapping regular personnel for reserves. In 2010 we did, indeed, make some very painful decisions right across Government. After that, the commission on which I served looked at the issue of the balance and recommended changing the way that we delivered defence to make the best use of our resources, better to harness the talents of the wider UK society and, above all, to help to restore links and understanding between the armed forces and the communities that they serve. The sombre events in Paris remind us of the importance of those close links. We should be in no doubt at all that, whatever the size of our armed forces, we must always have reserves.

Now, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) knows that he is not going to tempt me into anticipating the strategic defence and security review, but I can say that I am pleased to be part of a Government who are genuinely committed to 2% for defence spending, although I know I will not satisfy my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering on the legal point. Nevertheless, we are committed to it.

Our programme to grow the reserves is making good progress but, as my hon. Friend said, there is no room for complacency. In the year to 1 October, more than 8,500 people joined the volunteer reserves, an increase of more than 65% on the previous 12 months, taking their strength to more than 33,000. Most notably, 6,500 people joined the Army Reserve, an increase of 73% on the previous period. All three services are ahead of their trained strength targets, but that certainly does not mean that we can relax. We must continue to make further progress to meet our commitment of creating a force of around 35,000 trained volunteer reserves by April 2019, and to deliver the usable, motivated and capable reserve forces that the country needs. My hon. Friend is right that that means another 9,000 trained personnel in three and a half years’ time. Given that we have grown by 1,300 trained personnel in just the past six months, that seems challenging but not unattainable.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—a number of other Members referred to this—that the biggest challenge is building the officer base. The internal study set up by the Chief of the General Staff and headed by a reserve brigadier has recommended considerable restructuring, including a marketing post manned by a volunteer reserve officer with huge marketing experience, who is now installed in Sandhurst. The numbers are going up. For example, just outside the constituency of the hon. Member for Stirling (Steven Paterson) is 71 Engineer Regiment, which I visited recently. It now has six young officers under 30—a transformation from even a couple of years ago. The same thing has happened with my local reserve unit.

A number of Members made a point about the need to get the age structure down. In fact, the largest concentration in the age structure of the Army Reserve is in the 25 to 29 category. We are working hard on it, but the averages are pulled up by the fact that we want older people—those in their 40s and even 50s—in areas such as intelligence and for some of the medical skills. A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, mentioned transfers from the regulars. Those are running above our target. In fact, that is the one part of reserve recruiting that has been consistently above target, and we are offering substantial financial incentives to those who transfer.

We are offering reservists today more challenging opportunities than before. New call-out powers enshrined in the Defence Reform Act 2014 have allowed us to use reservists in the same way as regulars, and reservists have taken up the challenge. We would only have compulsory call-out only in an emergency, but people join the reserves because they want to be used. In the past 12 months, they have been deployed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said, in formed groups to Afghanistan and Cyprus. They have provided specialist help to deal with the Ebola crisis in west Africa, and maritime reserves have taken part in counter-terrorist and counter-piracy operations alongside their regular counterparts. As my hon. Friend said, next summer a company from 4 Para will provide the framework company for the Falkland Islands.

We are offering reserves more and better training opportunities. In the current training year, the services have planned more than 50 overseas exercises involving reserves, including a series of Army exercises in Kenya with integrated companies of regulars and reserves. A number of Members referred to the crucial importance of the specialist courses in what we call phase 2 and 3 training and to the difficulties of tailoring those to reservists in civilian employment. The fact that Chatham has managed that for an area such as bomb disposal shows that this is possible more widely across the Army.

Several people, including the hon. Member for Bridgend and my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, referred to the importance of cyber. For quite a long time, the only cyber-unit in the armed forces was a reservist one in the then Territorial Army. Today, reserves play an important role in cyber in all three services.

We have invested in new equipment. We have given reservists access to the regular pension scheme and a paid annual leave entitlement. We are giving them full access to Defence-provided medical care and physiotherapy, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering will remember, was an issue when he and I served. We have improved civilian accreditation for training. Employers are vital and we are immensely grateful for the commitment some of them make.

[Mr Baron]

No one in this Chamber doubts the dedication, hard work and enthusiasm that the Minister is putting into the task of increasing the reserve forces, but he must also accept that key questions remain unresolved, including the age profile of the infantry. We all accept the age profile when it comes to reservists and specialisms such as cyber, but the age profile of the infantry is still far too high—mid-30s and early 40s. May I return the Minister to the central issue of extra costs? There have been extra unforeseen costs with these plans, which, despite frequent requests to the Government, he and the Government are unable or unwilling to disclose. Does he intend—if not here today, then perhaps in the immediate future—to put that right?

[Mr Brazier]

I have written to my hon. Friend and I will write to him again. The ongoing costs of the recruiting process have shown some significant savings, but it is difficult to separate regulars and reserves because they are in the same contract. If he is referring to the contingency costs of deploying reserves on operations, there is a cost associated, but it is a cost that is paid for only when there are large-scale operations. The point about reservists—as the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) said, if I heard her correctly—is that it is very much cheaper most of the time to have part of the forces in reserves.

We have established the defence relationship management service, to which 42 of the 100 FTSE companies are now signed up. I have already mentioned the extra benefits for small and medium-sized enterprises. Crucially, we have set up an annual employer notification process, so that employers know a long way in advance when reservists are being called. That is crucial for retention, which so many Members referred to.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering set out the progress we have already made on the employer recognition scheme, which includes many NHS trusts. We are not in a position to dictate this, although I pay tribute to the Scottish Government, who run a more unified system and are able to dictate. Many hospital trusts have won employer awards. The Cabinet Secretary has the 1% challenge; we now have 1,250 civil servants serving in the reserves. These are at the heart of the retention issues. I cannot give the exact figures for medical reserve recruiting at the moment, but I can say that over the past 12 months the Army medical services, which are the bulk, have seen a considerable surge in numbers. I will write to my hon. Friend and to the other Members who raised that issue with some more detailed figures.

We have overcome a number of challenges that were affecting Army Reserve recruitment. We are making more imaginative use of advertising media, and we have hugely reduced the delays in the pipeline under the new system and provided better mentoring and support in units for those enlisting.

I thank all Members who took part in the debate and the many other Members who support their local units. Our reserves are stronger and better equipped than they have been for years. Despite the neglect, over the past 10 years, 70 reservists won decorations for gallantry in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 31 gave their lives. There is a great deal that we can be proud of in our reserve forces. We are making the reserves proposition that we set out in the 2013 White Paper a reality.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance, and I welcome the approach that the Opposition are adopting. We do not currently intend to present proposals to the House, but we have a strategy to help the Government of Iraq defeat ISIL, which we are pursuing in Iraq. We are also flying reconnaissance flights over Syria, and helping to train members of the Syrian opposition. As I think the hon. Gentleman implied, the situation in Syria is very different from and more complex than the situation in Iraq, and any strategy in Syria must properly reflect that.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

11. What assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the decision by the Major Projects Authority to give the Future Reserves 2020 programme a red rating.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Julian Brazier)]

My hon. Friend will have heard my earlier answer.

Since the MPA report, governance has been shaken up, with each service delivering its own programme alongside a defence-level enabling structure. My hon. Friend will know from many earlier answers that our improvements in recruitment, selection and training processes are bearing fruit. We remain committed to delivering the FR20 requirement.

[Mr Baron]

The Minister will nevertheless know that the MPA declares as red projects that it believes risk being unachievable. Given the delays, cost increases and capability gaps, and given reports that superannuated reservists and those who do not regularly attend parades are remaining on strength, at what point will the Government consider scrapping their plans and increasing the size of the regular Army?

[Mr Brazier]

We recruited nearly 7,000 reservists across the three services last year. That was a rise of 65%, and the rise was even greater within the Army Reserve. As for my hon. Friend’s reference to superannuated reservists, I visited 3 Royal Welsh last weekend, and the average age of that battalion has dropped from 41 to 31 over the past three years.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I would not want to suggest that the hon. Gentleman was reading his horoscope. I do not think he was doing anything of the kind—that is a calumny!

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Defence diplomacy is a major component of Britain’s soft power. What steps are the Government taking to foster and encourage this aspect of our international relations?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Julian Brazier)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: defence engagement is of pivotal importance. We are in the process of “upgunning” the role of defence attachés worldwide, with more language training and a proper career structure to make it more attractive. That is part of a wider attempt to raise the importance of defence diplomacy. Soldiers, sailors and airmen can so often reach parts of our allies that others cannot.