Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill
Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and Baroness Primarolo(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Out of enormous respect to the right hon. Gentleman and bearing in mind that he is standing down at the next election, I have been a little generous on those points, but I hope that his one and a half pages of notes do not stretch to engaging in a full discussion, tempted by his hon. Friend’s question.
Mr Arbuthnot
In order to reassure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I can say that it is one and a half sentences, and my one and a half sentences relate to the 0.7% statutory commitment that we seem to be moving towards on international development. I approve of international development—I think it does us good, as well as the countries that benefit from improved education—but to have a statutory percentage to be spent on aid and not even a manifesto commitment on defence beggars belief, and we must put that right.
Defence Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and Baroness Primarolo(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Baron
My proposal does not mention the regulars because the Bill is about the reservists. A couple of hon. Members have suggested motives for these proposals which I cannot agree with. The bottom line is that most of those regulars—this is my understanding and I am willing to stand corrected—have been disbanded in any case. Let me be clear about what my proposal says, because motives that I do not take kindly to are being attributed to it. The proposal is about saying that these plans are not working and we should take time, if only a brief amount of it, to scrutinise them properly to check for their viability and cost-effectiveness. That is the right thing to do—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has now made his point several times in one intervention, so I call James Arbuthnot.
Mr Arbuthnot
As I am coming on to discuss the reserves and why I think they are so important, I should perhaps declare an interest, in that my daughter is a second lieutenant in the Territorial Army. I think it is essential that we should change the reserves, boosting them, their numbers, their training and the equipment available to them. As a Defence Minister in the previous Conservative Government, I thought that that Government went too far in reducing the reserves, and I think that the previous Labour Government made the situation worse. It is high time that we begin again to build up and properly resource the reserves. I wish to pay particular tribute to two people, the first of whom is my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames). When he was Minister of State for the Armed Forces, he valiantly championed the Territorials and found himself fighting rather a losing battle.
Even more, I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury, who, as a Back Bencher—the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) made the point—has achieved more in supporting and championing the reserves than I or my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex did, when we were Ministers. My hon. Friend’s contribution to the reserves debate deserves an immediate dukedom. [Interruption.] Yes, a dukedom.
The reserves bring incredible value to this country. They bring vital specialist skills which are made contemporary by their civilian lives and they bring those skills to a changing world where they are essential. Crucially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury said, the reserves also tie the civilian world into the military world in a way that is becoming increasingly needed day by day. May I aim a shaft at my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State by saying that his clampdown on informal discussion between the military and politicians rather flies in the face of that need?
My second reason for supporting the Government is that wars are changing. We are increasingly less likely to see tank battles in Germany and increasingly more likely to be facing the emerging threats of cyber-attack, piracy and the covert destruction of our critical national infrastructure—the sort of things to which extra battalions of any particular regiment would not be the answer.