2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers

Debate between Lord Beith and Lord Robathan

Thursday 18th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

I do recall the phrase, and that is not what has happened.

Let me now explain in some detail how the application of the criteria that I listed earlier led us to the outcome announced on 5 July. Some of this may sound a little dry, but it is important for the House to understand the care that was taken in reaching these decisions.

Drawing on demographic data for the age cohort across the United Kingdom from which infantry recruits are drawn—the 15-to-29 age group, according to the way in which the Office for National Statistics segments the population—and taking account of historical trends in terms of the percentage of that cohort who were likely to join the Army, an assessment was made of which regiments were likely to be the least sustainable in the future in their current configuration. That work also included a comparison of each regiment’s historical outflow so that the likely recruiting requirement could be determined. On that basis, the Army’s analysis showed that the regiments likely to be the least sustainable in future were the Royal Regiment of Scotland, the Yorkshire Regiment, the Mercian Regiment, and the Royal Welsh Regiment. It was therefore decided to move one battalion from each of those regiments.

After the removal of the four battalions, and given the criterion that there should be no cap badge deletions and no regiment should lose more than one battalion, the method of predicting future sustainability, and therefore which battalion should be added to the four whose future had already been decided, became less statistically discerning. To put it another way, it was impossible to distinguish between a number of regiments on the basis of the future sustainability criterion alone.

[Sir Alan Beith]

In his letter to me, the Minister used those figures and there was a prediction that the Royal Regiment of Scotland would be one and three quarter battalions short on sustainability in the future. When we compare the risk to operability of that level of difficulty with the predictions for the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, do we not find that the military logic is overpowering?