Cadet Forces: Funding

Lord Colgrain Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Colgrain (Con)]

My Lords, I speak as one who has been a member of a school CCF and a university TA regiment. I also spent a short time as a police special constable, so there are no guesses as to where my loyalties lie in this short debate, so well brought by the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield.

My more recent experience came about through a visit to some sea cadets when I was High Sheriff. I was approached by a man and a woman after a cathedral service, asking if I could inspect their charges on the water in a parade thereafter. On the water, I saw two boats being rowed by the cadets. One was a lightweight fibreglass vessel, the other a heavy, wooden, corked lifeboat. Neither was fit for purpose—both were barely usable—but the commitment given to the rowing effort and the enjoyment derived from it was palpable. There were too many sea cadets for places in the boats.

They were then called off the water. After a short while, they all reappeared in immaculate pressed and clean uniforms, and a well-drilled parade took place. My evening finished with a request for help find £2,000 to buy another boat—the most modest financial request to provide a fantastic opportunity for those cadets, and future ones, to feel like valued members of a team and to enjoy a feeling of self-worth.

I mention this visit to illustrate a wider point. The two adults who originally approached me were volunteers who ran this branch of sea cadets with 70 young people, boys and girls, in their charge. “In loco parentis” is no exaggeration. Nearly all the young people were latchkey kids whose parents—they were lucky if they had two—would be working when they came back from school. Without the camaraderie, sense of belonging and palpable pride in being part of such a disciplined and purposeful organisation, they would have been exposed to all the temptations of the drug and gang culture by which they were surrounded.

The most recent figures from the House of Lords Library show that the direct cost to the MoD of the ACF, the ATC and the CCF is a mere £175 million, with indicative benefit figures to society of £479 million—a return that speaks for itself. Furthermore, as the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, mentioned, a report from the University of Northampton on the social impact of the cadet forces showed significant educational benefits deriving from the CVQO that were, in many cases, potentially life-changing. Enormous value can thereby accrue to those not necessarily talented in the schoolroom, so it is good to note that more than 500 schools have involvement of some sort with cadet forces.

The sadness is that membership figures have fallen—from 130,000 in April 2020 to 120,000 in April 2021—as has the number of adult volunteers, which has fallen from almost 29,000 to 27,500 in the same period. This cannot be put down to Covid-19, nor to government, since all parties have supported the increase in cadet numbers. Anyone who has been closely involved with cadet forces of whatever association can see for themselves the hugely beneficial social impact that they bring about, as I saw with those sea cadets. We must all do whatever we can to encourage making this opportunity available to everyone, as it was to me.

Reserve Forces and Cadets’ Associations

Lord Colgrain Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Colgrain (Con)]

I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord De Mauley for arranging this short debate. I always feel humble when speaking in your Lordships’ House—particularly on this occasion, when practically everyone who has spoken before me has held a senior rank. I held the lowliest rank, both in the OTC and the CCF, and as a police special constable. However, the first two gave me the opportunity to see the value of RFCAs from the bottom up, so to speak, and I found a further perspective when visiting a number of them while performing my duties as high sheriff of Kent. This perspective, of course, is also shared by lord lieutenants and deputy lieutenants, as has been mentioned a number of times in this debate. On the back of those and other experiences, I should like to make a couple of quick points.

First, the experience of one particular high sheriff visit remains with me—to a couple, just one man and one woman, responsible for 70 young sea cadets. Almost all these young people were latch-key kids, with one or both parents working when they got home from school. As cadets, they were removed from the temptation of being on the streets as gang members, with crime and drugs an everyday occurrence, and were instead given membership of an organisation that provided them with companionship, structure and the chance to build their personal confidence as a member of a team.

The couple responsible had significant influence in the local community, which did its best to support them financially and in kind. Therefore, I suggest that any reclassification of the RFCAs must be mindful of the value provided by similar local communities, and that any restructuring should not disempower them, superimpose any further regulation at grass-roots level or alter their scheme of association.

Secondly, RFCAs currently enjoy critical links to business through regional business groups; the importance of these links cannot be overemphasised. The theory of asking for the employer and the employee to have trust and understanding that the role will be kept open, and remuneration and promotion opportunities sustained, when a senior manager is called up for a six-month tour of duty seems pretty straightforward. The actuality is far from it—a situation that could be worsened if there is any severance of the current regulations, which would impact on our RFCA functions and could be detrimental to the Armed Forces covenant.

Thirdly, I have had personal, professional and commercial experience of the MoD’s track record in managing property. For 15 years I was on the board of a company that provided short-term residential accommodation to MoD personnel, some seven and a half properties at any given time. I saw how a mixture of civil servants, civilian contractors and military personnel from all three services were being asked to make commercial decisions for which they had no training or qualification and to which they were not best suited. When we suggested embedding our staff in the department concerned to facilitate the process, we were rebuffed. The final act of this particular play was the invocation of a judicial review to ensure that a tender document could be reissued within a level commercial playing field and the MoD’s own terms of reference. So the suggestion that the MoD might become further involved in the volunteer and cadet estate, which I believe the report is suggesting, is something I would hesitate to recommend.

On the basis of the above examples, I ask the Minister to encourage the powers that be to leave the current RFCA structure and classification as it is.