Armed Forces: Reserves

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, I declare interests as colonel commandant of the yeomanry and colonel of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, a regiment that I commanded early in the millennium, which might make me what my noble friend Lord Attlee calls a “proper Rupert”. I am also president of the Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations, in which latter capacity I succeeded my noble friend Lord Freeman, to whom I am extremely grateful for bringing this debate.

In those capacities and in my efforts to research for myself our progress towards our targets for 2020, I have recently visited the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry in Scotland, 7 Rifles in London and 622 Squadron RAF at Brize Norton, as well as my own regiment in the Royal Yeomanry at annual training in Sennelager, and a magnificent event to mark the unveiling of a memorial to Trooper Potts VC, hosted by 94 (Berkshire Yeomanry) Signal Squadron.

Listening to this debate, one could be forgiven for going away with the understanding that things are not going quite as they should be for the reserves. The reality is that they are generally going considerably better than they have been for very many years. I should pay tribute to the unprecedented support given to the Reserve Forces by the Government, emanating from my right honourable friend the Prime Minister himself. I would also single out for thanks the Minister for Reserve Forces, my honourable friend Julian Brazier, who is doing an outstanding job.

The Defence Reform Act 2014 gave the Reserve Forces and cadets’ associations a statutory responsibility for reporting annually on the state of the reserves. In that regard I draw noble Lords’ attention to this year’s external scrutiny team’s annual report, all of which is worth reading. I know the Government have taken care to note it.

Time is rationed, so I must focus my remarks on recruiting, although I would have liked to speak about several other matters, such as capability, integration and the reserves estate. I will not have time either to talk specifically about officer recruiting, to which my noble friends Lord Freeman and Lord Attlee referred, except to say that they are right and that this is a particular area of concern.

On the issue of numbers generally, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will confirm that the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force are making good progress and will achieve their targets, give or take a little, by 2018. The Army has the biggest challenge but is making progress, and I expect it to take a little longer, but I emphasise that, from the reports I hear, this is often because units have found workarounds rather than relying on the system in place.

Focusing on the Army, bearing in mind the aim of 30,000 people trained, in round numbers there were 21,000 in April this year—the Minister may be able to give us more up-to-date figures—with 4,400 more under training. However, this looks better when one appreciates that the trained strength is up by 1,000 since the year before and, more significantly, the figure for those under training is up by a further 1,000 since the year before. Aspects of the recruiting process remain cumbersome—too many applicants have been dropping out while in the pipeline because it has taken too long—but now the services have got a grip and are enlisting candidates conditionally while still awaiting their final medical clearance, which is eminently sensible and partly answers the very real problem identified by, I believe, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.

The Army is suffering on both regular and reserve recruiting, so a red light is flashing about how well the Capita recruiting group contract is working. There is a systemic problem with the way in which the process is set up, but there is a reluctance to acknowledge it and it would bear ministerial investigation. As ever, there is no substitute for units taking direct responsibility for individual recruits, making them feel part of the team immediately and managing each of them through the pipeline. That is now happening and things are improving.

Three of the recommendations in the external scrutiny team’s report are crucial for recruiting, and they bear repeating. Recommendation 15.3, to which I have just referred, proposes a review of,

“the separate roles played by the national call centres, the Armed Forces Careers Offices, the recruiting field forces and Reserve units to ensure that they are clearly optimised for Reserve recruiting”.

Recommendation 15.4 states that there should be a review of,

“the medical entry standards required of recruits”,

and that the MoD and the services should,

“ensure that the screening contracts are appropriately incentivised and assured to achieve success”.

Recommendation 15.5 states that we need to,

“determine the recruiting resources necessary to ensure steady state manning of the Reserve beyond the FR20 period”.

On a couple of specific matters, perhaps I could ask the Minister how the Civil Service 1% challenge is progressing. When I was at Defra, we made significant efforts to draw to the attention of civil servants the benefits of reserve service. It would be good to know how that is going because it seems a bit awkward for the Government to ask private sector employers to encourage their people to become reservists if the Government do not do the same, and more.

Finally, on the grounds that we need to recruit everyone bright and fit enough that we can, I ask my noble friend whether foreign and Commonwealth nationals can be recruited into the reserves, and what progress there has been on recruiting ethnic minorities, who historically have been underrepresented, so that major efforts have been made to attract them.