Armed Forces Bill

Lord Harlech Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Harlech]

40: After Clause 38, insert the following new Clause—
“Employer policies on the employment of members of the reserve forces(1) An employer to which this section applies must prepare, maintain and publish a policy on the employment of members of the reserve forces.(2) The policy must make provision about—(a) time off for reserve forces training, including any entitlement under section 50A of the Employment Rights Act 1996;(b) the treatment of a period of permanent service under a call-out order or a recall order for the purposes of pay, pension, seniority and continuity of employment;(c) reinstatement under the Reserve Forces (Safeguard of Employment) Act 1985;(d) the post responsible for the operation of the policy;(e) how an employee may make a request, or raise a complaint, under it.(3) The employer must make the policy accessible to every employee and, where it maintains a website, publish it there.(4) The employer must review the policy at least once every three years.(5) This section applies to an employer that employed, on average, 50 or more persons in the United Kingdom during the preceding financial year.(6) The Secretary of State must issue guidance for the purposes of this section, which must include a model policy, and the employer must have regard to it.(7) The Secretary of State must, each calendar year, lay before Parliament a report on compliance with this section.(8) A failure to comply with this section does not give rise to any liability in civil proceedings.(9) In this section “member of the reserve forces” has the meaning given by section 1 of RFA 1996.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require employers with 50 or more employees to publish and maintain a policy on the employment of reservists. It carries no sanction and no civil liability. It puts on a statutory basis an existing requirement of Silver and Gold employers under the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, it is a new day in Committee, so I declare my interest as a serving officer in the Army Reserve once again. In moving Amendment 40, I shall also speak to Amendments 41, 45, 69 and 70. I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Penn and Lord De Mauley for adding their names in support of my amendments. Let me also preface my amendments by reiterating my intent behind all of them, as I did on the first day in Committee. They are all aimed at improving the lived experience of reservists in order to boost recruiting and retention and therefore to enhance the operational effectiveness of the Armed Forces.

I begin by welcoming the Government’s Amendment 38, which allows call-out notices to be served by email. It is sensible and I support it. But it also illustrates the point behind this group. We are getting steadily better at calling reservists up, but we have said almost nothing about the civilian conditions that determine whether they are still serving and able to be serving reservists when we call. I think that there is common ground across your Lordships’ House on that objective. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, has amendments for consideration later today that approach the same problem from a different direction.

The Select Committee on this Bill in the other place put the point plainly. It welcomed the changes to recall liability and then noted that the measures focus on the strategic reserve and do not in themselves achieve the strategic defence review’s ambition, which in my humble opinion is too modest anyway, of an increase of 20% to make a larger active reserve. That growth will be produced by the conditions in which people serve—and those conditions are set at the reservist’s desk on a Monday morning rather than in the drill hall.

Amendment 40 would therefore require employers with 50 or more employees to publish and maintain a policy of employment of reservists. There is no sanction. There is no civil liability. The Secretary of State supplies a model policy and, under Amendment 69, this would not commence for 12 months. This is already the required standard of silver and gold employers under the defence employer recognition scheme. The difficulty with a voluntary scheme is that it reaches the converted. The employers who need a policy have never heard of it. There are roughly 38,000 medium-sized businesses in this country and that is where a great many reservists work but where there is no human resources function to absorb the question when it arises.

A reservist in a firm with no policy negotiates from nothing. Every request for time away is a personal favour rather than an entitlement, granted or refused according to the temperament of whoever is in the chair—and when that person moves on, the answer changes. A written policy would end the line manager lottery. Subsection (2)(b) requires the policy to address what happens to pay, pension, seniority and continuity of employment during mobilisation. Most reservists have no idea what happens to any of those things, because nobody has ever written it down. That is a remarkable thing to discover at the point of deployment.

My main effort is Amendment 41, which is at the heart of this group. Most reservists fund their own training out of their annual leave. They spend their holiday entitlement on annual camp and have to spread the remainder among family commitments, personal holiday and the incidentals that real life throws in their path. That is the position we are in today and I do not think that it is defensible. This amendment would give 10 working days of unpaid leave a year for annual continuous training or for promotion courses. It would become applicable only after the employee had completed 26 weeks with the civilian employer. It requires 28 days’ written notice and a certificate from the commanding officer. It excludes employers with fewer than 10 employees, it confers no right to be paid and it counts against any contractual entitlement that the employer already offers.

Section 50 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 already gives unpaid time off for public duties to magistrates, to local councillors, to school governors and to members of health bodies. Parliament has decided that sitting on a planning committee merits protected time off, but it has not yet decided that training for the defence of the realm does. I think that that is a very difficult proposition to explain to a reserve soldier. Ten days is already the gold standard under the defence employer recognition scheme, and the Civil Service has offered paid leave of this kind for well over a decade. It is a fair question why what the Government expect of themselves as an employer is too much to expect of anybody else.

Let us look at our Five Eyes counterparts. Australia’s Defence Reserve Service (Protection) Act 2001 requires employers to release reservists for training—not just for mobilisation, but for training. Our own 1985 Act protects mobilisation only. The current gap is legislative, not cultural. Let me anticipate the objections, including those on my own Front Bench. The first is that this is a burden on employers. It is unpaid, it is capped at 10 days, it requires four weeks’ notice, it excludes the smallest firms and, under Amendment 70, it would not commence for a year. If that is an unacceptable burden, we should be honest and say that we are not really serious about the whole force.

The second objection is that an absolute right is too rigid and employers must be able to refuse. A refusable right is precisely the position that reservists have now and it is exactly why they use annual leave instead. The notice period and the annual cap are what protect the employer, and they are real protections. The third objection is that this is a day one right. It is not. It arises only after the reservist has completed 26 weeks of employment with the civilian employer—the same qualifying period that this House insisted on for unfair dismissal.

Let me turn to something that has happened since these amendments were tabled. Last Friday, the BBC and the Times reported that the Army has been instructed to halt non-essential training exercises and that collective training for United Kingdom-based units has been suspended for most of this year on budgetary grounds. The Army has not denied it. It says that it is prioritising the activity that contributes most directly to readiness. I understand why it would say that, but this bears directly on the amendments before your Lordships.

A reservist books their annual continuous training months ahead, clears it with their employer and, very often, pays for it out of their own annual leave. If the exercise is then cancelled, they do not get that leave back, and the employer who has released them draws their own conclusions about how seriously the department takes its own training. Every cancellation of that kind spends employer good will that took years to accumulate.

I therefore ask the Minister three things. First, will reserve collective training and the annual continuous training period fall within the scope of the current pause? Secondly, what has been cancelled or curtailed for the reserves so far this financial year? Thirdly, £4.7 billion of the £15 billion in the defence investment plan remains to be confirmed at the Budget on 28 October. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether reserve pay and training will be protected within that settlement, as well as undertaking to write to members of the Committee once the position is known. I put that in support of these amendments, rather than against the Government. If money is tight, the measures that cost the Exchequer nothing become more, not less, important; everything in this group is of that kind.

Amendment 45 is the mechanism that makes Amendment 40 matter. It would require the national procurement policy statement to address how contracting authorities take account of a supplier’s arrangements for employing reservists. These authorities must already have regard to that statement under the Procurement Act 2023, so this would create no new machinery and no new liability. There is one fact here that the Committee ought to have: the current statement disapplies the social value priority for the Ministry of Defence in relation to defence and security contracts. So the one department whose suppliers most obviously employ reservists is the department least required to weight it; I would be grateful if the Minister could explain how that came about.

Amendments 69 and 70 are consequential. They would provide the 12-month commencement period for the two duties.

The Bill asks reservists to be available later in life, at shorter notice and on lower thresholds. Attendance at annual continuous training is the single biggest determinant of a reserve unit’s readiness. Promotion courses generate the non-commissioned officers, without whom mobilisation at scale is not possible, whatever powers the Bill confers. These are modest amendments and would cost the Exchequer nothing. I beg to move.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, before we move on—because I suspect that this is not going to detain us too long—I would like to tease out from the Government Front Bench a couple of things.

As I said in my earlier remarks, we are going through something of a sea-change, rather too late in the day, in how we look at our reserves, our responsiveness and our state of alert in this country. In that respect, we understand that it is easier for larger companies to let people go for training because they have more people, but it is the smaller companies on which we should spend a little bit more time in thinking how we can better assist them. With that in mind, in both cases—those of larger and smaller companies—what are we doing to promote the idea that it is a good thing for them to release their employees to take part in some activities involving the military? Are we actively doing that?

Secondly, on people being released from other duties, it suddenly struck me that it seems rather ridiculous that people in the reserves are not exempt from jury service; I think I am right in that. This means that, particularly if you are a small employer, you might have to let somebody go for not only their reserve training but jury service. That takes a huge whack out of somebody’s time. However we monitor these things, it is almost impossible to ensure that, ultimately, people are not being penalised in their careers for taking time off. I would like to know what the Government are doing to monitor this on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that people who are actively involved in the reserves are not being penalised further down the line.

There seems to be something of a disconnect in our thinking here. On the one hand, as I said earlier, there is talk of mobilising many more veterans—something like 69,000—in an exercise next year, just at the same time as we are telling our Reserve Forces that they cannot have money for training and equipment. What is the Government’s thinking on that? If we are going to mobilise these people, is it going to be a paper exercise or are we actually going to invite them to turn up? Are they going to be given equipment? What is the current thinking here—or is it just a catchy headline?

We have debated the whole issue of preparedness in this country and will continue to do so going forward, for obvious reasons—of that I am absolutely sure. The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, mentioned a number of issues, with which I concur. I am broadly supportive of many of the amendments that he has tabled and which we are debating this afternoon, some of which are probably probing. He talked about Australia and the difference in its approach to these matters, as compared to ours. We have lessons to learn from Australia, but why do we not also take into account what they have been doing so successfully in Switzerland for decades now, whereby almost anyone of working age and beyond is required to do service in the reserves at weekends? It is a very bonding exercise. You can be somebody’s boss in the week and that person can be your radio operator at the weekend. It engenders in a country a sense of purpose, unity and preparedness, which is what this must all be about.

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These amendments would take the existing requirements of the silver and gold employers and offer them to a wider group of people. The example of public duty is a good one. At Cerebral Palsy Scotland, we were finding ourselves completely hammered by jury call-ups. Clinicians, who make appointments six weeks in advance, were being called up for jury service—which, in Scotland, is even more likely to happen because there are 15 people on a jury rather than 12. We decided that we needed a public duties policy. It was because of my daughter and the need for such a policy that we had to consider how we would be treat reservists as a small employer. I am glad to say that we have a policy that enables us to lay out what we would do about time off and all the rest of it. These amendments lay it down and, importantly, would give that certainty for the vast range of employers. Anecdotally, I see that the current active reserves are made up disproportionately of people from organisations in the public sector—civil servants, teachers—

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

And the self-employed.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

Yes, and the self-employed. That is because they do not have to ask for time off or negotiate with their bosses for training days. I would argue that not only does such uncertainty put people off being in and remaining in the reserves but it leads to the number of service days that active reservists can commit to. I was just trying to look it up, but I think I am right in saying that the number of service days that active reservists have served has decreased year on year. I think that measures such as this would improve that. Anything we can do to support employers to support our reservists would get my vote.

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We understand the purpose of and the intent behind the amendments. We can deal with the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, in the next group. With that, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, and I assure him that I will, of course, consider the various points that have been made.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, let me start with the good. I am grateful for the support of my noble friends. My noble friends Lord Swire, Lord De Mauley and Lady Fraser all made very strong points. I am a bit disappointed by the rather gloomy view of my Front Bench of what reserve service offers to an employer. I will have to pick up this discussion outside the Chamber and try to persuade my noble friends otherwise. I cannot understand why the Government are not going for it. I am trying to generate mass for the reserve and to give them this.

I leave the Committee with this—of course, I will give way.

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Non-Afl)]

Since my noble friend is a bit gloomy, I would like to cheer him up slightly. The answer to the question, “What does the reserve service give to employers?” is, “Actually, quite a lot”. To answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, one of the things that defence is doing in a common skills framework is trying to ensure that, for the skills you learn in defence, both civilian qualifications will be recognised and the skills you get in defence can be transferred to civilian qualifications. Rather than having two parallel systems, there is an equal recognition so that there is mutual benefit for both employers and defence when it comes to training.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that intervention and for setting out this equivalence of the defence skills passport, which is much needed and long overdue and will be incredibly helpful. We must get better at explaining to employers the value of employing reservists and why it is good that they go to train. They will maybe go to do a course in leadership and management. They will come back upskilled, happy and motivated, and they will spread their good will and new skills throughout the rest of the civilian employer.

I just leave the Committee with this: how can it be that our Five Eyes counterparts do what I am suggesting and more—much more in some cases—and we do not? Do we think that that is the right or wrong way around? It is to be continued. With that, I beg leave to withdraw—for now.

Amendment 40 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Harlech]

42: After Clause 38, insert the following new Clause—
“Refusal of employment on grounds of membership of the reserve forces(1) It is unlawful to refuse a person employment because that person is, has been, or proposes to become a member of the reserve forces, or is or may become liable to be called out or recalled for service.(2) A person is refused employment if the prospective employer—(a) refuses or deliberately omits to entertain or process an application or enquiry,(b) causes the person to withdraw or cease to pursue an application,(c) refuses or deliberately omits to offer employment,(d) makes an offer on terms which no reasonable employer wishing to fill the post would offer, and which is not accepted, or(e) withdraws an offer, or causes the person not to accept it.(3) It is unlawful for an employment agency to refuse a person any of its services for a reason falling within subsection (1).(4) A person refused employment or services in contravention of this section may complain to an employment tribunal within six months of the conduct complained of, or within such further period as the tribunal considers reasonable where it was not reasonably practicable to complain in time. (5) Where the tribunal finds the complaint well founded it must make a declaration to that effect, and may award compensation, including compensation for injury to feelings, of such amount as it considers just and equitable, and may recommend action to obviate or reduce the adverse effect of the conduct complained of.(6) Where the complainant proves facts from which the tribunal could conclude, in the absence of any other explanation, that this section was contravened, the tribunal must uphold the complaint unless the respondent shows that the conduct was in no sense whatsoever on a ground falling within subsection (1).(7) In this section “member of the reserve forces” has the meaning given by section 1 of RFA 1996 and “employment agency” has the meaning given by section 13(2) of the Employment Agencies Act 1973.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause would make it unlawful to refuse a person employment because they are, or may become, a reservist, with a remedy in the employment tribunal. Existing protection is confined to dismissal, so a job applicant has none. The clause follows the model used for trade union membership in Part III of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, we have already started to discuss some of the themes here; the noble Lord, Lord Empey, raised some of them. On Amendments 42 to 44, I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Penn and Lord De Mauley for their support. The group addresses what I believe is the largest single gap in the law protecting reservists.

We protect the reservist who is already in the job, and almost nobody else. Section 17 of the Reserve Forces (Safeguard of Employment) Act 1985 makes it a criminal offence to dismiss a reservist because of call-out liability. Section 48 of the Defence Reform Act 2014 removes the qualifying period for unfair dismissal where the reason is connected with reserve membership. Both are about dismissal. Neither touches a candidate sitting an interview. I add that where an employer is convicted under Section 17, compensation is capped by Section 18 at five weeks’ pay. That is the entire financial consequence of criminally dismissing a reservist.

Amendment 42 would make it unlawful to refuse a person employment because they have been or may become a reservist, with a remedy in the employment tribunal. Our closest ally covers this expressly. American law protects applicants as well as employees and reaches past, current and future military obligations. This House has already accepted the principle at home: Part III of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 makes it unlawful to refuse a person employment on the grounds of trade union membership. It is difficult to explain to a reservist why union membership merits statutory protection at the point of hiring and service to the Crown does not.

This matters because of what it causes. The reason reservists conceal their service from employers is the belief—frequently, a correct belief—that declaring it will cost them the job. That belief is entirely rational, because there is no remedy if they are right. The consequence is that the whole architecture of employer support rests on people hiding the very thing it exists to support. That is not a stable foundation for the whole force, and it is not a recruiting proposition either.

I expect to be told that there is no evidence of a problem. The absence of evidence is a function of the absence of a remedy. Nobody records a refusal that they have no means of challenging. I also expect to be told that subsection (6) of the proposed new clause, on the shifting burden of proof, is too onerous, but it is the standard provision used throughout discrimination law and well understood by tribunals, and it is narrower than the American test. Without it, the clause would be decorative, because no employer writes down that they declined a candidate over their reserve service.

Amendment 43 deals with what happens afterwards. Between the 1985 Act and unfair dismissal lies everything that actually occurs in practice: being passed over for promotion, taken off the client list, given the shift pattern which clashes with drill nights, or quietly moved sideways after a mobilisation. The employer who does not want reservists does not dismiss them. Dismissal is legally risky and commercially untidy. They simply make staying unattractive, and, at present, that is entirely lawful. American protection reaches promotion, retention and any benefit of employment. Ours reaches nothing until the individual is sacked.

This is settled machinery. It mirrors the detriment provisions already in Part V of the Employment Rights Act, which protects whistleblowers, health and safety representatives, and pension trustees. It falls hardest on those the reserve can least replace: the medical, legal, cyber and engineering specialists that the Regular Forces cannot recruit and could not afford to grow.

Amendment 44 concerns the reservists nobody has legislated for at all. A substantial proportion are self-employed, run small businesses or are partners in professional firms, and not one of the protections in the Bill or in existing law reaches them. For that person, the cost of annual camp is not leave; it is a fortnight of lost revenue with the overheads still running. Australia’s protections expressly reach partnerships, and its employer support payment scheme covers the self-employed. Canada operates something comparable. We pay the reservists a daily rate and give the employer a certificate. Again, to my own Front Bench, I suggest that this is very pro self-employed businesses and business owners.

Subsection (3) of the proposed new clause is deliberately a duty to review and not a spending power, so it creates no charge on public funds. I ask the Government to examine the question and report, not yet to fund the scheme. If the answer is that we cannot afford what Australia and Canada do, this House is entitled to be told the figure.

I recognise that these are not government amendments and that the Minister may have concerns about the drafting. If the principle is accepted, I am entirely content for the drafting to be the Government’s, and I would welcome a conversation with him and with colleagues from all sides of the House before Report. I beg to move.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lord Harlech in Amendments 42 and 43. He has again brought before the Committee sensible, pragmatic amendments that surely must be addressed if we want reservists to continue to play a growing role in our Armed Forces. Refusal of employment, denial of promotion or withdrawal on the grounds of reserve service must be unacceptable. We are relying on reservists to balance the demands of their military service and their employment, and we must be able to say to them that they will be properly protected if their service unfairly threatens their livelihoods.

The Minister said in response to the previous group that reservists already benefit from employment protections. These amendments identify two gaps in those protections that I cannot see a reason not to fill. The Minister may, as my noble friend has anticipated, find objections to the drafting or in other areas, but it would be interesting to hear whether the Government accept the principle that these gaps exist in the employment protections for reservists. We might also hear the challenge about providing employment protection on or prior to appointment, but I think my noble friend has found a very good precedent in trade union legislation, which has solved this issue in other cases. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I again thank everyone who has participated in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, asked if we can have a conversation before Report; of course we can. We understand the intention behind the amendments: to further build on the protections offered to our reservists in current primary legislation. However, the Government do not believe that the new clauses are proportionate; they risk creating unintended consequences for employers, reservists and the wider labour market.

As mentioned earlier, reservists already benefit from a range of statutory protections. They allow reservists to claim compensation where their military pay is lower than civilian earnings, subject to a cap, and provide support for reasonable additional costs arising from mobilisation, such as childcare or other domestic expenses. This recognises the significant commitment that reservists make in serving our Armed Forces. The Armed Forces covenant further ensures that service personnel are not disadvantaged by virtue of their military service. The Government’s approach is to foster a positive partnership between defence and employers, rather than to create new categories of employment litigation.

Membership of the Reserve Forces is a voluntary commitment that may involve specific and foreseeable periods of absence from employment due to training or mobilisations. The amendments could introduce broad new causes of action in employment tribunals. As the noble Earl, Lord Minto, pointed out, the provisions are drafted in particularly wide terms, extending not only to actual reservists but also to persons who propose to become a reservist or who may become liable for future service. That would inevitably create significant evidential difficulties for employers. In particular, recruitment decisions often involve a range of legitimate factors, and it may be challenging to later demonstrate conclusively that reserve service played no part in a decision.

These amendments may therefore have the unintended consequence of discouraging employers from discussing reserve commitments openly with applicants and employees. The Government’s objective is to encourage transparent and constructive dialogue between employers and reservists. A statutory requirement may undermine that objective and weaken the collaborative relationship that currently exists between defence and employers through, as I say, the Armed Forces covenant and the defence relationship management programme. We remain committed to supporting reservists and promoting reserve services among employers. However, the amendments would create a disproportionate and potentially burdensome new legal requirement and introduce unnecessary uncertainty into recruitment and employment without compelling evidence of necessity.

I turn to Amendment 44. The Government recognise that reservists who run their own businesses, work as contractors or practise in partnership can face particular challenges in balancing civilian livelihoods with military service—again, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, made. Their commitment is highly valued, and defence will continue to support them through a combination of legislation, financial assistance, employer engagement and practical guidance.

Although the Government fully support the objective of ensuring that reservists are not treated unfairly because of their service, we do not believe that this amendment is necessary or proportionate. It would extend protections into a wide range of commercial contracts and partnership arrangements. Decisions about contracting, allocation of work or business partnerships are often based on legitimate commercial factors. The amendment could make such routine decisions vulnerable to legal challenge where current or potential reserve service is alleged to have played a role. That would represent a significant and far-reaching change to the law in this area, and the Government are not persuaded that the case for such a change has been made in the context of this Bill.

Existing protections and support mechanisms are already in place through various pieces of legislation. Financial assistance may also be available under Part VIII of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 when a reservist is mobilised or undertakes relevant reserve force activities. Support is available to reservists and employers, including self-employed employers and business partnerships. This can include provision for loss of earnings, replacement costs and additional business costs arising from mobilisation.

The Government’s approach is therefore to maintain a balanced framework; I think that starts to answer the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, made about trying to have a balanced framework and a balanced approach to some the competing demands. There is statutory protection where it is required, financial assistance where service creates identifiable costs, and strong engagement with employers and business through Defence Relationship Management. I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, about ensuring that everyone is aware of the skill reservists bring back to industry; that is an important point. There is also the Armed Forces covenant and the employer recognition scheme.

That partnership-based approach has built substantial and growing employer support for reservists without placing legal burdens on businesses. In 2016, under 1,000 businesses and organisations were signed up to the Armed Forces covenant. Today, we have over 15,200 organisations signed up. That is a significant thing that all of us across the Committee can be proud of, although there is still much more to be done.

The review requirement in the amendment is unnecessary. Defence already keeps reservist and employer support under regular consideration, including financial assistance arrangements for mobilisation and wider measures to improve reserve utilisation, readiness and employer support.

Again, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, that the Government will continue to consider whether existing schemes remain appropriate, but we do not believe that a statutory review tied to overseas comparisons is the right mechanism. International models can help, but arrangements in Australia and Canada operate within different reserve structures, employment markets, legal frameworks and funding systems. For those reasons, although we understand the intent, and I am perfectly happy, as always, to have a conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, we do not believe that these amendments are necessary. With that, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in this balanced but brief debate. I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the Government’s position. As with the previous group, I ask: are the number of reserves going up? Not really; we have stopped the bleed, so we have stabilised things, but the numbers are going down. If we keep doing the same thing we will get the same results. That is why what I am suggesting is a big change: it is dramatic, because it is time to do things dramatically differently to get out Reserve Forces where they need to be. For now, I withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 42 withdrawn.