Armed Forces: Reserves

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for tabling this Question for Short Debate. I do not come to this as a former Defence Minister or as somebody who has served in the reserves; I am very much a novice. I am now on the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. So far, I have only six days’ experience, so I am not pretending to speak as somebody who has been involved, but over the years I have been involved in Liberal Democrat policy-making on defence. Somewhat like the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, we had concerns about the reserves policy that was adopted after the last strategic defence and security review, and in particular we had questions about recruitment.

It appears from debates we have had in the Chamber in the past few months that recruitment seems to have improved, but I want to look at three related issues on the medical side of things. I will draw, to some extent, on the RAF, so we will move away from the Army briefly. The three things I want to touch on are recruitment medicals, the Defence Medical Services, and mental health and other provision for reserves.

In particular, recruitment medicals were touched on in the excellent report by the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations. That came up on a visit where I met a dozen recent reserve recruits who said, “If you want to understand what we’re doing, you should be a reserve”. They shared real frustration. Ten of the 12 of them said it had taken an inordinately long time to get their medical appointment. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect. If RAF bases have medical centres, which they do, and those centres are able to do recruitment medicals for regulars, why can they not do them for reservists as well? At the moment, medicals are out to contract with Capita. It seems to take an inordinately long time to get appointments and there is a danger of appointments being shifted. That sort of frustration causes a real problem right at the start. There are people who are enthusiastic about becoming reservists but they are told, “You can’t have that date”, and they are messed around, but those people have other jobs and do not necessarily have the time to be messed around because Capita cannot schedule their appointments. Could there not be some rationalisation of the medical aspect of recruitment?

The second issue was highlighted to me by the BMA in an email yesterday and is also in the report. It is about the Defence Medical Services. At the moment, there is undermanning of the regulars, which means additional demand on the reserves. While the reserves are clearly able to step up to the mark, and there is no question that they are absolutely able to do the job, one of the issues about more regular deployments is what employers feel about it. The slightly worrying thing is that the BMA seems to be suggesting a growing concern among NHS trusts about doctors being deployed. If our own ministries are not able to facilitate the deployment of reservists, that raises some serious questions. Does the Minister know whether this is more a systematic problem or whether it is only in the medical area that reservists are having problems being released for deployment?

The final issue is medical provision for reservists—in particular, in respect of mental health issues. Again, if you are a regular, you have access to the Defence Medical Services. If you are a reservist on a base, or during training and deployment, you have access to those services; but when you are back in your community, there may be issues that are not spotted because you are not working with your peers on a day-to-day basis. NHS doctors, despite the Armed Forces covenant, may not be looking for the sort of health issues that military doctors would be looking for. Is the Minister able to pass this back to the NHS and look at ways of improving those synergies so that our reservists have the same strength of medical provision as the regulars?