Defence Reform Bill

Bob Ainsworth Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

It is a huge pleasure to speak to new clause 1. Let me also say how much I enjoyed serving on the Public Bill Committee, through which we were so well guided by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne).

New clause 1 seeks to establish, on a permanent basis, a power for the council of the reserve forces and cadets associations to report annually to this House and the Secretary of State on the state of the reserves, and will restore to the reserves a powerful independent voice.

I hope you will indulge me, Mr Speaker, if I give the House a bit of history. In 1908, when that great reforming Secretary of State, Haldane, set up the Territorial Force, as it was then called, on its modern basis, it was recognised that if the force was established simply under the Regular Army, it would not prosper. Therefore, the county associations—what we now call the RFCAs—were given control of recruiting and property management for the TF, as it then was. Just six years later, at the outbreak of the first world war, there were 250,000 Territorials stood to arms. Thirty units went over to the continent in the first wave. Sir John French, our commander over on the continent, remarked:

“Without the assistance which the Territorials afforded between October 1914 and June 1915, it would have been impossible to hold the line in France and Belgium.”

Sir John French was of course referring to the beginning of the war, but even at that stage, the same split view, which I am afraid we still see today, existed in the Regular Army. Lord Kitchener, as Secretary of State, announced on the very day that he took up his post that he could

“take no account of anything but Regular soldiers”.

He derided the Territorial Force, which was already fighting over in France, as “a town clerk’s army” and said that it got its orders from “Lord Mayors’ parlours”. However, had it not been for the vigorous lobbying of Parliament by the county associations—the forerunners of the RFCAs, with which my new clause deals—his efforts simply to break up the TF and use it as a source of spare parts for the Regular Army would have been successful, and the remarkable process whereby it delivered almost half our fighting units by the end of the war and scored 71 Victoria Crosses in the process would never have happened.

The system continued for nearly a century. Indeed, in 2003-04, by far the largest deployment of reservists in post-second world war history took place. At one point, one fifth of all our forces in Iraq and, just afterwards, one eighth of all our forces in Afghanistan were from the reserves. It is no accident that two years ago the RFCA council elected as its chairman General Sir Robin Brims. The RFCAs elect people to such positions and have a structure that would be recognisable to those in all parts of the House. It is almost like a party structure, although RFCAs are not party political. General Brims commanded the remarkable capture of Basra. Getting into the centre of the city was an almost bloodless exercise and almost the only thing that went seriously right in the British engagement in Iraq. His deputy is Major General Simon Lalor, who is known to a number of people in the House and who headed the reserves very effectively during the last two years of the Labour Government.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Mr Brazier]

I am glad to see the right hon. Gentleman nodding.

More recently in Afghanistan, General John Lorimer—he is our current commander there, but at that stage he was a brigade commander—made the following comment on a Territorial Army company that was put under his command:

“Somme Company was an outstanding body of men: well trained, highly motivated and exceptionally well led.”

Sadly, however, for a number of years the Territorials have lost their voice and position. Crucially, in 2006, their control of recruiting was taken away from them and given to the Regular Army.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baron]

I have made it clear that I shall be taking no more interventions. I think that hon. Members would agree that I have been quite generous in that regard, and I shall now move on because I know that others want to speak. We also need to address another important group of amendments.

The Government’s Army Reserve plans raise many questions on recruitment problems, assumed mobilisation rates and rising costs which could lead to false economies, but one of my greatest concerns is the ever-widening capability gaps that could result from the proposals. If passed, new clause 3 would confirm that the time had come for Parliament properly to scrutinise the Government’s plans. There comes a stage in any struggling project when the evidence and common sense suggest, and perhaps demand, a rethink. We have reached that stage with these plans.

If the Government are confident about their plans—that is what Ministers claim, and I have no problem with that—they should not be afraid of the new clause. Let them present their plans to Parliament, and if their case is as strong as they think it is, Parliament will allow the plans to be passed and the reforms will carry on as intended. However, I urge all Members to support new clause 3 and consequential amendments 3 and 4. I shall seek to press new clause 3 to a vote.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I offer profound congratulations to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), not just for the concession he has achieved today but for the formidable way he has pursued this issue over the years. He harassed me when I was in office—I perhaps remember that with a fondness I never felt at the time—and has continued to harass his own Government and the defence establishment on the issue of the reserves and the role they can play in the country’s defence. No matter who wants to claim credit for some of the changes now being brought about, he can feel real satisfaction at something very few Back Benchers can say they have been able to do: profoundly to change a significant area of Government policy. He has most certainly done that through his work on the reserves over the years.

I totally support the hon. Gentleman’s new clause 1 and am enormously pleased that the Secretary of State has accepted it. I also support new clause 3, and I have to say that I believe the Secretary of State is being a little heavy-handed in suggesting that to support it is somehow to sabotage the direction of the Army or to play politics with the defence of the realm. I say that as a former Secretary of State who had to put up with allegations by the then loyal Opposition that I had deliberately delayed life-saving vehicles getting to our troops in Afghanistan. It is enormously important—particularly in the field of defence, where there is such a degree of cross-party support—that the Government’s own defence of their policies is somewhat measured, but I am not at all sure it has been in this regard. We can all read: we can see what new clause 3 says and does not say. As I say, my respect for the hon. Member for Canterbury is about as high as an Opposition Member’s can be for a Government Member, and I have not heard from him, or from anybody else here today, anything to suggest that the new clause does all the terrible things it is said to bring about.

New clause 3 calls for a report within a particular time frame after the Bill has been enacted, and a pause if Parliament does not accept it. It does no more than that. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) may have an agenda that is not mine—I do not know—because I support the general direction of policy in this area wholeheartedly. This development could bring about huge improvements in capability. I see nothing to justify the counter-argument that is being made.

[Mr Brazier]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his generous treatment of me, as leader of the all-party group for the reserve forces and cadets, which made the campaigning possible. The effect of this would be to send a message to those regular officers, many of them serving, who have rubbished this proposal for the past year and a half to the press off the record—they are a minority within the Regular Army but a significant one, some of whom the right hon. Gentleman will know—that if this can be kept down for just a little bit longer, they may get some regular manpower back instead.

[Mr Ainsworth]

The effect can and should be that this House is enormously interested in the development of the Reserves and wants to see their capability properly developed and scrutinised—and no more than that. That should be the message, and I do not think there is anybody in the House who is responsible for another message that I know of, other than the defence being offered by Government Front Benchers in the overreaction, as I see it, to new clause 3.

[Martin Horwood]

I am very grateful to the former Minister for giving way—[Hon. Members: “Secretary of State.”] Former Secretary of State; I beg the right hon. Gentleman’s pardon. He obviously has great knowledge of these issues, but on one he is quite wrong. He says that new clause 3 calls only for a report, but it does not. It is quite explicit: it calls for “Further implementation of the plans” to be “halted”. Why does the Labour party appear to be supporting the interruption of access to better pension provision and explicitly interrupting access to paid leave for training? Surely, that is not what he intends.

[Mr Ainsworth]

The new clause calls for a pause in certain circumstances, if the House has not been persuaded. To me, it gives time scales that are perfectly achievable, so I reject what the hon. Gentleman says.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Let us be clear: we are not talking about any conflict or preference for reserves or regulars; we are talking about numbers, competency and capability for the defence of the realm. What we need to be assured of—but which this House, largely, is not confident we have—is that the Government’s plans will provide us with the necessary numbers, competency and capability. That is what the pause is about. It is not a throwing away of the plan: it is a pause.

[Mr Ainsworth]

The growth of the reserve element in all the services has huge potential benefits, such as a connection with the population at large that the small regular armed forces that we inevitably have today and will have tomorrow can never achieve on its own. Equally, as other Members have said, it brings skills into the armed forces that cannot be kept up to date within the regulars themselves. So there are those potential improvements.

Government Members have talked about a potential gap of three years, but it is not just a question of that: I am worried about the potential ongoing downgrading of capability if we do not get this right. In order to get into the reserves the calibre of people that will be absolutely necessary for the kind of operations we have unfortunately had to carry out in recent years, and will undoubtedly have to carry out in future, the skills required by every rank must not only remain at their current level, but must improve. That is for the obvious and simple reason, which everybody knows, that the huge reputational damage to such operations, to our armed forces and to our nation, of errors in such operations can be profound. We must therefore ensure, given the cuts that are inevitably taking place, that we maintain within the regulars the quality of not only the original recruits but of the training given to them, in order to lift capability. We are blessed with armed forces with a capability level that, in some ways, is higher than that in any other nation on earth, in my opinion, but it will need to be higher still.

[Mr Ellwood]

I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman and the experience he gained as Secretary of State, but I genuinely worry that he is fighting the last war. The conduct of warfare has changed. I hope he would agree that we will not be doing “boots on the ground” in the manner in which we have done so badly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The size of armed forces concertinas—it has done so over the past 400 years. I hope he would agree that withdrawal from Afghanistan will have a huge impact on the size of the standing Army, both Regular and Territorial, and batting for the old numbers that we had five years ago is out of touch.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I totally accept that. I like to study history and I know that after conflicts, the services—generally the Army more than the other services, but those, too—have generally been decimated in times of peace, only to have to be regenerated in times of danger thereafter. So I am not trying to fight the last war. I am saying that as we struggle with these enormous economic challenges and the cuts that are almost inevitable, we have to do everything we can to maintain the quality of our personnel. That applies to the regular forces as it applies to the reserves. Even at a time of downsizing, we can surely do that—we have to try to do it because of the reputational damage that inevitably flows from our failure to do so. There is nothing “yesterday” or “last war” about that approach; this is about the kind of operations we could be involved in tomorrow, of whatever scale, and the need for quality personnel.

New clause 3 calls for a level of scrutiny that is wholly justified by the importance of the decisions, and the changes of direction and structure, that we are implementing and that the hon. Member for Canterbury has fought for so valiantly and successfully for so long. That is why I support it, even if he does not.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

As I have said before, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) has made some sensible points that need to be taken seriously. I recall my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) telling the House that the regulars would not be reduced until the reserves had been built up to take their place. He said:

“of course, the rate at which we are able to build up the reserves will determine the rate at which we are able to change the ratio with the regulars.”—[Official Report, 10 October 2011; Vol. 533, c. 9.]

That was a good thing for him to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I give way to the former Defence Secretary.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has obviously read new clause 3. With good will and effort, how long a pause does he think it would result in?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I do not think it is for me to say that. I am not advocating a pause. It is my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay who is doing so and he has told us that he thinks it all could be done in a matter of months. We have to understand what the Chief of the General Staff has said. There is a process under way.

I have talked to my commanders in Aldershot, about whom I am very proprietorial: the Secretary of State may think they are his commanders, but actually they are mine. The Army has taken this on the chin and said, “Right, this is the political remit we’ve been given. We salute, turn right, march off and do the bidding of the politicians.” Whether they think it is right or not, they do it and they are doing it now. Putting this spanner in the works will not hold back the run-down of the regular Army; it will create a run-down in the whole Army structure. As everyone knows, I am a light blue, but we are talking essentially about the Army.