Reserve Forces

Bob Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and discuss the matter. I personally read the DWP regulations on this yesterday and I am clear that when a member of regular military personnel is deployed on operations, their room will continue to be treated as occupied for the purpose of the spare room subsidy.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

What happens if the recruitment strategy fails?

[Mr Hammond]

We are committed to recruiting a reserve force of 35,000. I remind my hon. Friend that as recently as 1990, we had a trained reserve force of 72,500, so it is not as if we are trying to do something that has not been done before. All our English-speaking allies operate with far greater reserve forces as a proportion of their regular forces than we do.

I should tell my hon. Friend that the responsibility for delivering the strength required lies with the individual commands, and they understand and accept that they may have to flex resources if that is necessary to deliver the objective. We have no plan B: we will deliver these reserve numbers.