Defence Transformation

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

What I want to achieve—I go back to this point again—is a complete Army of reserves and regulars that is genuinely deployable. We have to increase the deployable number because that is what gives us our military effect. There is no point in having bigger armed forces when the budget does not allow us to fully train and equip them, because it is the military effect that we need to preserve. The real betrayal was the Labour party under-equipping our armed forces, as it did so often when it was in government, not the proposals I have put forward today.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

If the previous Government had made this statement, I do not think the right hon. Gentleman would have welcomed seeing the British Army reduced to the size that it was when Colonel Robert Baden-Powell was involved in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer war. The Secretary of State says that the Army will be formed into five multi-role brigades. Will he clarify where 16 Air Assault Brigade and the Colchester garrison fit into that?

[Dr Fox]

The five multi-role brigades are the core of what the Army will do, but one air assault brigade and one commando brigade will of course remain separate from that shape, so there will be no real difference to the lay-down that my hon. Friend describes. As for the Labour party having introduced such a programme in government, it would never have done so because it had no idea how bad the economic circumstances were that it was creating.