Reserve Forces

Douglas Chapman Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for bringing this important debate to the House.

I will start with how we recruit to, and encourage people to remain in, the reserves. Deployment and the value that we place on people who join the reserves are of crucial importance. The ability to allow people to put into practice what they have been trained for, whether at home or abroad, is a really important aspect of maintaining a professional reserve force.

My first question to the Minister is, how strong is the link between the regular forces and the reserves? I know there has been a lot of work recently to strengthen that link, but surely the reserve force can never be treated exactly the same as the regulars. Some roles may be interchangeable, and there may be an element of flexibility, but reserve training, which takes place primarily on evenings or at weekends, can never really reach the same standard as what we would expect for a full-time soldier, airwoman or seaman.

Does the Minister agree that we need more specialism for the reserves—the hon. Member for Kettering touched on this point—so that they can bring their professional expertise to bear? For example, in the recent tragic events in Paris, security, policing and intelligence skills were to the fore; it would supplement the work that goes on 24/7 in those areas, and support the greater good, if reserves used the talents that they already have from their professional lives. Likewise, the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) made a good point about cybercrime. The hon. Member for Kettering raised the issue of the NHS, and some of the gaps in specialist medical skills and nursing. I ask the Minister, is there anything further that the Government can do to extend the number of reserves we can take from our NHS?

A common complaint that I often hear concerns reserve officers. The average age for a reservist is 37; for an officer it is 44. It has been related to me that people serving in the reserves feel that is too high. Reserve officers are still on civvy street, obviously; the careers of many may be peaking at that age, and their families are probably at their most complex and busiest. Do they have the time and energy to take on a demanding reservist role as well as their normal day-to-day career? My question for the Minister, then, is, how do we encourage younger people, from all backgrounds and all sections of society, into the reserves and give them increased opportunities to access officer training much earlier?

On recruitment, the 35,000 figure is a tall order in anyone’s book. The Secretary of State suggested that the target was “stretching away”; that was in The Daily Telegraph, which is a fairly pro-Government newspaper, if I can put it that way, and not at all critical. The Major Projects Authority described the target as “unachievable”, and the project was downgraded from amber/red to red. We are currently 10,000 shy of the target, so at what stage will that become red and flashing? Reservist capability and numbers are crucial to forward planning for the military as a whole.

The hon. Member for Kettering also mentioned retention. Over recent years the Government have spent millions on recruiting reserves, but there is no point in recruiting all these people and training them to a very high standard only to see them haemorrhage out the other end. Many reservist units see that as a major problem, and many who lead those units see retention as far more important than recruitment, in many respects. As Members have suggested, many regulars have been made redundant in recent years; we might have thought that more effort would be made to ensure that people who leave the services get the chance to take up a reserve post if they want to—they would jump at it. Transfer from the regulars to the reserves is pathetically low. The Minister should have another look at that.

In Scotland, the activities of the Ministry of Defence can be summed up in one word: cuts. In 2012, there were 12,200 full-time regular service people in Scotland; we were promised that that number would be roughly maintained, or would rise to 12,500, in future years. The Minister will be more than well aware that that figure is now around 9,300. In Scotland, there is a big gap to fill in mainstream activity. Not a single Royal Navy surface ship is based in Scotland. Our coastline is equivalent to that of India, and we have assets such as fisheries, oil, gas and renewables to protect. Where is the Royal Navy in Scotland? Under this Government, in Scotland the Royal Navy surface fleet could be said to be absent without leave. There are 28 Air Force bases in the UK, but following the closure of Leuchars, Scotland is down to one. That barely rated a mention in any of the MOD literature put out before the referendum last year.

Recruitment rates for the reserves are appallingly low in Scotland, with barely 50% of the target figure met. That lack of take-up among reservists is because of a lack of confidence in the MOD to defend our shores and airspace in an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world. The target will not be met in Scotland against a background of cuts and a reducing MOD footprint.