Armed Forces Redundancies

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

It is. Some suggestions have been made that because of the redundancy programme we should end recruiting—[Interruption.] Hang on. Past experience shows that if we turn off the recruiting pipeline for a few years, we end up with a black hole in our armed forces structure some years on, which will subsequently be difficult to fill. As I have said, we have reduced the recruitment of regulars as far as we think we practically can, but there comes a point beyond which it is not safe to reduce recruiting efforts for the regulars. We have been mindful of that in going forward. We still want people to join the regular Army.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his thoughtful response to the question asked by the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) about those service personnel made redundant, who are calling themselves the “unpensionables”. Given his concerns about the difficulty of setting a cut-off point for those payments, will he consider a gradually accrued entitlement approach to the issue?

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend has obviously looked at this. If he is referring to what some call the taper model, then we have looked at it, but we do not think it works practically. There is then the further difficult problem about the legacy issue of what to do about tranches 1 and 2. It is not as straightforward as it sometimes looks. I can assure the House that I have tried to look at the issue very carefully, but I am not sure, for some of the reasons I have outlined, that we can change the position. We know it is a difficult subject, but wherever we draw the line, there will always be someone just on the other side of it.