Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Howarth and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the Chancellor agree with me that companies such as St Modwen that buy up town centres such as Kirkby in my constituency do nothing with them—in fact, they leave them to rot—and then simply sell them on to a pension fund? Is that the way we want to run the future of our town centres, and has he not got anything more imaginative that can be done about it?

[Mr Hammond]

The £675 million fund that I mentioned is specifically intended to allow local authorities to develop plans for responding to the transformation of the high street that is coming. Retailing is changing, and high streets have to change to reflect that. We cannot hold that tide back, but we can help to support the transition.

IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

Debate between George Howarth and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Let me deal with the cost point first. The overall programme, the Capita recruiting partnership project, has a budget of about £1.3 billion over a 10-year period. As I have just outlined, the additional cost of the IT platform is estimated to be £47.7 million.

Repeating the question that he has asked many times, my hon. Friend asked whether it is appropriate to replace 20,000 regular soldiers with 30,000 reservists. That is not what we are doing; we are changing the shape of the British Army and we are changing the role of reservists, whom we intend to fill specialist roles and provide resilience in the case of a prolonged future deployment. He makes a regular versus reserve point, but I should be clear with him that the recruiting platform is used for regular and reserve recruitment: it affects both regulars and reservists.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I declare a non-pecuniary interest as I chair Knowsley Skills academy, which has a 100% success rate in preparing candidates for entry into the military.

Does the Secretary of State accept that, regardless of who initiated the project, the problem is not the IT system, but the fact that the online recruitment model is flawed? It does not allow those doing the recruiting to identify at an early enough stage what candidates have to do to get up to the necessary standard to meet the requirements. He needs to go back to a professional soldier looking candidates in the eye and telling them what they need to do to get up to the required standard.

[Mr Hammond]

There is some truth in what the right hon. Gentleman says. One measure we have already put in place for reserves recruitment is reverting to an early face-to-face interview over a weekend session, where it is possible to deal with several processes in one hit, rather than stringing them out over a much longer period, which was how the system was originally set up.

It is clear to me that the original concept did not give a big enough role to front-line reservist units in managing the process of attracting recruits and then mentoring them through the pipeline to the point at which they join stage 1 training. We have now put that right, with recruitment budgets and recruiting targets allocated to reserve unit commanding officers, who will be held to account for delivering the recruiting targets. From the reserve units that I have visited and the COs to whom I have talked, I know that they are very glad to have back that role and responsibility.

Afghanistan

Debate between George Howarth and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I thank my right hon. Friend, and absolutely agree with his analysis that the greatest strategic challenge is security in the wider region, including security in the vulnerable cross-border area. If he does not mind, with only 48 hours under my belt, I will not give the House a lecture on how that is to be delivered, but I will confirm that I recognise it as a very important priority.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the Secretary of State to the formidable challenges that lie ahead of him. Can he assure the House that if the security situation in Afghanistan were to deteriorate after 2014, there would be sufficient flexibility to deploy British military assets in support of the Afghan security services?

[Mr Hammond]

The Prime Minister has made it very clear that we will have withdrawn from a combat role by the end of 2014, and that the number of UK troops remaining after that point will be very considerably fewer than are there now. The detail of the role of those few remaining troops has yet to be determined.