Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

I recently wrote back to the hon. Lady on this precise subject. I hope she has received the letter—she is nodding, and says that she has. I have also written to Ms Jayne Bullock, who wrote to me originally, and to a number of other servicemen’s wives who have campaigned on the matter. I remind the hon. Lady and others who support the so-called taper model, which a number of people have argued for, that we used that model for redundancies up to 2005-06, when the previous Government abandoned it.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T6. Last year, with colleagues, I visited the British peace support team in Nairobi. Does the Secretary of State agree that the valuable work it does at the international mine action training centre and in training peacekeepers from the east African armed forces plays a vital role in helping to bring about the stability that is essential to economic, social and political development?

[Mr Robathan]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend and pay tribute to the work done by the team, which, as the House will note, is broadly in peacekeeping, ending conflict and mine clearance. We should all pay tribute to that work and we very much value our defence engagement in Kenya.

Armed Forces Redundancies

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

I am sure that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the service of His Royal Highness in theatre in Afghanistan. Captain Wales, as I understand he prefers to be known in the Army, has done well for his country and his service, and we commend him for that.

On the hon. Gentleman’s specific question, I am aware of the military contribution that has come from Northern Ireland down the years, and I hope to visit Northern Ireland in the next few months. With regard to my appearing before the Select Committee, I shall take advice on the matter but, in principle, if it asks me to come, I will be there.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

If I understood my right hon. Friend correctly, there will be not much more than a month’s gap between the announcement later this year on who is to be deployed to Afghanistan and the date on which the redundancies will be announced. How will that affect those who might or might not be deployed, including the 3rd Battalion the Mercian Regiment, the Staffords?

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend has listened carefully to what has been said, and he is right to suggest that, because of the draw-down of our forces profile in Afghanistan, it will be only in April 2013 that we decide exactly which units will be going there. Clearly, it will then be a priority to look at anyone who might no longer be excluded from redundancy, but in effect, most of those who are in fields that are eligible for redundancy at the moment will have been notified by the chain of command this morning, in parallel with the process of notifying the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

There was a time a while ago when reservists returning from theatre did not go through a full decompression package and did not get the full mental health briefing when they returned from theatre. We have now altered that so that reservists do go through the full decompression package and do get a full mental health briefing when they come back from theatre. I will not go into the point about who was in charge when some of these deficiencies existed.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T10. What discussions has my right hon. Friend had over how the Staffords’ name, traditions and role as armoured infantry will be retained in the Mercian Regiment?

Afghanistan

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman asks the question in the abstract—[Interruption.] It is not a yes or no question at all. At the time when redundancy decisions are made, a defined group of people will be excluded from consideration. That will be people deployed on operations, people preparing to deploy on operations, and people recovering on leave after operations, but I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman, as the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) asked me to do, that anyone who is now or at any time in the future deployed in Afghanistan will not be eligible for redundancy. That would reduce the field eligible for selection to a tiny number and would be most unfair.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I welcome the ongoing United Kingdom commitment to give £250 million a year for development in Afghanistan. This represents about 10% of the pledged total. Does my right hon. Friend have confidence that the remaining 90% will be found and that the United Kingdom will not be left to pick up the difference?

[Mr Hammond]

I think my hon. Friend might be confusing two things. There are, rather unhelpfully, two separate 4 billions here. There is £4 billion of development aid that was pledged at Tokyo, and there is $4 billion a year of support for the ANSF, of which the United Kingdom has committed about $100 million—around £70 million. We are confident that these sums will be found and that they will be available to the Afghans on an ongoing basis. We have set out our commitment and we do not intend to change from that position.

Future Reserves 2020

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The consultation is designed exactly to explore with different types of employer in different sectors and of different sizes how best we can work with them, recognising that different challenges are faced by different types of business.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Following the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), does my right hon. Friend agree that welfare support for families is crucial to recruitment and retention in the reserves?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, indeed. When my hon. Friend reads the Green Paper, he will see that it has a strong focus on that aspect.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

The hon. Lady talks about a hiatus. There were 13 years during which the previous Administration made no attempt to transform procurement within the Ministry of Defence, but this Government are determined to make procurement efficient and effective so that our armed forces can be given the right equipment at the right time and at the right cost. In July, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced an investigation into the GoCo route, narrowing the options for Defence Equipment and Support. A value-for-money exercise is nearing completion, and we expect to make a decision before the end of the year on whether to move forward.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T4. What progress is being made on moving bases from Germany to the United Kingdom, and to Stafford?

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

My hon. Friend might know that the 1st Armoured Division’s signal regiment, based at Herford, and the 16th Signal Regiment, based at Elmpt, will move to Beacon barracks in Stafford in the second half of 2015. A competition is under way between four bidders to develop the main site, and we hope to let a contract for that development in the summer of next year.

Army 2020

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

This is not just about redundancy, voluntary or otherwise. The Army is continually recruiting and people are continually leaving it when they reach the end of their period of service. It is unlike most other careers. Over a period of time, the Army has considerable ability to change its size, simply by slowing the flow of recruiting while allowing the outflow of people at the end of their careers to continue. We will minimise the need for redundancy, both voluntary and compulsory.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

The Staffords have served our country with great distinction since they were first raised in 1705 in Lichfield, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who supports me in this question. It is essential that the name of the Staffords is maintained, as Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent are among the best recruiting grounds for the Army. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the name is retained with the serving unit?

[Mr Hammond]

The opportunity for the name to be retained is there. It is for the Mercian Regiment itself to decide how it wants to append the antecedent names of the battalion that is being removed to the other battalions.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

Well, the rate will decline—of course it will.

We gained some insight into how the disconnect between programmes and the ability to pay for them arose last summer when Lord Levene delivered his verdict on the MOD. His revelations dovetailed disquietingly well with Gray’s. He found a “bloated top-level defence board” supervising a

“department with overly bureaucratic management structures, dominated by committees leading to indecisiveness and a lack of responsibility.”

Last year, the armed forces covenant was written into law for the first time, as the Prime Minister said it would be. The covenant is not just about the compact between troops and the public. It also concerns the deal between troops and the high command. Those in charge betray the covenant if they allow the kind of shoddy, top-level management evidenced by both Gray and Levene. However, we still have nearly 500 one-star officers and above—a whole battalion of senior officers on packages well in excess of £100,000. Defence Medical Services is a good case in point. To oversee the care of a patient population less than half the size of Wiltshire we require one three-star, five two-star and 15 one-star officers who serve not as doctors, dentists or nurses but as administrators. Our top medic in Afghanistan is not among them—he is just a colonel. I commend the Government for the remedial measures announced before Christmas to reduce the number of starred appointments, both uniformed and civilian.

More generally, I note that although there here have been and will continue to be compulsory redundancies, the package is so reasonable that there has been disappointment among many of those not selected, as there was during previous rounds. From experience, I bear testament to that.

It is of course reasonable to flex personnel from one trade to another—a contention, I think, of paragraphs 67 to 70 of this week’s Defence Committee report—but the majority of pinch-point trades are so specific by rank or extent of retraining necessary that it would actually be quite difficult to do so. Flexible though our young people are, we simply cannot ask an infantryman to become an Intelligence Corps linguist, a pharmacist at the rank of captain or a Cat. A nuclear watchkeeper.

In our collective defence, NATO remains paramount. However, I share widespread concern that we are moving towards a two-tier alliance, with some players benefiting from the cover but not paying the premium. At next week’s meeting of Defence Ministers in Brussels, will the Defence Secretary continue to press our allies to meet their proper financial responsibilities? Present at the meeting will be those who press for an increasing EU defence identity as part of the security and defence policy. Naturally, that has nothing to do with defence, which only the UK and France come close to funding properly.

The latest turn of the screw comes from a European Parliament resolution of 19 February 2009, which proposes something called synchronised armed forces Europe. SAFE is a beguiling but deeply ironic acronym. Under SAFE, alarmingly, British servicemen would owe allegiance to the supranational European Union. One of its cheerleaders, the German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, told the Munich security conference in February 2010:

“The long-term goal is the establishment of a European army under full parliamentary control.”

Of course, that has nothing to do with improving our collective security; instead, it draws from a hubristic, maladroit pan-European political project that has brought us to the brink of economic catastrophe. The immediate concern about SAFE is that it would quite deliberately remove the capability of the two European nation states still able to act independently to project force worldwide on their own, or with partners of their choosing, in pursuit of the national interest.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is somewhat ironic that those calling for a European army and united European defence are the very people who refuse to pay up for it in their own country?

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It may not be by chance that the Germans are chief among those who wish to shelter under a European defence force, because Germany, of all our allies and friends, is the country one can most easily identify as a major economy that does not pay its way in terms of our collective security, which it so obviously enjoys. When the Minister is in Brussels, I very much hope that he will do everything he can to put pressure on the Germans in particular to make a fuller contribution to our collective defence; but it has to be through NATO, not through the European Union. The lesson of the past few years and the difficulty with the European Union in respect of our economic position—the greatest existential threat the UK faces at the moment—is that we cannot rely on Europe for our security. Our cornerstone has always been NATO and it will continue to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), to whom I listened with great interest because he has such vast experience in these matters.

Before I had the honour to be elected to this House, I was involved with others in setting up a business in Sierra Leone. We were able to do that only because the British Army had been involved in bringing stability and peace to that country, and I give credit to those in the previous Government who made the decision to get involved, and to all those who took part in the operation. It is clear that the conditions prevailing in Sierra Leone today were made possible only by British action.

In setting up a business in that country, it was great to be able to offer jobs to former child soldiers, who could then, instead of terrorising their neighbourhoods, earn a living. Is not one of the great benefits that the British armed forces are able to bring, as a result of the intervention in Sierra Leone, that experience of training that enables a country to live at peace, and enables people who were involved in murder to start to earn a living and look after their families?

I want to concentrate my remarks on the connection of our armed forces with their local communities—with the towns, cities and counties in which they are based. Despite the major changes that the SDSR has brought about, and will continue to bring about, these connections must be maintained and strengthened. Never was that brought home to me more clearly than in two recent homecoming parades through my town of Stafford by the Queen’s Royal Lancers and the 3rd Mercians, the Staffords, on their return from their tours of Afghanistan in the last 12 months or so. Both those regiments have strong connections with Staffordshire, and many people from the county and the city of Stoke-on-Trent serve in them. They paraded through many other towns in the area—I see my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) nodding in agreement. The people of Stafford turned out in great numbers for those parades, and showed just how much they respect the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces.

There are many ways to strengthen the bonds with communities, and I want to touch on just three. The first is to integrate local bases more into the community—while respecting, of course, security considerations. In Stafford, we are fortunate to be the home of 22 Signal Regiment and part of the tactical supply wing of the Royal Air Force, and we eagerly anticipate the coming of two more signal regiments from Germany from 2015. The people of Stafford recognise the great benefits that that will bring to our town: first, the coming of more servicemen and women and their families, who will receive a very warm welcome; secondly, the expansion of schools to meet the needs of their children; and thirdly, the prospect that those skilled men and women will wish to stay in the area when they retire from the armed forces and contribute to our emerging ICT industry and others. There are other opportunities for joint working too: shared sports facilities, advanced skills training, housing and health. We must never forget that the prime duty of our armed forces is the security of the United Kingdom, but no small part of the stability of the UK is the fact that our armed forces are seen as part of the communities that they serve.

Secondly, there is the role of our reserve forces, and I pay tribute to the number of right hon. and hon. Members of this House who serve, many of whom are here today. I also pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) and his team for the vital work that they have done in the Future Reserves 2020 study. He deserves great credit for that.

The increase in the proportion of our reserve strength to 30% of the total is a significant change, but as the review recognises, it will simply not be possible without both modernisation and funding. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to better integration with the regular force and increased funding, which I had understood was £1.5 billion, but I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State mention a figure of £1.8 billion in his speech.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my hon. Friend agree that not only are our reserve forces head to head cheaper than members of the regular armed forces, which is important in the current environment, but that other countries have far more reserves as a proportion of their total defence capacity?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as always. I believe that in the United States it is at least 30%, if not 35%, yet here it is less than 20%, so we are well under the average, even compared with fine armed forces such as those of our NATO allies in the United States and elsewhere.

As the review points out, however, we must use the specialist skills that our reserve forces have. In the proposed rationalisation of the defence estate, we must ensure that we do not lose the close connection between the reserves and the communities from which they come. The Government’s response to the review points out that connection as one of the benefits of increasing the size of the reserves. One way to do that is for the Ministry of Defence to work closely with local councils and councillors throughout the changes that are being made, so that they are kept fully informed.

Finally, I wish to say a few words about the cadets. I have been fortunate enough since my election to spend some time with the Army and RAF cadets in my constituency and my county. Last month I joined the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) at the winter camp of the Staffordshire and West Midlands North Army Cadet Force at Swynnerton in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash). What impressed me most was the commitment of the 500 or so adult volunteers, the full-time staff and the young people. It was a bitterly cold and icy weekend, but the full programme went ahead when other organisations might well have cancelled. When I spoke with the young people from Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stoke-on-Trent, Cannock—as I am sure the Minister knows—and Stafford, they said that the ACF gave them purpose and opportunities that they would not otherwise have considered or had the chance to take up.

We must never underestimate the value of the cadets. Last year they jointly celebrated their 150th anniversary, and their popularity is as great as it has ever been, with some 130,000 cadets in 3,200 units across the UK—no doubt in every constituency—and 25,000 adult volunteers giving up many hours of precious free time each week to help young people develop skills and make the most of their lives. I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to do everything possible to support the cadet forces. Their work is very much part of the big society, and shares the values of the national citizenship service by bringing together young people from all walks of life and all backgrounds.

Whether it is through the regular forces or the reserves, the bonds between our armed forces and the communities from which they come or in which they are based must not be underestimated. These bonds, along with the courage and commitment of our armed forces, are the cornerstones of the respect in which they are held. Our cadet forces have a different but equally valuable role: offering our young people opportunities to learn and work together that they would not otherwise have.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—