Reserve Forces

Joan Walley Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Of course, as my hon. Friend correctly presents, it will take us until 2018 to have achieved a 30,000-strong trained Army Reserve. We are seeking to capture as many ex-regulars leaving the regular service as we possibly can, and we expect that the £5,000 transfer bounty, together with the streamlining of the procedures for transfer from the regular to the reserve, will have a significant impact. He rightly says that there will not be a smooth trajectory between now and 2018—some of the measures we have to take will have short-term negative impacts before they deliver long-term positive gain—but we are clear that this is the right path to adopt.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Given the confusion that we have just had, can the Secretary of State categorically confirm that our campaign to keep the Cobridge TA centre in Stoke-on-Trent open, not least because of its community work, has meant that it is definitely not for closure and will stay open? Will he also give me an assurance about the recent Supreme Court judgment relating to the late Corporal Stephen Allbutt, whereby the Ministry of Defence has a duty of care properly to equip all serving armed forces under the Secretary of State’s jurisdiction? Will he assure me that the change being brought forward today will make sure that all our armed forces will be properly equipped and kitted out?

[Mr Hammond]

I am a bit astonished that someone who was a supporter of the previous Government has the effrontery to sit there and challenge me to declare that all our armed forces will be properly equipped when they go into battle, given the shocking examples that we had during the last years of the last decade in Afghanistan.

The hon. Lady correctly says that we have a duty of care, and we take it very seriously; we have made a very clear political and moral commitment to properly equipping our armed forces. I have to say to her that I do not believe that enshrining that as a legal duty, as the Supreme Court appears to have done, will help the operation of our armed forces. She also asked me specifically about Stoke-on-Trent and I can tell her that if it is not on the list we have supplied, it is not going to be vacated.