Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

I am most grateful for the service that the hon. Lady gives on the RFCA board in Scotland. The RFCAs are critical. To answer her question, we are looking at it. I do not have a comprehensive answer for her, but the four recruitment centres through which every recruit passes have a different track record. Some of them have had much tighter capacity constraints. We have taken measures to ease those. Scotland has had a number of interesting initiatives of its own, as well as leading the way on phase 1 training. We are trying to get best practice spread around the country.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

25. However these figures are dressed up, the Ministry of Defence’s own figures show that the trained strength of the Army reserve has actually fallen over the last 18 months. Given that the Government have had to throw more money at the reforms, including added incentives to join up, will the Minister answer the one question that the Government have so far ducked: how much extra are these reforms costing, over and above original estimates?

[Mr Brazier]

Over the past six months, the trained strength of the volunteer reserves has increased by 400, and it is only in the last three months that most of the reforms we have introduced have bitten. The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is that we are confident that the figure that we originally offered—1.8, over the 10-year period—will be adequate for the purpose. We are still aiming to reach our targets. Numbers are growing and recruiting is increasing rapidly.[Official Report, 2 December 2014, Vol. 589, c. 1MC.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dunne]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to explain once again to the House that it is this Government who have decided to make both carriers operational, unlike the previous Government, who were going to leave the second one tied up. The Ministry of Defence is now conducting a detailed analysis to develop how best to utilise the capability, including man power and aircraft numbers, which will become clear as part of the strategic defence and security review 2015.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

T8. In addition to Army Reserve numbers going backwards over the past 18 months, recent answers to written parliamentary questions show that there has been no improvement in the age profile of the existing Territorial Army/Reserve, with the average age of the infantryman stuck at 35 and the average age of senior non-commissioned officers and junior officers in the 40s. Why are the Government not tackling that?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Julian Brazier)]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for his question. On his premise, I remind him that over the past six months numbers have been moving firmly in the right direction as a result of the upturn in recruiting. On his question about age, I make no apology for a reserve force recruiting some older people, especially ex-regulars, who bring much experience. Fitness is a major requirement for all those people, and it is this Government who over the past few years have re-established a common standard for fitness across regulars and reservists.

Reserve Recruitment

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence to make a statement on Army Reserve recruitment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Julian Brazier)]

I am most grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for the opportunity to make this statement. Future Force 2020 represents one of the fundamental steps this Government have taken to ensure that our defence is delivered on a sustainable financial basis. The Government have ensured that the armed forces, both regular and reserve, are structured and resourced to meet the challenges of the 21st century. This is a far cry from the position we inherited, where our armed forces were run on a fundamentally unaffordable basis by the previous Government. After years of neglect, this Government are reforming and revitalising our reserve forces. We are investing £1.8 billion in better training and equipment, and reversing the decline and years of underinvestment in our reserves. We have always said that increasing the trained strength of the reserves to about 35,000 would not happen overnight; it is a five-year programme, but one year in we are making steady progress, and during the latest quarter we enlisted about twice as many people as we did in the equivalent period last year.

The expansion of the reserves is about doing defence differently. It is not about swapping regular personnel for reserves or doing defence on the cheap; it is about changing the way we deliver defence to make the best use of our resources and to harness the talents of the wider UK society. The contribution of our reserve forces will deliver, in a cost-effective way, the capable and usable armed forces that the nation needs. It will better harness the talents of the wider community and help restore the links and understanding between the armed forces and that community.

There have been a number of technical challenges affecting Army Reserve recruitment, which have been widely discussed in this House before, and we continue to introduce measures to improve recruitment. So far, those have included: improved financial incentives—much greater incentives with employers; removing delays, sometimes of many months, caused by medical documentation and security checks; increasing capacity at selection centres; and giving a key role for mentoring back to units.

The programme to grow the reserves is on track. We have reversed 18 years of decline. The Army’s latest projections indicate that the Army Reserve can reach its 30,000 trained strength target by April 2019. The Chief of the General Staff, the Secretary of State and I are all committed to achieving that target.

The future reserves programme is a bold change programme. It will make defence more flexible and able to deal with the changing demands placed upon it. I say this to the House: the plan is working.

[Mr Baron]

I thank the Minister for responding. No matter how he dresses up the figures, the latest recruitment figures for the Army Reserve show that the trained strength has fallen between April 2013 and October of this year. If one was being charitable, one would say that Government plans to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists are struggling to say the least. Those of us who have opposed those plans have questioned the resulting capability gap as 20,000 regulars have been shown the door and the false economies that will loom as the Government are forced to throw more money at failing plans.

Let us be absolutely honest about this: these plans have been in a state of flux from the beginning. The 2010 strategic defence and security review showed haste and little strategic overlay. In 2011, the then Defence Secretary stated that he would keep the regulars in order to check that the reservist plan was working and to recruit those reservists. In 2012, that plan was changed, and the regulars were allowed to leave before we had recruited any reservists. Meanwhile, the start line keeps getting changed. We talk about “one year in”, but we are actually 18 months into this plan and there has been no acknowledgement from the Government. We now have this sorry state of affairs where 20,000 experienced troops have left, including some from my own battalion the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and we are now recruiting—even if one puts the most optimistic spin on these figures—at a rate of seven reservists a month. If we are to meet our deadline and targets, we need to be recruiting nearer 250 a month. Let us not forget that we are 18 months into the plan.

The Public Accounts Committee has condemned the plan. It said that the plan has put anticipated savings at risk

“and is not delivering value for money.”

The National Audit office was critical, saying:

“There are significant risks to value for money which are currently not well understood by the Department or the Army.”

It has even been said that these plans have been put on the Treasury’s watch list.

I have a series of questions for the Minister. There have been extra costs: £10,000 given to ex-regulars to join the reserves,£300 to the civvies, £500 to the employee reservist per calendar month, pension liabilities, and the IT fiasco. How much extra are these plans now costing over and above the original estimate?

Secondly, how big are our capability gaps? Can the Minister guarantee that there will be no operational fall-out from these plans and tell us what assessment has been made? Finally, in this increasingly uncertain world, surely the time has come for a fundamental reappraisal of the need for stronger defence. Trying to get our defence on the cheap is not the right approach. We should now start recruiting regulars to the Army to bring up the trained strength of the Regular Army to at least 100,000. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for his thoughts. Let us be clear on the numbers. The Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the Army, said to the Defence Committee on 5 November:

“Already, at the six-month point, we have got to 2,100”—

he was talking about new recruits to the reserves—

“and it is my sense that we will increase the numbers beyond the target in this year…It is not something that will be solved overnight, because we have had the last 10 or 15 years when we have not invested in the Reserve in the way that we are now investing in the Reserve.”

The point—I have tried to explain this to my hon. and gallant Friend a number of times—is that we had a very long period of decline and neglect. In setting up a new system that for the first time for a decade re-established proper medical checks and proper fitness checks, started to collate the numbers properly and so on, we had some glitches, which have been widely discussed. Most of the improvements we made have happened only in the past few months. In the last quarter, we recruited almost twice as many people as in the equivalent quarter last year. I am grateful to him for his continuing interest in the subject, but may I recommend that he does what almost every single unit I have visited recommends and visits some reserve units to discover the exciting things that are going on?

Defence Spending

John Baron Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered defence spending.

May I first thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate? It is much appreciated.

I contend that the UK is making grave errors in cutting defence spending. We need to spend more on our armed forces. In an increasingly uncertain world, we cannot keep cutting if we wish to defend our interests and play a global role. As we approach the next strategic defence review, Parliament must make it clear that defence and security has to be given precedence over other priorities.

It is said that the British seldom read the writing on the wall until our backs are against it. I fear that hard choices will now have to be made if we are not to repeat errors. The need for a strong defence policy is becoming more obvious and urgent almost by the day. The latest increase in China’s defence spending—a 12% real-terms rise—and confrontations in the South China sea and Ukraine remind us that countries not necessarily friendly to the west are increasingly capable and willing to use their military might.

I hope nobody could accuse me of being an interventionist. Having opposed our interventions in Iraq and Libya, the morphing of the mission in Afghanistan into one of nation building and, most recently, the proposed intervention in Syria, I hope my credentials are clear. However, I believe that those entanglements have distracted us, at least in part, from recognising the bigger picture, which is one of increasingly powerful countries elsewhere professionalising and bolstering their armed forces. A willingness to use them illustrates a growing confidence, if not assertiveness. That is significant, because Britain has global interests and needs to remain a global power to protect them. No one can predict—not with any certainty, anyway—where the next substantial threat will come from. As a consequence, our armed forces need to have sufficient capability so that, in concert with our allies, we will be best prepared to meet that challenge.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that this Essex MP supports what he has just said 100%. Does he agree that we also need to look at what is happening in the Baltic countries and in particular at Russia’s meddling in the air, at sea and on the land along the border?

[Mr Baron]

I completely agree. I will come to this point shortly, but the bottom line is that a strong defence policy is not just about ensuring peace—although that is terribly important, because it has a dividend—but about sending messages to potential aggressors. That is not just about fronting them, but about supporting allies and like-minded peoples who have a genuine concern and fear about the consequences of the actions of others. It is an extremely important point.

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I welcome the debate and I agree with every word that my hon. Friend has said so far. Does he agree that although this Government face a difficult financial situation, it is very important that we stay true to our defence commitment to spending at least 2% of our GDP—our NATO commitment and the signal that we must send to our allies?

[Mr Baron]

Yes, I completely agree. If anything, we need to spend more than 2%, but there have been quite authoritative reports, most notably in the Financial Times, suggesting that our defence expenditure as a proportion of GDP will fall below 2%. One of my questions to the Minister—if he cannot answer it in this debate, I am happy to take a written response—is what truth is there in the suggestion that our defence spending will fall well below 2% or, as some figures suggest, 1.8%?

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Or 1.7%.

[Mr Baron]

Or 1.7%, as my hon. Friend suggests.

I believe it is particularly incumbent on us to ensure that we have a strong defence policy—more incumbent on us than on other powers, perhaps—because in addition to our global interests and territories, we are highly dependent on maritime trade. The South China sea and the straits of Hormuz may seem far-away places, but I can assure the House that if those sea lanes ever became closed, we would certainly feel the pinch. A shock on the other side of the world, as we all know, can have reverberations here—a rise in the oil price is just one example.

There are many less tangible benefits to a strong defence policy. These include maintaining influence, supporting our defence engineering and industrial base, and global partnerships through defence diplomacy. Despite bruising deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain still rightly sees itself as a global power, at the forefront of diplomacy. It is impossible to do this without the options that strong defence gives us. Furthermore, there are many strands to the special relationship, but the ability to deploy force by land, sea and air is an essential component. If this is not present, we can expect a markedly different relationship, as former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently testified.

I hope we will continue to be close allies of the US. We share common interests and common values. However, we need to play our full part in being a good ally lest our influence and, ultimately, our interests suffer. We should not forget that we would be foolish to depend entirely on the US. Sometimes we may have to act alone. The Falklands is just one example of that. In the absence of US support, we need to ensure that Britain can face the world with confidence, and that will involve strong and credible defence.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree also that we must do so in the context of NATO, and that it is about time that some of our NATO allies started stepping up to the mark and putting some money into it as well?

[Mr Baron]

Nobody in the House would disagree. It is a sad fact that many of our NATO allies are not pulling their full weight. But that should not stop us accepting what we need to do, particularly given our reliance on maritime trade and our global interests, territories and possessions. If anything, it is more incumbent on us than on many of our NATO allies to wake up and realise that we need to spend more on defence, but I take my hon. Friend’s point on board.

Despite the need for a strong defence policy because of both the tangible and the intangible benefits, we continue to make cuts. The Royal Navy, for example, has been reduced to a mere 19 surface ships. Not so long ago, a strategic defence review suggested the figure should be closer to 30.

[Bob Stewart]

Forty-two. [Interruption.]

[Mr Baron]

I will take further bids. For the moment, though, I will stick with my figure of 30. Have the threats declined since that defence review? No, not since we were recommended to have 30 surface ships. Our aircraft carriers are being built, but there is no certainty that the second one will see service. There is talk about it perhaps being mothballed. The other carrier will have to await fighter jets.

The situation is not much better in the skies. The F-35 fighter is beset with problems. Britain without a maritime patrol aircraft—that is an extraordinary position for an island nation such as ours to be in. We need to try to put that right.

I speak with a vested interest here, I suppose, but it is the Army that has borne the brunt of our short-sightedness. Cost-cutting plans to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists will create unacceptable capability gaps in the short term and, I believe, false economies in the long term. Unfortunately, my attempt to get the Government to think again during the passage of the Defence Reform Bill fell on deaf ears, although Members of all parties made their views well known. It was, to a certain extent at least, a close-run thing, given the strong three-line Whip.

These legitimate concerns were echoed—in fact, I suggest, amplified—by an authoritative and critical report from the National Audit Office. It provides a list of critical conclusions, so let me read some of them. It states, for example, that

“significant further risks…could significantly affect value for money”.

Another conclusion was:

“The Department”—

it means the Ministry of Defence—

“did not test whether increasing the trained strength of the Army Reserve to 30,000 was feasible.”

It added:

“The Department’s recruitment targets for reserves are not underpinned by robust planning data”

and:

“Reducing the size of the Army will not alone deliver the financial savings required.”

It goes on:

“The Department did not fully assess the value for money of its decision to reduce the size of the Army.”

These are pretty damning conclusions. Another is:

“There are significant risks to value for money which are currently not well understood by the Department or the Army.”

It then states:

“The Department should reassess its targets for recruiting reserves.”

As I say, this is all pretty damning stuff. I believe that the decision taken in 2012 to cut the Regular Army by a fifth before the replacement reservists were even recruited has not gone well; in fact, it has been a shambles. The NAO has said that it does not believe that the MOD will be able to replace those lost regulars until 2025—a full 10 years away.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that with the MOD cutting the regulars, failing to recruit the reserves and continuing to recruit those under 18, many of those among the numbers quoted are likely to be under-18s and are thus incapable of being deployed?

[Mr Baron]

I share those concerns, and I shall share another one. I was not originally intending to raise it in my speech, but it is a significant concern. To get to the 30,000 reservists—or indeed 36,000 if we want 30,000 to be deployable—we will be heavily reliant on the existing Territorial Army. If we look at the age profile of the existing TA, we find that it includes regular infantry in their 30s, junior officers in their 40s and senior officers in their 50s. There is a demographic issue within the existing TA; it is not just about new numbers, so there are real concerns there.

The clear implication of the recent and critical NAO report is that the transition to 30,000 reservists may turn out to be more expensive than the steady-state costs of maintaining the 20,000 regulars they are replacing. The plan is complete and utter nonsense. We have seen not just a doubling of the ex-regular reserve bonus, the introduction of a civvy bonus of £300 and the equalisation of pensions, but the introduction of other financial incentives, bringing into severe doubt the financial logic and merits of introducing this plan. False economies loom, as acknowledged by the NAO, when it said that the plans could cost even more. We need to sit up, take note and ask questions. If this ends up costing more in the longer term, I really think heads should roll.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I was hugely with everything he said in the early parts of his speech, particularly on the need to keep up spending on our armed forces and defence, but he is really going over the top here. Whatever one’s view of the NAO report, it did not suggest that it could be more expensive to have reservists rather than regulars. What it queried were some of the cost figures, but it could not possibly be interpreted as suggesting that, man for man, the reserves are more expensive than the regulars.

[Mr Baron]

I think that my hon. Friend should look at the report, because it concludes that there is a real risk that what I have described will happen. I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from, and I respect his enthusiasm for the reservist plan, which is clear from his contribution to the debate about it, but I think that he should look at the report extremely carefully.

The MOD went into typical “shoot the messenger” mode. It would not co-operate fully with the National Audit Office, and was not even willing to share its methodology with the NAO. Many questions need to be asked, and I am sure that the Defence Committee, for one, will ask them. I certainly hope so.

This plan has had distorting effects on the ground. As I have said, I have a vested interest: the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, which is one of my regiments, is one of the best recruited battalions in the British Army, but it is being scrapped to save less well-recruited battalions north of the border. Everyone in the Army accepts that that is a political decision that was made in the light of the Scottish referendum, and it is a complete and utter nonsense. It will cost more to try to maintain battalions that are not well recruited at the expense of those that are.

Britain needs to increase substantially the resources that it commits to its military capability. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister will point out that we have the fourth largest defence budget in the world, but such cries ring somewhat hollow when estimates suggest that, when it comes to actually deploying force in the field, we rank closer to 20th or 25th. We seem to have a policy of hollowing out our armed forces, keeping expensive bits of kit while taking away manpower, which restricts our ability to deploy force overseas.

I believe—and I accept that there will be a keen debate on this—that a defence budget representing 2% of GDP is simply not enough, let alone a budget that will, in the view of the Financial Times, fall below that percentage. I think that our budget should be increased substantially. Given our dependence on the sea, we should, as a minimum, be funding two properly resourced battle groups centred on our aircraft carriers, and troops that we can deploy if necessary.

The military have done their best within the financial envelope that Parliament has given them. These decisions are for us. They are political decisions about who will get what, when, and how. I have no doubt that we will all have our pet subjects when it comes to the question of what could be scrapped if money were required from elsewhere. I voted against HS2 because it involved £50 billion that could be spent elsewhere over 10 years. I also believe that we still have too many quangos—and can anyone justify the fact that people in public sector management receive salaries far higher than the Prime Minister’s?

Abroad, international aid running to hundreds of millions of pounds for countries that can well afford to help themselves, or are corrupt, or both, should be stopped. If that money cannot be given to other countries that cannot help themselves, it should be channelled back to this country. Meanwhile, extravagant European Union budgets need to be cut. The EU is indeed

“too big, too bossy, too interfering”,

and it needs to be cut down to size. There is no shortage of places where money can be found if the political will is there.

We must reverse the trend, and significantly increase our defence spending. This is not a “call to arms”, but a response to the increasingly uncertain world that we inhabit, and with which we are increasingly ill-equipped to deal. Strong defence is a virtue. It does much to prevent conflict, and it can also be cheaper than the alternative: nothing is as expensive or as wasteful as war. However, if we are to change the mind of Government —any Government—Parliament must become more robust in its questioning of the Executive. It must ask more questions about what is going wrong, and about why we need to put it right.

The debate is overdue, but, as might be expected, it has been shunted to the end of a parliamentary week. It should have been in Government time, and we should perhaps have a debate in Government time on defence spending annually, if not more frequently.

The time has come for action. Opinion on the need to increase defence spending is hardening on both sides, yet we keep cutting. Talking the talk is no longer good enough; we now have to walk the walk.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

The Chair of the Defence Committee pre-empts me. On current plans, defence spending will continue to meet the 2% target this year and next year. Decisions on public spending after financial year 2015-16 will be taken in the next comprehensive spending review, but that applies to all Departments and not only to the Ministry of Defence. I hope that that is a clear answer to his question.

At this juncture, it is important to recall that in 2010 we inherited a financial situation in the Ministry of Defence which was, to say the least, distinctly sub-optimal. It was exacerbated by a culture of short-term decision making, prevaricating over big decisions, slipping everything to the right and storing up costs over the long term. As Nye Bevan—that is Bevan, not Kevan—told the Labour party conference in 1949:

“The language of priorities is the religion of socialism”.

If that is so, there was a pretty atheist period when the Labour party last ran the Ministry of Defence. We inherited a financial shambles, which we have had to deal with for four years. The defence programme is affordable over 10 years after some difficult and painful decisions, and as a result of our better financial discipline, the Treasury has allowed us to roll forward recent in-year underspends to supplement our future plans. We are continuing to examine a package of additional investment, including on equipment and cyber. The details of that are currently being finalised, and they will be announced soon.

[Mr Baron]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Francois]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I must say something about reserves, because I suspect that that is what he wants. I have four points to make on reserves. First, we are aiming for a trained Army reserve of 30,000 by April 2019. Secondly, we have gripped the problems regarding the IT recruitment systems and we have reduced bureaucracy in the process. Hon. Members know that we are investing £1.8 billion over 10 years to make the programme work. Thirdly, our target of a net additional 11,000 trained reservists for the Army is the equivalent of slightly more than 16 additional reservists for each parliamentary constituency, and I have to believe that that can be achieved. Fourthly, and crucially, we have halted 18 years of decline in our reserve forces; for the first time since 1996, the total strength of our reserve force has increased. Our forecast for the trained strength of the Army reserve was 18,800 by the end of quarter 4 last year. We have exceeded that forecast and there are a total of 19,400 in the trained strength of the Army reserve, which is 600 reserve soldiers ahead of the forecast. That is a five-year programme, not a five-month initiative, and as a former Territorial Army officer I remain confident that we can do that.

[Mr Baron]

I was not going to ask about reservists. Only time will prove us right in the end, but we need that time to pass. Briefly, will the Minister return to the 2% question? One hears what he says about the comprehensive spending review in two years’ time, but that should not preclude the Government from committing now to 2% of GDP, whatever that GDP is in two years’ time.

[Mr Francois]

I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes, but I have already attempted to give a clear answer on the position.

I referred earlier to D-day, which resonates with me because my father was at D-day on a minesweeper. He taught me a valuable lesson, which was never to take living in a free country for granted. I think he was in a good position to be able to say that. Yes, we must live within our means, but equally we must not shirk on our nation’s insurance policy. My father taught me that the first duty of Government is the defence of the realm, and I will always remain conscious of that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered defence spending.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

As someone who has commanded reservist soldiers, I understand very clearly the importance of local roots and regiments having a basis in their own community. We have said that we will look carefully at the basing announcements that we have made with regard to the reserve. In particular, we will analyse those units that are especially well recruited. If we see units that are recruiting well, we may be prepared to take that into account before final decisions are made.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

One of the reasons why many of us opposed the Government’s reservist reforms was the prospect of false economies. Given that the financial incentive to ex-regular reservists has recently been doubled because of poor recruitment and that other costs have increased, will the Minister update the House on the financial cost of this initiative, if not now then in writing subsequently?

[Mr Francois]

It is true that there have been a number of financial incentives designed to encourage ex-regulars to join the reserves, although those incentives generally operate in a way such that those regulars have to commit for a number of years in reserve service and do not necessarily get all of that money up front. It is still highly cost effective to have reserves that can be mobilised for operations. In addition, I was at the Ten Tors Challenge on Saturday on Dartmoor, which was supported by a number of Army Reserve units. I spoke to a number of Army Reserve commanding officers, including Major-General Ranald Munro, the Deputy-Commander Land Forces and the senior reservist in the British Army. They are absolutely confident that we can hit our targets, and so am I.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

As my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary has said on numerous occasions, the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces cannot operate oblivious to the country’s fiscal position. However, we and the Army are quite clear that Army 2020 represents the best answers to the challenges, fiscal and otherwise, the country faces and is best placed to help us address the future.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Events such as in Crimea and the South China sea remind us of the need for strong defence. Has the time not now come for a fundamental reassessment of how much we spend on our armed forces? That figure should be increased even if white elephants such High Speed 2 have to be sacrificed along the way. We may have the fourth or fifth biggest defence budget, but we rank nearer 30th when it comes to deploying troops overseas, which is nonsense given the extent of our global interests.

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend might want to turn up to Treasury questions in the near future and ask the same question. In the meantime, as he mentions overseas deployments, he might be interested to hear that last week I visited 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in Cyprus, in which I know he takes a strong interest. I can report to him and the House that despite difficult circumstances its members are in good order. The planning for the merger of the two regiments of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is almost complete and a number of soldiers in the 2nd Battalion have expressed interest in remaining in the Army. We are seeking to facilitate that wherever possible.

Armed Forces Restructuring

John Baron Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I can confirm that.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

The plan to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists is beset with problems, including more than £50 million wasted on a botched IT system, missed recruitment targets, cancelled reserve courses and a widening capability gap. Given that the previous Secretary of State recently confirmed in this House that the original plan was to hold the regulars in place until the reservists were able to take their place, can this Secretary of State inform the House why and when that plan changed?

[Mr Hammond]

First, my hon. Friend continually asserts, and I continually rebut, the idea that we are trying to replace 20,000 regular soldiers with 30,000 reservists— that is not what we are doing. We are restructuring the regular force; the regular force will be smaller. We will use civilians in a different way from how we have used them in the past. We will use contractors more effectively, learning the lessons, particularly from the US experience of using contractors to support combat operations. We will also use reservists, but it is simply wrong for him to suggest that this is a straightforward swap of 20,000 regulars replaced by 30,000 reservists. That is not how it works.

My hon. Friend knows very well the answer to the second part of his question: there is not the budgetary capacity to maintain the Regular Army at 102,000 while building the reserve to 30,000 by 2018. That simply cannot be done without imposing new and unwanted cuts elsewhere.

IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

John Baron Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

That is precisely what I am doing. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should remind himself that the initial gate business case for this project to outsource recruiting was approved in July 2008, so I hope we are not in dispute over the principle.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned an IT debacle. Yes, there are big problems with the IT and I have told the House on repeated occasions that we have IT challenges. There are problems with IT in Government. The hon. Gentleman speaks as if he was not a member of the Government who spent £13 billion on a health computer system that we had to write off and £400 million on a work and pensions computer system that had to be written off.

What we are doing now is gripping this problem and addressing it. That means, in the short term, workarounds and putting additional manpower into the system to provide additional support. Short-term solutions include the new front-end web application, which will go live over the next two weeks, to improve the experience of applicants accessing the platform.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the costs and I can give him some figures. The Capita solution will cost about £47.7 million to produce a full new IT platform. The alternative Atlas IT platform proposal would have cost about £43 million, so the additional cost of the Capita solution is about £4.5 million. He asked about the £15.5 million of sunk cost. Our initial estimate is that about £6.7 million of that represents costs that will have to be written off, but that will be subject to a proper audit process.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the additional cost—the running cost, as it were—of the interim solution that we have put in place. It comprises additional payments that have to be made and the cost of the additional manpower that has been delivered into the system. That is currently running at about £1 million per month. The solution that we have adopted and that we have now approved—going ahead with Capita platform and placing the integration risk back on Capita—is judged to be the quickest way of eliminating that ongoing expenditure and the best way of delivering a permanent solution for the benefit of the Army and the taxpayer.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I again suggest to the Secretary of State that plans to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists will cost much more than the Government envisage, leading to false economies and a waste of taxpayers’ money. Given the tens of millions of pounds already wasted on this IT shambles, will he outline how much more it will cost to put it right? Does this not reinforce the point that the Government should now halt and stop the disbandment of regular units until we are sure that the plan to replace them with reservists is both cost-effective and feasible?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

The King’s centre for military health research, among others, is expert in the field. Professor Sir Simon Wessely is not only nationally but internationally renowned as a great authority on the subject. When veterans present with PTSD, which can be some years after they have left the service, we find that sometimes, because of a trigger event, the symptoms begin to emerge quickly and the challenge is to reach those people rapidly and to begin to give them help when they need it. We are talking to the NHS about how we can do that even better than we do now and we hope to make some further announcements about the progress we are making.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

The charity Combat Stress has suggested that reservists are twice as likely to suffer from mental health issues and PTSD than regular soldiers or, indeed, the population at large. Will the Minister confirm that those potential costs have been factored in to the new Army Reserve costings?

[Mr Francois]

It is true that reservists returning from operations have a slightly higher rate of incidence of PTSD than regular personnel, but according to my last briefing on the subject the rate is only about 1% to 1.5% higher. I am afraid that I do not agree with the analysis that it is twice as likely. My hon. Friend might not agree with me, but, if he wants, he can pop down and see Professor Sir Simon Wessely and have a word with him about it.

Defence Reform Bill

John Baron Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for his tribute. I understand how strongly he and a number of other Members feel about the timing of the decision. However, although he and I—and, I am sure, the Secretary of State in his private heart of hearts—would like more money to be spent on defence, it is a question of the cash envelope within which any Government are likely to operate. If we wound up the whole Territorial Army tomorrow, it would be possible to pay for only 6,000 or 7,000 regulars rather than 20,000, and that would mean losing most of our medical capability as well as a number of other benefits.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I accept what my hon. Friend has said about the MOD’s cash envelope, but surely this comes down to national priorities. The plan was not to wind down the regulars to such a degree without first ensuring that the reservists could take their place, but the plan has changed. None of the new clauses and amendments is asking for extra money from the MOD. It is, as I have said, a question of national priorities: it is a question of whether more money should be committed to defence, which is the first priority of Government.

[Mr Brazier]

I will respond to my hon. Friend’s intervention, but I hope he will forgive me if I leave it for a couple of minutes. I shall deal briefly with new clause 2, and then I shall come to his new clause.

Ever since Haldane, the reserve properties of the Army, but not all those of the other two services, have been managed largely by the RFCA. The fact is that the Defence Infrastructure Organisation—or the Defence Estates, as it used to be called—has a poor track record. There are so many quotations available that I am spoilt for choice, but according to the latest report from the National Audit Office,

“Defence Estates is not well placed to weigh up and challenge Budget Holders assessments of estate requirements.”

While I am certain that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his team will sort out the problems, two quite different jobs are involved. We do not want an organisation whose job is to look after super-garrisons to be worrying about repairing the roof of a cadet hut. The vast number of locations—2,500—across which reserves and cadets are spread need to be looked after by a local organisation with local feel, which can call on local expertise, often free of charge, and which, above all, has a low overhead. As I have said, new clause 2 could not become law, but I wanted to put those points on the record.

I now come to the new clause tabled by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who has fought a very good-tempered campaign, and one that I respect although I disagree with him. It is no secret that I stepped down as a Cabinet Parliamentary Private Secretary 20 years ago because I was unhappy about “Options for Change”. I would dearly love to see more money spent on defence, and I know that my hon. Friend would as well, but the reality is that the money is not there. Despite all the Secretary of State’s battles, the fact remains that no Treasury team that is likely to take charge will give us more money. The effect of my hon. Friend’s new clause would be not to guarantee a larger Regular Army, but to devastate our attempts to rebuild the reserve forces by putting them all on hold.

My hon. Friend must be familiar with his own wording. Are we to push to one side the plans for better training and better equipment? Are reservists, many of whom have served on operations and have struggled through a difficult period with no kit and no training, suddenly to be told. “This has all been put on hold, because the House of Commons wants it all to be looked at again”? The people to look at it are the RFCAs, and the Secretary of State has generously said that he will arrange for that to happen.

[Mr Baron]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way, and I appreciate the tone in which he is setting out his case, but may I address his central point by reminding him that the delay or postponement—the pause—need not be long at all because the report could be laid before Parliament the day after the Bill becomes an Act, and then it is up to the Government to decide how promptly we can scrutinise that report? The pause may not be long at all, and as for all the other comments about wrecking amendments and that this would turn the plans upside down, they are wide of the mark—they are Aunt Sallies—that do not do the Government’s cause any good.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

I am a signatory to new clause 1, and I want to make a simple statement about its power. It will provide an independent element to the scrutiny of the whole process that comes back to Parliament. The debates that we will now have about new clause 3 and other things must be based on the truth on the ground; they must be based on the reality and an understanding so as to inform the decision making properly. This amendment is about doing that and also about cementing consent from the public and involvement of the public in building the consensus that we require to develop the quality of reserve recruitment into the Army, RAF and Navy and to make a whole force that is properly integrated. If we do not have that consent, we will not achieve that. If the amendment helps to provide that, it will be valuable and important. I am glad some Damascene conversion has taken place and the Government have now recognised the sense in accepting the amendment.

[Mr Baron]

New clause 3 and consequential amendments tabled in my name and those of other hon. Members will, if successful, postpone the implementation of the Government’s reservist plans until their viability and cost-effectiveness have been scrutinised and accepted by Parliament. I should clarify what these amendments are not about, because a number of Aunt Sallys have been proposed by various interested parties. Contrary to some claims and implications, these are not wrecking amendments; they are not designed to scupper, reverse or tear up the Army reserve plans, and they are certainly not an attempt to recreate, or go back to, Victorian-style and size armies. These arguments are Aunt Sallys that do not do the Government’s cause any good.

I also want to make it clear that if these amendments are passed the delay to the Army reserve plans could be kept to an absolute minimum if the Government allowed prompt scrutiny of the report. There is no intention to drag this out or turn it into a campaign that goes on for months and months. The report could be produced the day after the Bill becomes an Act and we could have a debate in this place within weeks. I have to say that the stories that this is scuppering the Army reserve plans or reversing them are very wide of the mark.

[Mr Philip Hammond]

As the House may imagine, my hon. Friend and I have discussed these issues at some length. I think he will acknowledge that while a debate could be held in short order the requirement is for the Government to carry the House at the end of that debate. Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that the Government would have to get that vote through before we could progress with the reserves agenda, and setting out that hurdle today would send a negative signal to the reserves community, which has heard a message of reinvigoration and growth for the future?

[Mr Baron]

I will very directly answer both those questions. I completely agree that the report the Government would submit would be subject to the scrutiny of this House and a vote, but the fact that the Secretary of State seems concerned about that points to a bigger story about the reforms. If the Government are concerned that they might not carry the House as to the logic of their report, I suggest that that shows a weak point. I therefore suggest that the Secretary of State should, perhaps, not pursue that argument for too long, because for the Government not to accept this amendment because they are concerned they might not be able to carry the House tells a bigger story.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I am very concerned about that point because if the Government are saying they think they have real problems with this and they might not carry Parliament, the Executive are trying to implement something that Parliament does not approve of, and that is totally unacceptable.

[Mr Baron]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The restructuring of other areas of government, such as the NHS, has been subject to the scrutiny of this place, yet here we are undertaking a major restructuring—the Secretary of State cannot disagree with that—of the Army and we are not prepared to subject it to that scrutiny, apparently for fear that we might not carry the House. It is not a very good reason.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Surely, this is a common sense approach, and to say it will cause confusion among the reserves is borderline ridiculous, because they are quite capable of rationalising things for themselves.

[Mr Baron]

I very much agree. I sometimes think in this place, where there is no shortage of former serving soldiers, that Front Benchers can be a little too sensitive about how stoical troops are. Their job is to get on with it, particularly if they are professional soldiers. They know these debates are taking place, but they get on with the job in hand, because that is what they are paid to do.

[Mr Philip Hammond]

Would my hon. Friend not accept, though, that there is no attempt to avoid scrutiny here? By indicating that I will accept the intention of our hon. Friends’ new clause 1 and legislate to require an annual independent report—not for a limited period, but as a permanent arrangement—we are in effect creating a mechanism whereby annually the House will receive a progress report on the state of the reserves, and I would expect the House to debate that progress report. That will provide the level of scrutiny that he seeks. What we cannot accept is the destabilisation of the programme that introducing an artificial hurdle—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Interventions need to be brief. The Secretary of State is an experienced Member of the House, and he knows that. Also, it would be good if he addressed the whole House, particularly the Chair, not just the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron).

[Mr Baron]

What the Secretary of State cannot get away from, however, is that this is not that sort of report. It would be the equivalent of a speech to the House followed by questions; it would not be subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny and a vote. We are talking about proper scrutiny of the plans. We know that things are not going well. Reservist recruitment targets are being badly missed, TA numbers are falling, there is a widening capability gap as a result and we have deviated from the original plan, as was just clearly confirmed by the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox); the original plan was to maintain the regulars until the reservists could take their place, but that has now been scrapped, and as we keep missing the reservist recruitment targets, the capability gap gets ever wider. These are legitimate questions that we in Parliament should be asking, and we need proper scrutiny of the answers the Government are giving. At the end of the day, that is all we are asking for.

As I have said, the report on its own is not enough, because we need proper scrutiny and a vote in the House, and if it does not bear scrutiny, perhaps that tells a wider story. A number of us, on both sides of the House, have tabled these amendments because we have deep-seated concerns that we believe have not been adequately addressed by the Government. I take no pleasure from saying this, but that includes the response to a well-attended general debate in the Chamber only a few weeks ago, when the Government could not muster one single vote in support of their position. One reason was that we put forward a series of questions, but very few, if any, answers came back.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman’s points about scrutiny might be well-intentioned, but new clause 3 talks about further implementation of the plans being halted. What would be the implication for the process already under way of giving reservists access to the armed forces pension scheme? What signal would it send to our reservists if we practically halted the implementation of a widely supported measure to give them better pension provision?

[Mr Baron]

My hon. Friend will just have to accept that we are suggesting a brief pause. Why should Parliament not be able to ask for a brief pause in a process that is clearly not going to plan, with recruitment targets being missed, an ever-widening capability gap and rising costs? If we all accept that defence is the first duty of Government, which I know we do, it is incumbent on Parliament to ask these questions.

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some perfectly sensible points, many of which I agree with, and I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) that his campaign has been conducted in an extremely measured way. My difficulty with his new clause is that I think it addresses a point he is not that interested in. I think he wants to reduce or stop the running down of the regulars, yet, so far as I can see, his new clause would stop the beneficial changes to the reserves that all of us—including him, I suspect—want to see.

[Mr Ellwood]

It is too late; the redundancy notices have already gone out.

[Mr Baron]

If I could just answer the question. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) for his kind words, but let us be clear: there have been three major tranches of redundancies in the regulars already. I think a fourth one is due shortly, although I do not know the Secretary of State’s exact intention on that. The plan to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists essentially hinges on our ability to recruit those reservists, but the plan is clearly in trouble, and if we do not stop now, if only briefly, to re-examine the logic and ensure it stands up and properly scrutinise the viability and cost-effectiveness of the plan and the widening capability gap, we risk heading towards false economies and unacceptable capability gaps, which people will not thank us for. It is not unwise, therefore, to say, “Pause briefly and let Parliament properly scrutinise these plans.”

[Mr Brazier]

I have just received another text from a Royal Air Force reservist that reads, “A pause will cause widespread concern”. The problems with recruitment are not about footfall, as I set out in my speech. What message does my hon. Friend have for the officers in a reserve unit who have seen the regular recruitment apparatus block up and wreck their ability to enlist people and who are now being told to stop once more, just as things are starting to move again?

[Mr Baron]

To save my hon. Friend mentioning texts and e-mails a third time, I can assure him that I have no shortage of texts and e-mails from reservists and members of the TA saying, “Yes, you’re absolutely right. These plans are not working and it would be right to pause and examine them again.” I will happily swap those with him after the debate.

On the effect of my new clause on the morale of the TA, let us consider the present situation. The latest figures, which came out last Thursday, show TA numbers falling, not rising, despite all the expensive recruitment programmes. Then we have the figures—and they are not full figures either; some of them were actually missing—for reserve recruitment going forward. I can tell my hon. Friend that it has got to such a state that the Army Reserve and TA courses scheduled for next January and February have had to be cancelled owing to a lack of recruits. The Secretary of State may be willing to check that, because I heard it very recently in one—in fact, more than one—of the texts and e-mails that my hon. Friend keeps mentioning. That shows the current state of recruitment. I therefore suggest to my hon. Friend that there are fundamental problems with this plan and it is only right that Parliament should scrutinise it more carefully.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

I am a practical individual. In my lifetime, I have lost hundreds of full-time jobs within the armed forces in my constituency, with the latest losses due to air traffic control at Prestwick moving down to Swanwick. That means that there is not a single full-time job within our armed forces in my constituency, whereas before there were hundreds, yet there is still a recruitment centre. What chance is there of recruiting full-time members of the armed forces in my constituency when we have closed down the whole position as regards full-time jobs?

[Mr Baron]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am focusing my remarks on the reservists—that is what the Bill is about—rather than full-time regulars. I suggest that we could very easily reverse the cuts to the regulars because, as things stand, more people are willing to become regular soldiers than reservists.

[Mr Brazier]

My hon. Friend is of course right that anecdotally one can prove anything. Nevertheless, I will tell him a story from half an hour ago. The last reservist I dealt with before coming to the debate—he is one of the cleverest members of the TA and the kind of person who should be its future—has a brother trying to join the TA who, for 13 months, has had his paperwork lost in the hopeless regulars system. While the TA is trying to struggle with that, it is grossly unfair to tell it that we are putting all this on hold too.

[Mr Baron]

I completely disagree; it is not grossly unfair at all. In fact, my hon. Friend highlights the fact that we have fundamental problems with the way the system works. If people are having to wait 13 months for computer systems to talk to each other, then that, if anything, reinforces the case that we should be saying, “Let us pause for a moment and properly scrutinise these plans.” That is all we are asking for.

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I have acknowledged in this House recently and shall do so again later that we have challenges in the recruitment pipeline and problems with the IT systems. We cannot wait until next May to deal with them—we are dealing with them now on a daily, weekly basis. The senior management at the Department and the senior leadership of the Army are all over these problems; they cannot wait until next year for my hon. Friend’s pause.

[Mr Baron]

My right hon. Friend is ascribing a victory to me before it has taken place. The bottom line is that the new clause, like the Bill, would not take effect until the Act receives Royal Assent in the spring of next year. If he is as confident as he says that this is all going to work out, then he has until the spring of next year, before the Bill becomes an Act, to work on these problems. So I do not buy that one either, I am afraid—it is a not a particularly strong card to play when the new clause, like the Bill, would not take effect until the Act receives Royal Assent.

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend talks a great deal about pausing, scrutinising and thinking, but would it not be more accurate to say that he has already reached his conclusion and that he wishes to increase the size of the Regular Army? If so, will he confirm that and explain how he intends to pay for it?

[Mr Baron]

I disagree with my hon. Friend. The intention behind the new clause is very straightforward; it does what it says on the can. These plans are not working and a series of things are going wrong, and it merely says, “Let’s pause for a moment to make sure that the plans stand up to scrutiny in terms of viability and cost-effectiveness so that rising costs do not lead to false economies and we are not opening up ever-widening capability gaps.” I am afraid that my hon. Friend is not quite fair in ascribing such a motive to me.

One of the first questions I would like the Secretary of State to answer is why the plan has changed. As we heard from the former Secretary of State in his own words—it came from his mouth, not mine—the original plan was that the regulars would be held at their current level until the reservists were able to take their place. That plan has changed. To return to a point that several Members have already made, by the end of last year a good number of the regulars had already gone—the final tranche may be next year; we are not sure—and by the end of next year most of the regular units and battalions will have been disbanded. Meanwhile, the reservists are not due to reach adequate strength to take their place until 2018, if present plans are met, but there is every indication that, because we are struggling, we will not even achieve that. That was not the original plan, as the former Secretary of State said. It would be good if, for once, we could get an adequate answer to this question, because we have asked it many times in this House and have not got one.

Let me talk about the recruitment problems. Last Thursday, figures confirmed yet again that TA numbers are in decline—not rising, but in decline. We also know that the Army Reserve recruitment targets are being badly missed, as confirmed in a spate of reports, some derived from leaked MOD documents. Figures due last Thursday regarding Army Reserve recruitment were not released in full. It is clear that the required recruits are not coming forward and that computer problems have added to the problems, as confirmed by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier). As everybody can imagine, there has been no shortage of texts and e-mails about this debate, and I have learned in such messages from the north-east that raw recruits to the Reserve have been told that it could take up to 15 months for them to get into uniform once they sign up. These are the sorts of delays we are talking about and which Parliament has every right properly to scrutinise. As even the Secretary of State may not be aware, the Army Reserve courses for January and February have had to be cancelled in their entirety because of lack of recruits. The fact that the Government are offering significant payments to businesses underlines the reluctance of many businesses, particularly smaller businesses, to let valued and key employees go on more frequent and extended deployments. All that is part of the cycle which in itself is adding to costs.

Our concerns are not just about reserve targets not being met; we also have deep-seated concerns about the resulting capability and manpower gaps, which are getting worse as we miss the reserve recruitment targets. Let us take as an example the mobilisation rate. At present, the MOD confirms that the TA mobilisation rate is 40%. In other words, for every 100 reservists there are on paper, the MOD deems that 40 are deployable. That can be to do with fitness, kit, sickness or all sorts of reasons. In order to make the Army Reserve plans work, the mobilisation rate has to double from 40% to 80%. I see nothing in the plans about how that massive increase in the mobilisation rate can be justified or whether it has been costed. It is a massive ask to go from 40% to 80% mobilisation. These questions need to be answered.

There are also concerns about the plan risking capability gaps. The nature of conflict is changing. Many countries that are not necessarily friendly to the west are increasing their military spending, and war is becoming more asymmetrical. Gone are the days of binary conflicts involving good guys versus bad guys—terrorism has ensured that things are much more complex nowadays—and we need professional, mobile, high-readiness, agile forces that are ready to respond to the threats that we face.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting argument. At its core is whether those on the Front Bench made a promise to increase the size of the TA before the regulars were downsized. Did he ever hear the Secretary of State say that he would guarantee that that number of reservists would be recruited before the regulars were downsized by the proposed number?

[Mr Baron]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has asked that question. It completely misses the point, and illustrates the weakness of the Front-Bench position. I am not saying for one moment that the present Secretary of State has said anything other than what he has said. My point is that the plan under the previous Secretary of State was very different only two years ago. I do not want to labour this point, but we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset no more than half an hour ago that the original plan was not to wind down the regulars until the reservists were able to take their place. We heard that from his own lips. I do not want to enter into a war of words between the present and former Secretary of State, but we know that the plan has changed over the past couple of years, and that is another reason for scrutinising it.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Going back to the cost of deploying reservists, the Government have said that they want to increase the percentage who are deployable at any given time from 40% to 80%. “Deployable” does not necessarily mean that they would be ready to be deployed in theatre, however. In many cases, it will mean that they are ready to begin training. I had five months of additional training before I was deployed in theatre. That kind of training involves additional costs, as does the reservist award, so this is not quite as clear-cut as the Secretary of State suggests.

[Mr Baron]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. To double the mobilisation is a big enough challenge. The plan represents a fundamental change in another respect, which provides a further reason to scrutinise it in some detail. I am proud to have served alongside TA soldiers, but the bottom line is that they were in large part in-filling. We helped each other along.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Baron]

I will not, if my hon. Friend does not mind; I am responding to another intervention.

Those TA soldiers were in-filling, but let us not forget that part of the present plan is to deploy reservists as units. That is very different from what has happened before; it represents yet another whole-scale change to the plan. It is therefore only right that we should scrutinise it in detail.

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Mr Brazier]

rose—

[Mr Baron]

I will not give way. I have given way three times to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury, and I must conclude my remarks, as I know other Members want to speak.

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Mr Baron]

No, I have already given way to my hon. Friend as well. Actually, I am doing a disservice to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile). He has not yet asked me a question, and I give way to him.

[Oliver Colvile]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I apologise for being late; I have been upstairs in the Northern Ireland Select Committee. What impact would my hon. Friend’s amendment have on the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, both of which play a significant role in my constituency? They have already been the subject of significant cuts, and the Army appears to be being protected as a special case.

[Mr Baron]

My hon. Friend missed the earlier part of the debate, and he has not heard the exchange of questions and answers. We are asking for a brief pause—it could be very brief indeed—while the plans are scrutinised. That is within the Government’s gift.

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baron]

I have made it clear that I shall be taking no more interventions. I think that hon. Members would agree that I have been quite generous in that regard, and I shall now move on because I know that others want to speak. We also need to address another important group of amendments.

The Government’s Army Reserve plans raise many questions on recruitment problems, assumed mobilisation rates and rising costs which could lead to false economies, but one of my greatest concerns is the ever-widening capability gaps that could result from the proposals. If passed, new clause 3 would confirm that the time had come for Parliament properly to scrutinise the Government’s plans. There comes a stage in any struggling project when the evidence and common sense suggest, and perhaps demand, a rethink. We have reached that stage with these plans.

If the Government are confident about their plans—that is what Ministers claim, and I have no problem with that—they should not be afraid of the new clause. Let them present their plans to Parliament, and if their case is as strong as they think it is, Parliament will allow the plans to be passed and the reforms will carry on as intended. However, I urge all Members to support new clause 3 and consequential amendments 3 and 4. I shall seek to press new clause 3 to a vote.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I offer profound congratulations to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), not just for the concession he has achieved today but for the formidable way he has pursued this issue over the years. He harassed me when I was in office—I perhaps remember that with a fondness I never felt at the time—and has continued to harass his own Government and the defence establishment on the issue of the reserves and the role they can play in the country’s defence. No matter who wants to claim credit for some of the changes now being brought about, he can feel real satisfaction at something very few Back Benchers can say they have been able to do: profoundly to change a significant area of Government policy. He has most certainly done that through his work on the reserves over the years.

I totally support the hon. Gentleman’s new clause 1 and am enormously pleased that the Secretary of State has accepted it. I also support new clause 3, and I have to say that I believe the Secretary of State is being a little heavy-handed in suggesting that to support it is somehow to sabotage the direction of the Army or to play politics with the defence of the realm. I say that as a former Secretary of State who had to put up with allegations by the then loyal Opposition that I had deliberately delayed life-saving vehicles getting to our troops in Afghanistan. It is enormously important—particularly in the field of defence, where there is such a degree of cross-party support—that the Government’s own defence of their policies is somewhat measured, but I am not at all sure it has been in this regard. We can all read: we can see what new clause 3 says and does not say. As I say, my respect for the hon. Member for Canterbury is about as high as an Opposition Member’s can be for a Government Member, and I have not heard from him, or from anybody else here today, anything to suggest that the new clause does all the terrible things it is said to bring about.

New clause 3 calls for a report within a particular time frame after the Bill has been enacted, and a pause if Parliament does not accept it. It does no more than that. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) may have an agenda that is not mine—I do not know—because I support the general direction of policy in this area wholeheartedly. This development could bring about huge improvements in capability. I see nothing to justify the counter-argument that is being made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Arbuthnot]

From memory, I believe it came after that decision, but I cannot be certain. It was a good thing for the then Secretary of State to say. Quite apart from that, it is a good thing for Governments to keep their promises. However, I thought I should briefly tell the House why I shall be voting with the Government tonight. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) said, although new clause 3 highlights the problem, it does not provide the answer. I think that what my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay really wants to achieve is not the halting of changes to the reserves, but the halting of changes to the regulars, which his proposal does not mention.

[Mr Baron]

My proposal does not mention the regulars because the Bill is about the reservists. A couple of hon. Members have suggested motives for these proposals which I cannot agree with. The bottom line is that most of those regulars—this is my understanding and I am willing to stand corrected—have been disbanded in any case. Let me be clear about what my proposal says, because motives that I do not take kindly to are being attributed to it. The proposal is about saying that these plans are not working and we should take time, if only a brief amount of it, to scrutinise them properly to check for their viability and cost-effectiveness. That is the right thing to do—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has now made his point several times in one intervention, so I call James Arbuthnot.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I must apologise to my hon. Friend for having entirely failed to cover in my few remarks about why I am supporting the Government the issue of SMEs, which are of less relevance to this reservist issue than larger companies. None the less, my hon. Friend makes a perfectly sensible point, and I hope that he will be able to make it again later during the course of the debate.

[Mr Baron]

May I briefly suggest that we would not have to make cuts to the defence budget if the Government were to put a higher priority on defence, as they do with other budgets and Government Departments?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I said that there were a number of things that my hon. Friend had said and would be saying with which I entirely agree, and that is one of them. That was a peroration, so I had better sit down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I do not think it is for me to say that. I am not advocating a pause. It is my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay who is doing so and he has told us that he thinks it all could be done in a matter of months. We have to understand what the Chief of the General Staff has said. There is a process under way.

I have talked to my commanders in Aldershot, about whom I am very proprietorial: the Secretary of State may think they are his commanders, but actually they are mine. The Army has taken this on the chin and said, “Right, this is the political remit we’ve been given. We salute, turn right, march off and do the bidding of the politicians.” Whether they think it is right or not, they do it and they are doing it now. Putting this spanner in the works will not hold back the run-down of the regular Army; it will create a run-down in the whole Army structure. As everyone knows, I am a light blue, but we are talking essentially about the Army.

[Mr Baron]

rose—

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I give way to my hon. Friend, because I have made some observations about his position.

[Mr Baron]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Those who say that we are trying to reverse the Army Reserve plans are completely wide of the mark. I recommend that one or two Members actually look at the wording of the new clause. It is very simple. It basically proposes a pause while we examine whether rising costs will lead to false economies and whether we are opening up unacceptable capability gaps. The pause could be very short if the Government allow prompt scrutiny of the report. It need only take a few weeks: the report could be produced immediately after the Bill gains Royal Assent and we could have a debate and vote in this House within weeks.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s position, but I am afraid to say that we will just have to disagree. I think it would have a destabilising, adverse effect. My hon. Friend has not made the situation clear. What would happen if we initiated his proposed process, scrutinised the plan and the House then rejected it? Where would we be then? Would the House go back to square one and trade alternative views—perhaps even within our own parties—while in the meantime the whole thing implodes and melts down?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baron]

In direct answer to that question, if the plans do not bear scrutiny in this place, that tells us that we should not be doing it in the first place and suggests a much bigger story that the plans are not working. The argument that this place cannot scrutinise something because we are afraid it will not pass the test of scrutiny is a particularly weak one, and I would suggest that we do not promote it for those who genuinely want to defeat the new clause.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is a gallant and, indeed, very honourable friend, but party politics do come into this from time to time. I cast no aspersions on the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), but it is a fact that, sometimes, if the Opposition see an opportunity to defeat the Government, they will use it. That is the way in which our system works, notwithstanding what the shadow Secretary of State has said about the general cross-party agreement on defence. Such agreement never existed when I first came to the House in 1983, so it is refreshing to debate matters in a much more intelligent way than in the mid-1980s.

I will conclude, because others wish to speak. We are not where I particularly would like to be, but the Army is to be commended for its professional approach. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury is also to be commended for the lead he has given. Our duty now is to crack on and make this work and, in the meantime, to address some of the longer-term structural issues as we approach the 2015 strategic defence review. I put my right hon. Friends on notice that I want the Conservative party to commit to giving more money to defence and it has to come out of the aid budget or any other budget—frankly, I do not care which. I think that the world is a dangerous place and we need our armed forces. The world has seen how professional they are. They are the finest armed forces in the world and they really can deliver what the Prime Minister wants, which is for this country to help shape the world in which we find ourselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Mercer]

I am grateful for that intervention. Recruitment in the Province was always good—despite the troubles—and I hope that it is even better now.

[Mr Baron]

On the point of TA numbers, let me confirm that the figures released last week showed a fall in TA recruitment. That was clear to see, and it was reported by the media and mentioned in various circles. That is what the report showed.

[Patrick Mercer]

I thank my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

I also have great reservations about the Army 2020 plan for the Territorial Army. I am a passionate supporter of the TA and reserve forces. I served in the TA for seven years, and I think the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) in forcing forward this agenda has been superb. Contrary to what my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) said, I think that in the future the reserve forces will make a magnificent contribution to whatever we ask our armed services to do, as they have done in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Mr Baron]

I commend my hon. Friend for all his good work on behalf of the regular armed forces in this place, but with the greatest of respect his point that the MOD budget has to be cut because of the financial constraints does not quite ring true because other Departments have escaped the cuts. It is a question of national priorities. Does he agree?

[Mr Gray]

I always feel instinctively uneasy when anyone says, “With the greatest of respect,” because it almost certainly means, “With no respect at all.” Of course, I agree with my hon. Friend: of course, we would all love the budgets to be as they were; of course, many of us would like the aid or other budgets cut, possibly in favour of defence; of course, those of us who believe passionately in defence would like to see the defence of the realm maintained as it has been for the past many years; of course, we would like us to achieve the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP—or even the NATO target of spending 2.5%—of GDP on defence, but this is realpolitik and those things are not going to happen.

I will leave that to one side for a moment. We all start from the position of regretting the cuts but realising the reasons for them. On the reserve forces, we all hope the plans in place work. We are all committed to making them work and believe that the reserve forces have done a superb job. In recent years, and as long ago as the first world war, they have made a gigantic contribution to the defence of the realm, and we strongly support that. Everyone in the Chamber is deeply concerned about whether the 20,000 regular soldiers will be replaced by the increase in the TA that is posited. Of course, we are concerned about that, about the recruitment figures and about whether the Secretary of State’s plans will work out. Those are common positions. I suspect that not one person in the Chamber would disagree.

The disagreement arises when we consider what to do about it. The Regular Army is already at about 86,000 or 87,000. By early February, it will be at about 82,760. The redundancy notices have gone out. People are already on their leaving training and getting ready to leave the regular forces. We cannot reverse that. No matter what we do in the Chamber today, there is no magic wand that will reverse it. By the middle of January, the Army will be at 82,760 soldiers. Regret it as we may, we cannot reverse that. The second thing for certain is that, whether or not we have confidence it will work, we will have to set about increasing the size of the reserve forces, their training and their equipment so that they can replace the lost regulars. Those two things are certainties, and regret them as we may, they are going to occur.

The question, therefore, is: what do we do about it? That is the nature of this debate, and it seems to me that there are two possibilities. The first thing we could do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) seeks to do—I have to admit that I signed his new clause 3—is to write our aims and concerns into legislation. In recent years we have done that in this House on a number of occasions—for example, with regard to the green carbon targets and reducing child poverty. In such cases, there is a law that says, “The Government will do this or do that,” and if it does not achieve those aims there will be some penalty to pay. It is therefore perfectly possible that we could do what my hon. Friend seeks to do by writing into legislation—the law of the land—something that says that the Government will improve our reserve forces in the way described. The alternative approach would be to do what we do with regard to every single thing in this place—to scrutinise what the Government are doing in questions and debates in this Chamber, in Westminster Hall and in Select Committees. We can do that in a variety of ways.

I am very encouraged by the fact that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State tells me that because of my hon. Friend’s new clause and this debate, he, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defence as a whole have been entirely focused on this matter for a number of days. That means we have achieved one of the things we wanted to achieve. We have said to the nation as a whole—it has been wall to wall in the media—that we are deeply concerned about these cuts in defence spending, about the fact that we have an Army of 82,000 that may not be able to do its job, and about whether the re-growing of the Territorial Army will actually occur. However, should we take the further step of writing those concerns into legislation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baron]

I agree with what my hon. Friend said about nation building. He had his opportunity to adjudicate on the Government’s nation building when we had the Afghanistan vote in 2010. Does he not accept that what we are arguing for here is a very brief pause—it does not have to be a long pause—and the longevity of that pause is in the Government’s gift?

[Rory Stewart]

I do not wish to quote my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), but my peroration was somewhat interrupted by that intervention.

Above all, it seems important that our relationship with the reserves is characterised by one word, which is “seriousness”. We need a plan, a direction and a confidence of Government, and that will turn around recruitment. People do not join the reserves for exactly how many days they serve, for how much money they receive or for the pension terms they get. They join because they feel that it matters: Government are serious about them, Parliament is serious about them and we know where we are going. The reason I will not vote for new clause 3 is that it passes exactly the wrong model at exactly the time when we should be moving forward with the wonderful work of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury and producing the excitement and the vision that we require. Another muddle and another conversation would be catastrophic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

I am afraid that I do not have time to give way to the hon. Gentleman. Of course, Labour also cut TA training completely in 2009, so it is difficult to take lessons from Labour Members. It is opportunistic to join this argument now, as others have said.

[Mr Baron]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Ellwood]

I will, but very briefly.

[Mr Baron]

I think that my hon. Friend has inadvertently misrepresented what I said. I was commenting on the previous Secretary of State’s plans and his commitment to the House that there would be no wind-down of regular forces until the reservists were able to take their place, which my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) confirmed only a few minutes ago.

[Mr Ellwood]

I hope that the Secretary of State will respond to that point, because in an earlier intervention I asked the question to get to the heart of that aspect.

I am concerned about the message that would be sent to our allies, both NATO allies and the United States, if Parliament halted or interfered with the recruitment drive that the Bill is designed to enable. The redundancy notices for the regulars have already gone out, so it is clear that there is no quid pro quo and that we cannot stop this plan and keep the regular forces at the size we would allow. The Bill allows a method of influencing, and indeed improving, recruitment, through the relationships with employers and so forth.

On the capability gap, an important question was asked: how will the wider world perceive that? Any pause in the recruitment of reservists would be dangerous, because the TA is at a lower state of readiness. The idea is to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists. Are they the same? No, of course they are not, but that raises the question of what world we are now working with.

I was interested in what my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said. He touched on some of the concerns about how the conduct of war is changing. I asked those on the Opposition Front Bench to say exactly what it is, with our withdrawing from Afghanistan and reducing in size, to have a standing commitment, and what the armed forces, however they are comprised, will actually do, because the balance between war fighting, stabilisation and peacekeeping has changed. The idea that we have to win over local support is now more central than it ever has been. Infrastructure, development, local governance and the drive for agriculture have all been mentioned. All that is secondary to the war fighting that takes place, but in Afghanistan and Iraq the war fighting was conducted and completed relatively quickly. We lost in those cases in the peacekeeping and nation-building. That is where it is very interesting to see the TA provide value, because it has the linguistic skills and can come in when skills in banking, cyber-technology, civil service and governance are required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hammond]

I must make some progress, because I have very little time and I want to leave a couple of minutes for my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury to wind up the debate.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury will not press new clause 2. It is essential that we manage the defence estate as a whole. We are on the brink of completing the appointment of a strategic business partner for the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, which will mean that we have the very best private sector estate management capability to deliver the defence estates programme. That will be to the benefit of the regulars and the reserves.

[Mr Baron]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hammond]

I will say something about new clause 3 and will then take an intervention from my hon. Friend.

First, I recognise that my hon. Friend is a passionate supporter of the armed forces. It is ironic that today, that passion has manifested itself in an attempt to block or inhibit the growth and reinvigoration of the reserves. I know that that is not what he wants. Indeed, I know that he would like to see more capability across our armed forces, not less. As I have made clear, we have no problem with submitting information to the House for scrutiny. By accepting new clause 1, we will deliver the intention behind subsection (1) of new clause 3. I believe that making it an annual report for annual scrutiny will provide for better scrutiny than what he is proposing.

I cannot accept the halt that is proposed in new clause 3. That would send out a signal now to the thousands of people who are in the reserve forces or are thinking of joining them. The Government have set out their plan and are legislating to deliver it. The Army has embraced the plan wholeheartedly. For Parliament to introduce additional tripwires at this stage would create uncertainty, undermine the message about the roll-out of improved terms and conditions, and cast doubt on our intention to spend the sizeable sum of £1.8 billion that is available to support this agenda. In short, it would make the whole agenda into a political football.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) said in his contribution, the proper way to scrutinise the implementation of this programme is through the established mechanisms of the House—the annual report, Select Committee hearings and the reporting of data—and not by halting the roll-out of the programme. We do not do that elsewhere and we should not do that for our reserve forces.

What I am attempting to do is to ascribe the most transparent of motives to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), but listening to him I could not help detecting just a hint of an undertone of a hidden agenda. Maybe what he wants is not to help us to fix the challenges we face in the reserves agenda, but to find a reason to abandon the project. In his own words, he told the House:

“we could very easily reverse the cuts to the regulars”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baron]

Using language such as “tripwires” and apportioning motives that do not exist does not do my right hon. Friend any good at all. The bottom line is that it is perfectly right for Parliament to say, “Let us pause and examine in detail,” and it is in the Government’s gift to make it a very brief pause indeed. The Secretary of State has still not answered the question. Does he accept that the plan has changed since 2011? We have heard in the House that the previous Secretary of State said that the intention was not to wind down the regulars until we were sure that the reservists could take their place. When and why did that plan change?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hammond]

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that, although we have not publicised it, we have increased the recruiting cap on units in Northern Ireland to 115% of liability, and the Army will continue to consider increases in liability caps in other parts of the country where recruiting performance is strong. I can go further and tell him that a review is currently under way to look at trade skills available in Northern Ireland. Most of the reserves recruiting is trade skills-specific. If we find that pools of additional trade skills are recruitable, we will consider locating additional units in Northern Ireland to tap into them. We have to be agile and go where the potential recruits are and where the skills we need are.

I want to go briefly through some of the other points that have been raised. I want to nail the point my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay has made several times in debate and in the media. He says that a 40% or an 80% mobilisation rate is not achievable. We are looking at a maximum mobilisation of between 3,000 and 4,000 reservists at any given time, out of an Army Reserve of 30,000. By my maths, that is significantly below 40% or 80%. During Operation Telic in Iraq, 85% of reservists responded to call out—an 85% mobilisation rate—and Operation Herrick had a 79% mobilisation rate, so I do not quite understand his point.

[Mr Baron]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Hammond]

I am sorry, but I have to press on. I also want to deal with—

[Mr Baron]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The Secretary of State is not giving way and he has very little time to finish.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)]

I am grateful for that question. I am aware of the difficulty and that is also my understanding of the issue. I will make further inquiries. Of course, one of the problems we know we will face is when we have bereaved families both north and south of the border and what will occur in such circumstances. I would be more than happy to discuss the issue further with the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

T4. Parliament sent a very clear message to the Government—the vote was 92 to nil—not to disband regular units until we were sure that the Army Reserve plan was both viable and cost-effective. What plans do the Government have to enact Parliament’s will?

[Mr Hammond]

As I have said in answer to an earlier question, it is just not possible, within the resource envelope available, to maintain the regular forces at their previous level while also recruiting and building the reserve. Neither would it allow us to restructure the force in the way necessary to deliver the outputs required from Future Force 2020.