Julian Brazier
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Defence Reform Bill
Julian Brazier Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 2—Duties and powers of reserve forces and cadets associations—
‘(1) The Reserve Forces Act 1996 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 113(1) insert—
“(1A) In deciding which of the matters set out under subsection (2) should be transferred or assigned to the associations, the Secretary of State should take account of—
(a) the cost effectiveness of associations as compared with wider defence operations; and
(b) the ownership of the particular site.”.’.
New clause 3—Report on Future Reserves 2020—
‘(1) Within one month of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State shall make and lay before Parliament a report on the viability and cost effectiveness of the plans set out in Reserves in the Future Force 2020: Valuable and Valued, Cmd 8655, together with his recommendation on its further implementation.
(2) Further implementation of the plans shall be halted 40 days after the laying of the report unless both Houses shall have resolved to approve the recommendation from the Secretary of State contained in the report.’.
Provides for a Government report detailing the viability and cost-effectiveness of the plans set out in the White Paper on Reserves (Cmd 8655). Both Houses must approve the report and the Secretary of State’s subsequent recommendation in order for the implementation of the reforms to reserve forces to continue.
New clause 4—Mental health provision for members of the reserve forces—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall publish annually an analysis of mental health provision for members and former members of the reserve forces.
(2) The report shall include information and annual spend on such services.
(3) The Secretary of State shall within one year of this Act coming into force bring forward proposals clarifying provisions for the transfer of medical records belonging to former members of the reserve forces to the NHS and for the monitoring of the health needs of former members of the reserve forces.’.
New clause 6—Leave entitlement for reserve forces—
‘(1) The Employment Rights Act 1996 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 63C insert—
“63CA Right to time off for reserve forces
(1) An employee who is a member of a reserve force (as defined in section 374 of the Armed Forces Act 2006) is entitled to be permitted by his employer to take time off during the employee’s working hours in order to undertake training activities connected to the reserve force.
(2) An employee’s entitlement to time off under subsection (1) is limited to 14 days maximum.
(3) An employee is not entitled to paid remuneration by his employer for time off under subsection (1).
(4) This section does not apply to employees of companies with fewer than 50 employees.
63CB Complaints to employment tribunals
‘(1) An employee may present a complaint to an employment tribunal that his employer has unreasonably refused to permit him to take time off as required by section 63CA.
(2) An employment tribunal shall not consider a complaint under this section unless it is presented—
(a) before the end of the period of three months beginning with the day on which the time off was taken or on which it is alleged the time off should have been permitted, or
(b) within such further period as the tribunal considers reasonable in a case where it is satisfied that it was not reasonably practicable for the complaint to be presented before the end of that period of three months.
(3) Where an employment tribunal finds a complaint under this section well-founded, the tribunal shall make a declaration to that effect.”.’.
A reservist would be entitled to two weeks statutory additional unpaid leave from their employment (where the company has more than 50 employees) for the purpose of reserve forces training, for which they shall receive their military pay.
New clause 7—Publication of data on reserves—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall publish quarterly recruitment figures and trained strength numbers of the reserve forces against adjusted quarterly targets.’.
Amendment 3, in clause 49, page 31, line 32, leave out ‘1 to 3’ and insert ‘1 and 2’.
Amendment 4, page 31, line 35, at end insert—
‘(2A) Part 3 shall not come into force unless the receommendation referred to in section Report on Future Reserves 2020 has been approved by both Houses, and may then be brought into force on such day or days as the Secretary of State may by order made by statutory instrument appoint.’.
Mr Brazier
It is a huge pleasure to speak to new clause 1. Let me also say how much I enjoyed serving on the Public Bill Committee, through which we were so well guided by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne).
New clause 1 seeks to establish, on a permanent basis, a power for the council of the reserve forces and cadets associations to report annually to this House and the Secretary of State on the state of the reserves, and will restore to the reserves a powerful independent voice.
I hope you will indulge me, Mr Speaker, if I give the House a bit of history. In 1908, when that great reforming Secretary of State, Haldane, set up the Territorial Force, as it was then called, on its modern basis, it was recognised that if the force was established simply under the Regular Army, it would not prosper. Therefore, the county associations—what we now call the RFCAs—were given control of recruiting and property management for the TF, as it then was. Just six years later, at the outbreak of the first world war, there were 250,000 Territorials stood to arms. Thirty units went over to the continent in the first wave. Sir John French, our commander over on the continent, remarked:
“Without the assistance which the Territorials afforded between October 1914 and June 1915, it would have been impossible to hold the line in France and Belgium.”
Sir John French was of course referring to the beginning of the war, but even at that stage, the same split view, which I am afraid we still see today, existed in the Regular Army. Lord Kitchener, as Secretary of State, announced on the very day that he took up his post that he could
“take no account of anything but Regular soldiers”.
He derided the Territorial Force, which was already fighting over in France, as “a town clerk’s army” and said that it got its orders from “Lord Mayors’ parlours”. However, had it not been for the vigorous lobbying of Parliament by the county associations—the forerunners of the RFCAs, with which my new clause deals—his efforts simply to break up the TF and use it as a source of spare parts for the Regular Army would have been successful, and the remarkable process whereby it delivered almost half our fighting units by the end of the war and scored 71 Victoria Crosses in the process would never have happened.
The system continued for nearly a century. Indeed, in 2003-04, by far the largest deployment of reservists in post-second world war history took place. At one point, one fifth of all our forces in Iraq and, just afterwards, one eighth of all our forces in Afghanistan were from the reserves. It is no accident that two years ago the RFCA council elected as its chairman General Sir Robin Brims. The RFCAs elect people to such positions and have a structure that would be recognisable to those in all parts of the House. It is almost like a party structure, although RFCAs are not party political. General Brims commanded the remarkable capture of Basra. Getting into the centre of the city was an almost bloodless exercise and almost the only thing that went seriously right in the British engagement in Iraq. His deputy is Major General Simon Lalor, who is known to a number of people in the House and who headed the reserves very effectively during the last two years of the Labour Government.
Mr Brazier
I am glad to see the right hon. Gentleman nodding.
More recently in Afghanistan, General John Lorimer—he is our current commander there, but at that stage he was a brigade commander—made the following comment on a Territorial Army company that was put under his command:
“Somme Company was an outstanding body of men: well trained, highly motivated and exceptionally well led.”
Sadly, however, for a number of years the Territorials have lost their voice and position. Crucially, in 2006, their control of recruiting was taken away from them and given to the Regular Army.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way at this early stage in the debate. I hope it might be helpful if I indicate to the House at this stage that we are minded to accept the principle of his new clause 1. Indeed—[Laughter.] The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) laughs. We have already made arrangements to receive independent reports from the RFCAs on an annual basis; my hon. Friend is suggesting placing that requirement in statute. On reflection, we consider that to be a sensible idea that will strengthen the programme for the growth and reinvigoration of our reserves. I hope that making that clear to my hon. Friend at the beginning will help to set the tone for today’s debate.
Mr Brazier
May I express my thanks to my right hon. Friend? I am delighted by that, and I know that the knowledge that the reserve units out there will once again have a powerful independent voice will make a difference. When I talk about some of the current problems, people will understand just how much that voice matters every bit as much as it did in 1914.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I pay tribute to the work he has done over the years on the reservists. Can he explain why, when the Opposition tabled an amendment in Committee that asked for figures to be—
Mr Brazier
I do not think the gathering of individual statistics should be a statutory matter, but the fact is that the Government have made a perfectly clear pledge that they are going to publish them. The crucial thing from the point of view of the ordinary reservist is that this body, which is elected by former reservists and respected by them as a body that effectively looked after their interests for nearly a century, is back with a really crucial position, able to make this report. When it visits the Army Recruiting Group, it will be heard with considerably more authority when it is known that it will be put on a permanent statutory basis and will be able to tell us what is really going on. I would like to say, however, that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has taken a close interest in this matter, which I respect.
The plain fact is that when the Regular Army took over recruiting in 2006, the numbers collapsed. The collecting of statistics collapsed, too, and the structure made no serious effort to address the challenges it was taking on. It simply raided the budget and used it for Regulars. To provide just one example, from 2006 to this day—it is now seven years on—Army recruiting offices are open only from 9 to 5.30 Monday to Friday, so they are not even available for people with civilian jobs.
A number of other things happened at the same time. There was a steady reduction in the flow of equipment to the reserves. There was a huge cut in the training budget. In 2009, we almost lost the whole training budget for the Reserves for six months, and I pay tribute to a small number of colleagues on both sides of the House who supported us in that battle. Worst of all, from 2009, all deployments of formed bodies to Afghanistan stopped—echoing the argument that had taken place at the outset of the first world war—and units were effectively told, “You are just here to act as part-time personnel agencies for the Regular Army”. That really destroyed much of the Territorial Army’s officer corps.
I strongly support what the Government are trying to do with the reserves. The House will know how much I am in favour of a rebalancing. I also commend many things that have taken place: the equipment is improving; there has been a huge increase in the funds available for training, particularly for collective training; and there have been some interesting initiatives at Sandhurst, under the charismatic leadership of the recently appointed Commandant, General Tim Evans. He started a number of improvements in officer training, one of which was the personal brain child of the Chief of the General Staff—taking people through the training in a single eight-week package, timed to coincide with the summer vacation in universities. The pairing of units is another initiative.
The Army Recruiting Group, however, has not got its act together; it is every bit as disorganised as it has always been. I hope the House will forgive me if I give just one example in detail to show just how hopeless it is. When the RFCAs lost their recruiting brief, the requirement for medicals, which had been very efficiently organised, disappeared. Suddenly last year, as part of common selection, it was announced that the Territorials were to do medicals, too. A system was set up, using the NHS as the old one had done, but in a fashion that had not even been cleared by the lawyers in relation to the Data Protection Act 1998. It was completely unworkable. People were told to take a form to their GP and get him to sign it off and send it in. So inefficient was this system that GPs did not know what to do. If units rang up to see what was going on, they were breaching the Data Protection Act. The system was so hopeless that a unit I know well—for obvious reasons, I will not say which—that had had an average of 48 successful enlistees per quarter in the months up to that change, saw a rising trend in applicants turn into just eight enlistees per quarter in the subsequent quarters.
I could go on and on. The software is unworkable; Ministers have already acknowledged that. Unfortunately, that compounds the problems at the recruiting centres. Because it is de facto impossible for somebody to do the form online on their own—if they make one mistake, their application is lost in cyberspace—it has to be done either at recruiting centres or in the units. The recruiting centres, of course, are not available.
Heather Wheeler
I forget many things, Mr Speaker.
Having sat in Committee week in, week out, with my hon. Friend, it is fascinating to note that it has taken this Bill, proposing this reform to bring all the discrepancies of the past out into the open, and indeed to bring things together with a new form of Territorial Army and a new form of reservists. I give great credit to my hon. Friend for his perseverance throughout the Committee stage; he attended as much as he possibly could and provided helpful background to our understanding of the Bill. My question to him is this: does he find it as interesting as I do that it has taken this Bill to show what a mess all the previous discrepancies were?
Mr Brazier
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her kind words. My essential point is that Parliament recognised, when the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 was put through, that reservist recruitment would never work if it were simply run by the Regular Army. It does not work. There is no reserve army anywhere in the world that is effectively run by its regular counterpart. We need a strong independent body. This new clause, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has generously said he will accept, will put the body that used to do this job very effectively into a powerful position as inspectors.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
For the record, it is not just a question of the mess that it all was; it is a question of the mess that it still is. My understanding is that the new clause will help to put the mess right.
Mr Brazier
I am not sure that I heard the last few words of the hon. Lady’s intervention; would she mind repeating it, as I could not quite hear?
Mr Brazier
A whole string of changes affecting the recruiting group are already taking place, and I am sure that the Secretary of State will address some of them. The key point—I am really grateful for the hon. Lady’s support in signing my new clause and in raising questions in the Select Committee and so forth—is that we would not have lost 18 months if people had listened to the RFCAs, to which all this was painfully obvious 18 months ago, instead of having some regular officers arrogantly cracking on without talking to the units or the RFCAs.
Mr Brazier
I hope my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) will understand if I take an intervention first from my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood).
Mr Ellwood
I would be happy to give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), but that would be out of order. I declare an interest as a member of the reserves and a former member of the regulars. I am able to relate to what is being said by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier). Does he recall in his time that the recruitment officers were manned by “the sick, lame and lazy”, as they were called? These were the people in the regular battalions who were sent to the recruitment offices because they could not keep up with the rest of the battalion. Would he like to see the commander taking a greater interest in who is signed up as a yardstick for promotion, so that numbers are kept up to par?
Mr Brazier
I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend’s point, but to be honest, the long-term solution is to sort the software out so that people do not have to go into the recruitment offices at all.
Nicholas Soames
First of all, the country and the Territorial Army owe my hon. Friend an enormous debt for everything he has done over the years, often under difficult circumstances, to promote their interests and to try to get things right. It is the case—and has remained the case for a distressingly long time—that there has been a very unsatisfactory attitude between the Regulars and the reservists. This has got to end. It has to end in a proper way, with the new proposed structure. Does my hon. Friend agree that all the points he raises about recruiting are correct? Things got off to a bad start; it has not been a success. However, I am told that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State went to Upavon the other day and read the riot act. I am quite clear—I know from my own experience as honorary colonel of a TA squadron—that the situation is already beginning to improve and will continue to do so.
Mr Brazier
Indeed. I strongly agree with my right hon. and gallant Friend, and thank him for his kind words.
Mr Philip Hammond
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. I cannot resist following up the intervention of our hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). When I went to Upavon a couple of weeks ago, I found that a number of limbless ex-Afghanistan veterans had been integrated into the call centre and were managing the online process. I noted that they were able to use their own military experience to encourage and support the young recruits whom they were mentoring online.
Mr Brazier
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. Not only is it good for the veterans to be integrated into the call centre while remaining in a military environment, but, crucially, the fact that the job is being done by people with military experience makes a huge difference. That is a message which, in a different context, I have tried to get across to our police force in Kent from time to time.
I do not want to speak for too long, because a great many other Members wish to contribute to the debate, but I should like to look abroad for a moment. It is no accident that the Haldane reforms came just after similar reforms in America which established the National Guard Bureau, just three years before the power was given to the forerunners of the RFCAs by the House of Commons. I have been privileged to visit National Guard units on operations in Afghanistan, and to see them doing various kinds of work. One airborne cavalry unit was mentoring the police, and an infantry unit from Virginia—whose origins, incidentally, date back to before American independence—was deploying its platoons along the Pakistani border, protecting aid posts there. Those units were able to bring to those jobs something that regular soldiers could not have brought to them.
“Losing Small Wars” is a book by Frank Ledwidge, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It refers to a catalogue of things that went wrong with the British presence in Iraq and, in the early years, in Afghanistan. One of the saddest aspects of the book is that it paints a picture of the Army not as it used to be, when it was quintessentially good at dealing with civilian populations all over the world. The fact that our Army was entirely unable to relate to the population in Iraq—in particular, it failed to recognise the murderous nature of the Iraqi police—was fundamental to our problems there. By contrast, National Guard units, which contain, for instance, police officers, business men and farmers, related very well to their local areas.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
I must challenge my hon. Friend at this point. In fact, the experience in Iraq was often that the British Territorial Army units had considerably more expertise than the National Guard units. In al-Amarah, for example, they had water engineers serving as majors and development specialists serving as corporals. I think that we should take much more pride in what the TA was able to do in Iraq, often outperforming the National Guard units on the ground.
Mr Brazier
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has intervened and put me right. I was not drawing a parallel between the National Guard and the British TA. By the stage when things were starting to unravel, the TA deployment, which had been large at the beginning, was very small. It is true that the TA punched above its weight. I have heard General Abraham, who currently leads the transition process, pay tribute to a military police TA sub-unit which was briefly under his command, while also making the point that it was only briefly: the presence was all-regular most of the time. However, because at one stage just over half the American deployment consisted of reservists, and because, typically, the regulars would capture the ground—and provided the surge—but the National Guard would hold ground, it was possible to introduce a range of different skills across a much larger number of people. Given my hon. Friend’s constituency, I could refer to agriculture and the role that the farmers in the National Guard played, most of them in infantry combat units rather than specialist units.
Let me now say a little about new clause 2, which, I hasten to add, I shall not be pressing, as it could not possibly become law. It is merely an attempt to initiate a short debate about property.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I had hoped to speak in the debate, but those of us who are serving on a Committee will not be able to do so.
Before my hon. Friend moves on to new clause 2, may I make a point about new clause 1? The principle behind the change in the proportion of reserves to regulars was exactly right: it brought us into line with many more contemporary countries. The proviso, in practice, was that the reduction in the number of regulars would not take place until we saw the necessary improvements in training, equipping and numbers in the Reserves. The problem for the House of Commons was that we had very little information to go on when it came to assessing the decision. I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend on tabling new clause 1, which will provide the transparency that will enable the House to make that assessment. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his wisdom in accepting a new clause that will give the House a good deal more pertinent information than it would have had otherwise.
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.
Mr Brazier
I wish I could show my hon. Friend some of the e-mails and texts I received before the debate. I know this is not his intention, but if Parliament passes his amendment, that will strike a hammer-blow to morale in the TA. Many Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the future of the reserve forces. Many Labour Members fought very hard when we were having the battles towards the end of the last Labour Government, and I am delighted that the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), is present, as he took a very close personal interest in this, and I note that the problems that arose at the end were not of his making. I urge Members on both sides of the House to think very seriously before they send that message to the reserve forces.
Mr Ellwood
This Bill is the starting gun for allowing TA recruitment to move from 18,000 to 30,000. Anything that is done to delay that recruitment will cause confusion in the TA, and that is exactly what we do not want at this difficult time of change.
Mr Brazier
I thoroughly agree with my hon. and gallant Friend.
I want to bring my remarks to an end as many other Members wish to speak. A number of noteworthy people have come through the Territorials and the other reserves—I have said nothing yet about the RAF and naval reserves. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), was recently commissioned into the Royal Naval Reserve and the Air Force Reserves heritage goes back to two of the three highest scoring fighter squadrons in the battle of Britain. The reserves have produced a number of distinguished individuals, including the grandfather of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, Sir Winston Churchill, and our greatest general in the last war, Bill Slim. People fondly imagine he was a regular officer who went to Sandhurst. He was not; he was a Territorial who sneaked in through the back door of the Birmingham officer training corps because his brother was a student there and nobody realised he was not a student too. There is also David Stirling, who founded the SAS. Again, people think of him as a Scots Guards officer. Yes, he was; he was a Scots Guards reservist. He had done his officer training at Ampleforth combined cadet force and then, through mountaineering, he had developed the qualities of character and team leadership that were so vital for setting up the SAS.
There are three reasons why we need reservists. First, because we can keep far more capability if we keep some of it at much lower cost—about a fifth of the cost—at lower readiness. Secondly, because they bring the energies, extra skills and imaginations of the wider civilian community into the armed forces. Thirdly, because that keeps the link with the local communities, which just after Remembrance Sunday we should all remember.
New clause 1 will give a strong independent voice back to the reserves. I am very grateful to the Government for accepting it and I must ask the House once more not to be persuaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay on new clause 3, because that will send a devastating message to the Reserve forces.
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
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 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 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.
Mr Brazier
I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his generous treatment of me, as leader of the all-party group for the reserve forces and cadets, which made the campaigning possible. The effect of this would be to send a message to those regular officers, many of them serving, who have rubbished this proposal for the past year and a half to the press off the record—they are a minority within the Regular Army but a significant one, some of whom the right hon. Gentleman will know—that if this can be kept down for just a little bit longer, they may get some regular manpower back instead.
Mr Ainsworth
The effect can and should be that this House is enormously interested in the development of the Reserves and wants to see their capability properly developed and scrutinised—and no more than that. That should be the message, and I do not think there is anybody in the House who is responsible for another message that I know of, other than the defence being offered by Government Front Benchers in the overreaction, as I see it, to new clause 3.
Vernon Coaker
It all needs clarification, which is my point. It is interesting that when we have a debate such as this, when the Secretary of State is feeling under pressure, we see amendments being accepted and more information being brought before the House. It is good that he is saying how he will publish this and how he will respond to that, but we now know that some robustness is lacking from the Government’s figures. That situation will no doubt be corrected much more quickly than it would have been before.
Mr Brazier
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his generous words earlier, but I must pick him up on that last point. The new clause I have drafted is based on what the Government have already announced. It seeks to make that permanent and put it on the statute book, but it is working with the grain of what the Government are already doing.
Vernon Coaker
We think that the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, although it is welcome, does not go far enough. That is why we support new clause 3.
When the Defence Secretary responds to the debate, I think the House would like to know a little more about what negotiations are going on with Capita, which is running the recruitment programme for the Defence Secretary. What are the problems? Will the IT issues be resolved soon? Are there any other issues? He will know that various rumours are circulating about the problems with regard to Capita and I think it would help the whole House to know where we are with those negotiations, what the Secretary of State intends to do about them and whether there are any penalty clauses for Capita should it continue not to perform as the Secretary of State and the House would expect.
New clause 3 does not call for a reversal of the cuts to the regular forces, despite some of the accusations from those on the Government Front Bench. We support it precisely because we want the Government to prove that their plans are both cost-effective and viable. For that reason, we deem it reasonable that both Houses of Parliament should scrutinise and approve a report that assesses the viability and cost-effectiveness of the reforms.
It used to be the policy of this Government that regular forces would only be reduced contingent on the required increase in reserve recruitment—
Mr Brazier
My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) has just made almost exactly the same point I was going to make. If we can keep a broader spectrum and a larger total mass, some of it at lower cost, by keeping reserve forces going, which brings in a wider range of skills and enables a multiplier effect, surely that is a better buttress against the unexpected.
Thomas Docherty
I agree with my hon. Friend, whom the House will recognise is one of the experts on the Defence Committee on the issue of morale.
Mr Brazier
The hon. Members for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard) are both good friends and colleagues on the Defence Committee. However, may I suggest to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife that what he is saying just is not right? What the reserves want is a strong voice of their own in a regular-dominated process. That is exactly what new clause 1 would give them and the Government have agreed to that. What they do not want is what is in new clause 3. Proposed subsection (2) states:
“Further implementation of the plans shall be halted 40 days after the laying of the report”
unless there is a resolution of both Houses. That would put yet another level of uncertainty into their thinking.
Thomas Docherty
I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I gently disagree with him. The reserves already have many strong voices in the British Army. He would agree that Major-General Munro is one of those strong voices. I think that the hon. Gentleman means that the reserves need stronger voices in the British Army.
I am sorry to disagree with the hon. Gentleman but, like many colleagues on both sides of the House, I think it is clear from present morale—I am not sure how it could be much lower—that our reserves are not being given adequate support. New clause 3, which is supported by respected figures on both sides of the House, would send a clear signal that we will not simply go along with the plans, come hell or high water, but that we want to see genuine progress.
Richard Drax
I hear my hon. Friend, and I respect him hugely for his opinion, but it is slightly dangerous to look at other countries and think that we can meet their expectations. I remember when an American general came to speak to a few of us upstairs about reserves. He had served under President Clinton and then President Obama. He was an interesting and very decorated man who had fought in Vietnam. We asked him about the reserves that America has. He made a rather salutary comment: “In America, having a high proportion of reserves works, because we have the money to fund them. We have airstrips with Hercules aircraft lined up on them, just waiting for commercial pilots to step out of their 747s into them, and to go off to trouble spots or wars around the world.” We cannot begin to meet that level of expenditure; that is what really worries me. We are pushed to fund the regulars.
We have two aircraft carriers, but I bet my bottom dollar that we will not have enough men and resources to man and protect one, with frigates and destroyers around, submarines underneath, and aircraft above. It is a hugely expensive commitment that I do not think has really been considered.
Mr Brazier
I am so pleased that my hon. Friend enjoyed the presentation by Dave McGinnis, one of my oldest friends, but his point was that because in America reserve manpower is less than a quarter of the cost, America is able to afford, whatever size its budget—it is obviously larger than ours—a much larger range of capabilities, and more boots on the ground, albeit that some of them are at lower readiness, by having such a high proportion of reservists.
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.
Mr Brazier
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The new commander of Sandhurst in the sand, which will be our most long-lasting legacy in Afghanistan, is of course a TA brigadier.
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a long-term aspiration in helping Afghanistan.
My concern is whether this House will ever again entertain putting boots on the ground. I would like us to have a large standing Army, as others have mentioned, and to be that leader in the world, carrying that big stick. I ask that question because of my concern about the vote this place had on Syria. It was a very simple action that we would have been participating in, yet this House voted against the Government. Others say that perhaps that is not a yardstick for potential future interventions, and I quite understand that, but it could be that, because of the ghosts of Afghanistan and Iraq, interventions in future will have a light footprint and will be very different. I simply pose a question as to what our armed forces need to look like: do they need to look like what we have had in the past, or should they adapt to the type of footprint we will need in the future?
Mr Hammond
I also want to deal with the cost of the Reserves. The ratio is 1:5—the cost of training and maintaining a reservist is one fifth of the cost for a Regular Army soldier.
I will not dwell on the Opposition’s position; I think I have made my views known in interventions. However, I want to make a comment about new clause 4, tabled by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), which deals with mental health. He has a long and honourable record of raising this issue. While I hope he will not press new clause 4 to a vote, I would be prepared to ask the RFCAs, as part of their obligations under new clause 1, to include reservists’ mental health in the issues that they report on. I hope he will consider that helpful.
Finally, let me turn to new clause 6, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). His intentions are absolutely honourable and good: he wants to impose an obligation on employers to grant unpaid leave for training. We have not absolutely ruled out looking at that possibility in the future, but we have made a conscious decision that we want to do this working with employers, not against them. That has meant a couple of tough decisions on unpaid leave availability and discrimination rules. For now, we have decided to try to work with the grain, with employers, but if that does not work and we find there is a problem in the future, we will have an opportunity to return to this issue in the Armed Forces Act in 2016.
We have had a good debate. I urge the House to reject new clause 3 and embrace the concession we have made on new clause 1, so that we have an annual debate on the progress of the project in the House. I hope we can send from the House tonight a clear, cross-party message that we are behind the men and women of our reserve forces, who give so much for the defence of our nation.
Mr Brazier
May I say what a pleasure it is to speak for the first time under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker? I failed to declare my interest at the beginning of this debate: I am proud to have one son in the Regular Army and one in the Territorial Army.
This has been an excellent debate. I would like to mention two speeches in particular: the forensic analysis of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) and the piercing vision of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). They both gave the House a great deal to think about, as did many others, in excellent speeches.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for accepting the substance of new clause 1. I look forward to it being introduced in another place. I will indeed withdraw my new clause—I made it clear that what I wanted was for it to be properly discussed. He has been very patient with me pressing him on reserve matters, of which property is just one. The decision to adopt the substance of new clause 1, reinforced by many speeches from all parts of the House, sends out a message to the reserves that the House of Commons is behind the reserve forces, just as it is behind the regular forces. We are proud of both. Finally, I must ask colleagues not to vote for new clause 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). Much as I respect him, it would send out a disastrous message to the reserve forces at this sensitive time. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 3
Report on Future Reserves 2020
‘(1) Within one month of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State shall make and lay before Parliament a report on the viability and cost effectiveness of the plans set out in Reserves in the Future Force 2020: Valuable and Valued, Cmd 8655, together with his recommendation on its further implementation.
(2) Further implementation of the plans shall be halted 40 days after the laying of the report unless both Houses shall have resolved to approve the recommendation from the Secretary of State contained in the report.’.—(Mr Baron.)
Provides for a Government report detailing the viability and cost-effectiveness of the plans set out in the White Paper on Reserves (Cmd 8655). Both Houses must approve the report and the Secretary of State’s subsequent recommendation in order for the implementation of the reforms to reserve forces to continue.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.