Defence

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Ministerial Corrections

[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, 24 November 2014, Vol. 588, c. 624.]

Letter of correction from Mr Brazier:

An error has been identified in the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) during Questions to the Secretary of State for Defence.

The correct response should have been:

[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 billion, 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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

1. What recent progress he has made on reserve recruitment; and if he will make a statement.

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

The programme to grow the reserves is on track. We have reversed 18 years of decline. Our more recent official figures, published on 13 November, show an increase in both recruitment and the trained strength of the reserves. Enlistment numbers are increasing and recruitment times are reducing, thanks to improvements that the three services have made.

[Toby Perkins]

I am very concerned to hear that the net increase of just 20 reservists is actually a part of the Government’s plan. With our regular forces at their lowest numbers since the Napoleonic wars, the news that just 20 extra reservists have signed up is extremely worrying. Will the Minister tell us his assessment of why the almost £2 million spent on advertising and all the warm words have not led to the extra reservists that we desperately need given the huge reduction in the regular forces that we have seen?

[Mr Brazier]

In the six months to 30 September, 2,770 people joined the reserves. That is an increase of 61% compared with the same period last year. The bulk of the difference occurred during the second half of that period, because it is only in the last few months that our changes in the recruiting process have come through.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

May I thank my hon. Friend for the important reforms that he has instigated and the fact that he has taken this back and we now look to substantial improvements? May I assure him that recruiting in the Yeomanry Squadron, with which I am associated, is going extremely well? The only problem that remains is for the Government to persuade employers that it is well worth letting their employees go for territorial service.

[Mr Brazier]

I am most grateful to my right hon. and gallant Friend, who is of course a distinguished former Minister for the Armed Forces. I was privileged to visit the unit he mentions, the Royal Yeomanry, which is now over strength. The point he makes about employers is well taken. We recently enhanced the package for small businesses, with a supplementary £500 a month, on top of the rest of the compensation package for small businesses that release people for operations. We also have a considerable initiative in the wider country.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

22. I declare an interest as a member of the Strathclyde-area Lowland Reserve Forces and Cadets Association. Can the Minister say whether he has carried out any regional or national analysis of reserve recruitment figures, whether there are any problems in different parts of the country and whether a more individual and specific approach to recruitment requires to be taken as a result?

[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.]

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

A key plank of the Government’s defence policy was to increase the number of reservists to make up for the reduction, by a fifth, of the regular Army, but the latest figures, however dressed up, show an increase of just 20 Army reservists in a year. The Government have had two years, spent millions on advertising and revised down their targets, and there has still been no improvement. It is becoming clear that this key plank is now dead wood. Does the Minister have a plan B, or is “Don’t panic!” the only answer offered by him and Captain Mainwaring there on the Front Bench?

[Mr Brazier]

The size of the volunteer reserves, including the then Territorial Army, halved under the last Government, and we inherited a structure that had lost most of its officers and was falling apart. The size of the Regular Army was reduced because of cash constraints that arose from an economic crisis we inherited. Our plans to expand the reserves are not designed as a direct substitute for regular numbers; they are designed to provide the kind of reserve—the framework for expansion—that would be needed in a time of national crisis.

[Vernon Coaker]

Permission to speak, sir—they don’t like it up ’em, do they? We need to see a clear plan to address concerns about future gaps in the armed forces’ capability, so why have the Government rejected recommendations by the Public Accounts Committee to put in place contingency measures if reserve recruitment continues to fall? Surely that is just plain common sense. Is this not further proof that when it comes to defence, the Government have no strategy and just make it up as they go along?

[Mr Brazier]

I think the hon. Gentleman wrote that question before he heard my earlier answer. His premise is that reserve recruiting is falling, but reserve recruiting increased in the last six months by 61% compared with the equivalent period last year. We are confident that it will go on increasing, so the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question is, I am afraid, wrong.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to protect the pensions of war widows who subsequently remarry or cohabit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

17. What steps he is taking to promote service in the Army Reserve.

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

Being a reservist is a great way to experience adventure with new comrades, develop leadership qualities, learn new skills and get paid up to £3,000 in the first year, while maintaining a civilian life and day job. Funding of nearly £2 million has been delegated to fund regional and unit initiatives, as we believe that it is from the unit level that the greatest impetus for recruiting should come.

[Bob Blackman]

On Remembrance Sunday, I had the honour and privilege of meeting the commander of the reserve base in my constituency. He made it clear that capacity was available for new volunteers to come forward. What further steps does my hon. Friend suggest we can take to ensure that people locally can volunteer, should they wish to do so?

[Mr Brazier]

The short answer is that we have a very considerable advertising programme and a programme of engagement with employers—from the civil service down to small businesses and the special measures for them that I mentioned. The best advocates of all are serving reservists themselves, who need to go out and talk about the new opportunities. Examples include the platoon from my own constituency which, with a reserve officer commanding it, is going off to serve in Afghanistan from February onwards; the company that has just been to Cyprus; and all the other opportunities that are available in reserve service.

[Alok Sharma]

The fantastic 7 Rifles, based at Brock barracks in my constituency, will be encouraged by my hon. Friend’s answer, but could he please outline any specific incentives that employers are being offered to encourage their employees to become reservists? He has talked about the package for small businesses; can he provide a bit more detail, please?

[Mr Brazier]

I in fact served in the unit to which my hon. Friend refers when it was 4th Green Jackets. The £500 a month on deployment available to small businesses is over and above the full compensation package available to all employers when soldiers are away on operations. It is estimated that the training experience gained from an average period of mobilisation is worth up to £8,000 for a private, £14,000 for a sergeant and £18,000 for an officer. We have a full employer recognition scheme for supportive employers, and I myself have signed off a number of the dozens of organisations coming through, large and small, that want to be part of this exciting initiative.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have had the privilege of meeting reservists and potential reserve recruits up and down the country, including in Wales. Many potential recruits are deeply disturbed by the length of time they are having to wait after their initial expression of interest. What is the Minister’s estimate of the number who are dropping out of the reserve recruitment process as a result of the delays that are being experienced by so many people?

[Mr Brazier]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that there was a very considerable glitch in the pipeline, but we have taken a number of steps to solve it. People can now be enlisted even if their medical documents have not caught up with them, and they can be enlisted pending their security checks once they have done the initial interview. We have also very considerably increased the capacity at the assessment centres so that people are not caught waiting for places. All those changes are making a considerable difference. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a precise answer to his final question, but it is quite a number. I hope that that will not be the case in future, however, because the process has now speeded up so much.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Reports by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and the Defence Select Committee into Army 2020 have all said that Ministers have not done the basic work necessary to bring forward those reforms successfully. Poor planning data have been used, and assumptions have not been properly tested. What is the Minister going to do to put right this shambles?

[Mr Brazier]

The outline of the plan came from the original “Future Reserves 2020” review, which was chaired by the current Chief of the Defence Staff. The early blueprint was put together by General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the General Staff. The hon. Gentleman is partly right: there were some mistakes in the early stages relating to the way in which the recruiting pipeline was organised. Since those early glitches, we have made considerable changes—relating to meeting a common standard, for example—and recruits are now coming through in much greater numbers.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

9. What recent steps the UK has taken against ISIL in Iraq; and if he will make a statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

In the 2010 SDSR the UK Government committed to reducing the number of launch tubes from 12 to eight. A recent opinion poll issued by the US navy states that the American firm General Dynamics will build 12 Trident missile launch tubes for a successor UK submarine, something that has not yet been approved by this Parliament. Is that true? If so, why has the House not been informed, and why do we need to learn about it from US navy press releases?

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

How much has been spent on advertising to support the current reserve recruitment, and how much is budgeted to be spent on advertising in future?

[Mr Brazier]

I shall have to write to my hon. Friend in order to give him a full answer.

[Sir Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this unexpected boon. As he prepares for next year’s SDSR, may I commend my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary on the merits of an open and inclusive process that maximises the involvement of the public, Parliament, industry and academics?

Reserve Recruitment

Julian Brazier 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?

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The Army Reserve has expanded by just 20 troops in the past year—20, not the 30,000 personnel promised by the Prime Minister. Capita is being paid £50 million a year to assist in recruitment, meaning that each new net recruit costs taxpayers £2.5 million. That does not include the millions spent on online and other advertising campaigns. The Minister is failing so badly, two years after the policy was announced, that the upper age limit for recruitment is now to be raised, even though, from his reply to the question, one would not think that anything had changed.

This is a shambles—yet more along the lines of the failed IT systems that wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and the repeatedly missed and repeatedly readjusted recruitment targets. Now we have the fiasco of the increase in the upper age limit for recruitment, changing the goalposts to meet the targets. Urgent clarity is needed on the level of integration between regular and reserve units following the recent statement by the new Chief of the General Staff. Will the Minister confirm whether it is now Government policy that reservists will not be called on routinely and will instead be used only in times of emergency? When was he consulted on that change in policy?

May I ask the Minister to be honest with the Army and the British people about what size he envisages not only the reserve but the British Army will be at the end of the process? He said that his policy is bold. Yes, it is bold, but it is fundamentally flawed, it has failed to be tested, and the tragic consequence will be that Britain's defence will be vulnerable for years to come.

[Mr Brazier]

I think that the hon. Gentleman had drafted his points before he heard my answer to my hon. and gallant Friend, so I will not repeat the same points about the changes in the system that are just coming through now and are evident in the latest quarter.

Let me deal with the hon. Gentleman’s more substantive questions. The message coming from the Chief of the General Staff has been cleared with the Secretary of State and me. We are all at one on this and I am grateful for the opportunity to make that clear. When we talk about integration, there is an important distinction to be made between compulsory call-out, which will occur only in times of public emergency—in the long term, because we suddenly hit an unexpected conflict, or in the short term, because of flooding and so on—and opportunities for intelligent mobilisation for formed bodies or individuals that will be there all the time. Most people join the reserves because they want an opportunity to deploy on operations. It may help the hon. Gentleman, whom I have known for a long time, if I give a few examples of that.

In February, under Operation Toral, the next phase in Afghanistan, a formed platoon from my local battalion, 3rd Battalion the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, will go to Afghanistan with its sister unit, the Royal Anglians. We have 24 people, 19 of whom are medics, going out on the Ebola operation. In 2012, the framework battalion for Cyprus was a reserve battalion. The opportunities are there, but call-out will be compulsory only when there is a real emergency. It is worth noting that 25,000 individuals went through Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them under a Labour Government. All of them went through the intelligent mobilisation process, except for a relatively small number involved in the original Iraq operation.

My understanding throughout this has been that Labour’s policy is to support our plan in principle, while doing what an Opposition always should do: hold the Government to account for delivery. I have heard nothing in what the hon. Gentleman has said to suggest that that has changed, and I am pleased about that.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I will seek to do that, Mr Speaker. My hon. Friend the Minister has a long-standing commitment to the reserve Army, which I salute. I am proud that my Territorial Army regiment is, I understand, 125% above its recruitment target, which is great. Other regiments around England could follow that example. However, does he agree that we cannot replace regular soldiers with reserves on a regular basis? Would it not be better to do away with the 82,000 and 30,000 figures, and replace that with an Army of 112,000, which could be made up partly of one and partly of the other?

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I am not quite certain what he is proposing. We are planning for an Army of 82,000 regulars, and 30,000 reservists integrated with them—in other words, available as formed sub-units or individuals to supplement the regulars outside periods of great national emergency, and to be called up in much larger numbers during periods of great national emergency.

May I pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) that I failed to answer? We make no apology whatever for recruiting older people to specialist roles, such as intelligence roles, and as medics, where they have specialist skills. As for the new standards of fitness and so on that we are introducing for medics, there is no suggestion of having those people in the combat arms.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

Those of us who, in principle, support what the Minister is trying to achieve have always warned about the potential for over-optimism, and about the resistance and about the need to drive this in. None of this appears to be working at the speed that was envisaged. The Government really have to accept that there is a bigger gap in capability than they have hitherto acknowledged, and that the gap will probably go on for longer than was planned. They must acknowledge that and say what they plan to do about it.

[Mr Brazier]

I have the greatest respect for the right hon. Gentleman. I am glad that he, too, buys into the principle of the plan. We are committed to the same targets. He will see that as the measures that we have taken to unblock the recruiting system feed through into the numbers—let us remember that we are looking at 12-month rolling data, and that will take time—we will achieve these targets. We are committed to getting 30,000 reservists trained by 2018. I look forward to further exchanges on this with Members from across the House.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The assumptions underlying this policy were not tested because of the experiences of the Minister for the Armed Forces in the TA 30 years ago. I wrote to the Secretary of State over a year ago to point out that this policy was highly unlikely to work, and that the Department would have to throw a fortune at it to try to make it work. It is not working. When will Ministers face up to that? At the current rate of progress, it will take between 100 and 200 years to achieve the target.

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend. He says that the policy should have been tested; the recommendations came out of an inquiry chaired by the Chief of the Defence Staff. They have been strongly and publicly supported by the Chief of the General Staff, both publicly in front of the Select Committee on Defence and privately in front of the all-party group, of which my hon. Friend is a member. We know that we can achieve this; the plain fact is that we said that it would take five years. We are unblocking the recruiting system. The units that I visit all suggest that they are well on their way. We will achieve the targets.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

When those reforms were originally launched, one of the key principles was for the reservist force to “routinely share” jobs that were once the

“exclusive domain of Regular forces”.

There was therefore that integration. Back in October, when the Chief of the General Staff suggested that reservists would be used only in emergencies, he was kind of rebuked for not being in line with Government policy. Is not the reality now that the original policy of sharing is no longer possible, and we are reduced, because of the numbers, to using them only in national emergencies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brazier]

I have the greatest admiration for the hon. Lady. I sat next to her on the Defence Committee for four years, but she really has missed the point on this. Nobody has rebuked the CGS. The CGS designed the detail for this plan in his last job but one. The hon. Lady misunderstands the difference between opportunities for regular use of reserves, of which I have just given three examples, and compulsory call-out. That is the distinction she must understand.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that recruitment to the Army Reserve in the six months to 30 September will be well over 2,000 people, which represents a 60% increase on the same period last year? If that acceleration in Army Reserve recruitment is sustained, it will be in stark contrast to the planned reduction in the TA under the last Government?

[Mr Brazier]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a 60% increase over six months, and as the bulk of that occurred during the most recent quarter, it is almost a doubling in that period. He is absolutely right. It is a tremendous turnaround after years of decline under the previous Government.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for reversing the daft proposal to close the TA centre in Widnes following my representations. Does he have any concerns about how Capita is working? For example, a constituent of mine has applied to join the regulars but has been given four separate dates verbally and has still not been able to join the Army. Is not the problem with Capita as well?

[Mr Brazier]

Will the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have the greatest respect, write to me so that I can look into that individual case? We have had a number of delays in the system. We are sorting those out, and the process is now working much faster for both regulars and reservists, but I would be grateful for a letter.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I have been waiting by my phone for the call to join the Army Reserve, but so far nothing has happened. What percentage of the 30,000 Army Reserve personnel will be available for not a great national emergency at any one time—assuming we get 30,000?

[Mr Brazier]

Over a decade or so, 25,000 reservists were called out of what was then a falling institution. I have given my hon. and gallant Friend some examples of the things we are calling reservists out for now—on intelligent mobilisation, not compulsorily, for Afghanistan, for Cyprus, and for interesting exercises all over the world, such as the British Army Training Unit Suffield in Canada and live firing in Kenya. I cannot give him a firm number, but we have seen that large numbers of reserves are available and willing to come. Compulsory call out, as the CGS has made clear, will happen in a national emergency.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

On 24 June, the MOD told me in answer to a written question that £300 million had been spent so far on the recruiting partnering project. How much money has been spent to date on this fiasco?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brazier]

I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman to give him a total figure. I do not recognise the figure he quotes, but I will write to him. Most of the Capita programme is directed towards the regular forces. It has had some difficulties, some around software, which has been a feature of Governments of all complexions. It is in the process of a considerable set of improvements, most of which are now in place.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend on all the efforts he is making in this regard, but may I make one small point? According to the sources I speak to, the smaller the Army gets, the more professional it needs to be in order to be more flexible in dealing with a greatly changing world, so the proportion should stay at 80:20 and not move to 70:30. Can we therefore go back the other way and have a smaller Army, yes, but one that is more professional, not less so? I am not saying that the part timers are not professional—they are—but a smaller full-time Army has the necessary flexibility.

[Mr Brazier]

I hear my hon. and gallant Friend with respect. However, if he visits, as I am sure he does from time to time, the Royal Wessex Yeomanry in his own constituency, he will see just how good that unit is and how much it can achieve. The size of the Regular Army came out of the very difficult decisions that we had to make in the strategic defence and security review. We have to be clear that if we want to have a framework to expand a small professional Army, and if we want to keep connections between that small professional Army and the wider civilian community, we need a substantial reserve.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I do not think that anyone in the House would dispute the fact that this is a bold challenge. No one is unaware that there have been technical problems and glitches, but the Minister must know that there is a high degree of concern that only 32% of the regulars have confidence that reservists will be well integrated within their units, and that there has been a net increase to the reserves of only 20. What can we do to improve on those figures?

[Mr Brazier]

I have already answered the second question from the hon. Lady, who is another fellow member of the Select Committee, by listing the very many changes that we have made to the recruiting pipeline and noting that in the last quarter we almost doubled the numbers coming through. On her first point, there are indeed some in the Regular Army who do not agree with the changes, having seen former comrades leave, but the fact is that a Chief of the Defence Staff chaired the original commission that set out the overall plan and the Chief of the General Staff wrote the detailed blueprint.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Is not part of the problem that the increase in reserves has been seen as a cover for a cut in regular forces? What can the Minister, as a champion of the reserves even when we were spending more money on the armed forces, say to dispel that impression?

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question, not least because he is a former member of the Royal Naval Reserve, who are well ahead of their recruiting targets. The short answer is that if we want defence to prosper in this country when there are very many calls on the public purse, we need the footprint around the country that the reserve forces have—they are represented in half of all the constituencies in this House—to remind people what armed forces are all about.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that part of the problem is that some applicants, although they have the potential, do not yet meet all the requirements? Does he believe that there is a place in the recruitment system for the military preparation course that was devised by Lieutenant Colonel Tony Hollingsworth, who runs Knowsley Skills Academy?

[Mr Brazier]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a really excellent question. This is why we are looking at the criteria again. We have reintroduced proper medicals, proper fitness tests, proper intelligence tests, and all the things that disappeared under the previous Government. He is right. There should be room for flexibility, and where people are, for example, a little bit below the right level in the fitness test, units have measures in place to give them coaching to bring them to up it. I would like to have a longer conversation with him about this another time.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I am proud of our reserve forces and grateful to employers who participate to allow workers to serve, but given the huge cuts in the regular forces what happens if recruitment for the reserve forces does not meet the targets the Minister is talking about?

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. We are confident that we will meet the targets. I say again that in the last three-month period we achieved almost double the equivalent level for last year. We are committed to those targets so his question does not arise.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

After this expensive disaster, does the Minister have a shred of a regret about hacking away 20% of the Army’s strength, particularly given the fact that some regular soldiers served in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the Olympics and were then told, “There’s your P45. Now sod off.”? What a disgraceful way to treat soldiers.

[Mr Brazier]

This Government have taken huge steps to build the armed forces covenant and to ensure that veterans who left the armed forces on redundancy terms were well looked after. Members of the hon. Gentleman’s own Front-Bench team made it clear that under Labour there would have to be cuts in defence. The previous shadow Secretary of State said:

“The truth is the Labour Party would have to make cuts if we were in power.”

We have had to make difficult decisions because of the economic circumstances we inherited.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

As someone who has visited reserve units, I find increasing optimism among commanding officers and others that they are going to achieve the targets. May I suggest a very small tweak? The emergency service cap on recruits needs to be reviewed. For example, in the Met police a reserve recruitment cap of 0.25% has existed since the cold war. This could be an ideal recruiting ground. Will the Minister look at it?

[Mr Brazier]

I am most grateful for the question from my hon. and gallant Friend, who served in the same regiment as I did, although he was a regular and I was a reservist. He is exactly right. The cap is being addressed. Clearly, the Metropolitan police need to have a cap, but it is much too low at present. There is a discussion going on. A commanding officer I met had lost three military police soldiers from her unit because they had got jobs with the Met and been made to resign because the quota was filled.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am not a defence buff, but I believe in the security of our country and I recognise the dangers that are emerging across Europe. If I were sitting in the Kremlin right now, I would be very happy about the run-down of our regular forces. What does the Minister say about that?

[Mr Brazier]

I have too much respect for the hon. Gentleman to get too party political about what happened to our defences under the previous Government. If he chooses to cruise the BBC website, he will find that in the past four weeks Vladimir Putin has announced a very large expansion in the Russians’ part-time reserve army.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

One area of apprehension in Salisbury is the package of incentives and support available to small and medium-sized employers. Will the Minister say something about why employers should be content to allow their employees to volunteer to join the reserves, and why that package has improved?

[Mr Brazier]

The first thing we should recognise is that this is part of corporate social responsibility. Any employer who signs up faces the prospect that in extremis his employee might be compulsorily mobilised. What he gets for that is somebody who is motivated and who is trained in a variety of ways not available in civilian life. What he gets also is a loyal employee with good values. The financial side has been improved in various ways, including the £500 a month extra compensation for a small business that loses an employee on operations, over and above the full compensation package.

[Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)]

How much money has been spent on television recruitment ads this year, and is the Minister happy with that cost?

[Mr Brazier]

I am sorry, I did not hear the question.

[Mr Speaker]

How much money has been spent on television recruitment advertisements this year?

[Mr Brazier]

I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does the Minister think that the closure of recruiting offices such as the one in Bury in my constituency has had any effect on the number of reservists being recruited?

[Mr Brazier]

I do not believe that that has had a direct effect. Most reservists join initially through their local reserve unit or, in some cases, through the national website. There was one immediate indirect effect—while all the glitches were in the system, which we have ironed out over the past few months, the lack of somebody immediately available on the high street to mentor somebody who had not already got dug in with a unit made a significant difference. I do not believe it will make a long-term difference.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Being the fourth highest spender on defence in the world has led to the deaths of 632 of our brave British soldiers in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction and in Helmand in the belief that not a shot would be fired. Why cannot we pursue an independent foreign policy and recognise that spending above our budgets and trying to punch above our weight always results in dying beyond our responsibilities?

[Mr Brazier]

I am not sure how that fits into the statement, but I am very happy to comment. The fact is that we should be proud of what we have achieved in Helmand province. That operation started, as did the previous one, under a Labour Government.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

3. What steps he has taken to improve the process for applying to join the reserves.

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

All the reserve forces have worked to simplify their application procedures, including through streamlined online processes and shorter medical forms. We have increased capacity in Army recruitment and selection centres, and more mentoring and support for candidates is being provided by their chosen unit. Early indications of those measures are promising, and Army Reserve enlistments over the summer quarter, traditionally the quarter when enlistments are lowest by far, are running at roughly double the levels of last year.

[Damian Collins]

I welcome my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour to his appointment as reserves Minister. The Gurkhas are a much-valued force within the British Army. Would the MOD be prepared to consider creating a Gurkha company within the reserves, if that would help to boost the number of Gurkhas who seek to join the reserves after their retirement or of their children who seek to do so?

[Mr Brazier]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind welcoming of my unexpected mobilisation. We are indeed looking at ways in which we can get more ex-Gurkhas to join the Army Reserve, but there are legal and practical reasons against establishing a separate Gurkha reserve unit. Given their experience, there are great benefits in ex-Gurkha personnel joining a whole range of Army Reserve units. Gurkhas leaving the Army receive briefs on reserve service as part of their transition support, and we have a programme of using ex-Gurkha reservists to visit Gurkha units to provide case studies of what can be expected.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am not a defence expert, but I do chair a skills commission, and I know about the market for certain skills. Is not the problem that the whole reserve policy is bound to fail, because these days most people in our country work for small and medium-sized enterprises that do not allow, or have the capacity for, people to serve as reservists?

[Mr Brazier]

I hugely respect the hon. Gentleman, but I should tell him that these targets are extremely low compared with either our national history or targets in our English-speaking counterparts. A whole range of larger businesses has come on board, 10 of which have already been over to Downing street for their gold awards. As a special incentive for the employers of SMEs, we are offering £500 a month over and above the other award they can get if someone is mobilised. The various branches of Government, including the civil service, are all on the move. This can and will be done.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

Clearly, this is a welcome scheme. What more can be done to promote it to small businesses as a way of encouraging them to be happy about people being reservists?

[Mr Brazier]

We are making use of every possible route. The Federation of Small Businesses is particularly active and helpful on this. The Reserve Forces and Cadets Association and Supporting Britain's Reservists and Employers—SaBRE—which now comes under it, are providing advice to small businesses. A small business connection with just seven employees expressed his concern through a family friend about taking on a reservist. I was able to put him in touch with those organisations and provide reassuring messages. A pack will come out shortly showing how individual MPs can help.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The South Wales valleys have traditionally been a recruitment source for the regulars and the reserves, and long may that continue for those young people who wish to pursue such a career. The valleys are also characterised by a huge proportion of small and medium-sized enterprises. Will the Minister monitor the success of this approach, and has he set targets internally on how he will measure his success with SMEs?

[Mr Brazier]

We are looking at the employment market of reservists in a segmented fashion, but we do not have separate targets for separate sectors. We want to make progress in all areas—Government, large businesses, SMEs and self-employed as well as students, who are now a crucial element and of particular interest to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)]

What can the Minister for reserves tell us about the future of the Barnstaple Territorial Army centre? He knows that the existing unit does not want to relocate more than an hour’s drive to Exeter, so can they stay where they are?

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

I was with the Royal Wessex Yeomanry on Saturday, and in the gentlest possible way may I remind my hon. Friend—of whom I am extremely fond—that he promised me a short written brief on the subject? I look forward to discussing that with him and seeing what can be done.

Recruit Trainee Survey

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Written Statements

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

Today I am publishing the 2013 recruit trainee survey annual report. All recruits and trainees passing through phase 1 and 2 training are offered the opportunity to participate in the survey which is anonymous and administered independently on behalf of the services by an external provider.



The annual report contains the views of recruits and trainees about topics such as the preparation for joining, their treatment during phase 1 and 2 training, food, accommodation, access to instructional and welfare staff and complaints procedures. Overall the results are positive and importantly the findings are used by service training headquarters and units to monitor the training environment and make improvements.



A version of the full “Recruit Trainee Survey 2013 Annual Report” has been placed in the Library of the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

We believe that we have properly assessed the right size of the Army to create a mixture of regulars and reserves to defend our country in the future, and I respectfully remind the hon. Gentleman that we mobilised 25,000 reservists for service in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom won gallantry awards fighting directly alongside their regular counterparts. We are very proud of our reserves and what they have achieved in the defence of this country in the past, as well as what they will continue to do in defence of this country in the future.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Although I strongly welcome my right hon. Friend’s earlier answers, will he tell the House what is being done to get the money and processes of recruiting back into the hands of reserve units?

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend—who, by the way, is responsible for the amendment that leads to the report mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon)—is familiar with the whole process, and he and I have discussed the matter on a number of occasions. To make the programme work as effectively as possible, we must continue to devolve responsibility for recruiting down to unit level to give commanding officers and their subordinate officers greater responsibility and challenge in meeting the numbers. As I have intimated to the House, that programme is already under way, and I believe that with his support, and support across the House, we can make this programme work.

First World War (Commemoration)

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I commend my hon. Friend’s project. Other hon. Members will wish to emulate it. Like me, he has a large number of Commonwealth war graves in his constituency. I know that primary schools in particular in my constituency are keen to honour the fallen. Several of those schools have similar projects. The centenary will be an occasion when our minds will be focused closely on the subject. I suspect that, over the four years, interest will increase, particularly in schools. I hope that MPs will be able to take the lead in promoting that, as my hon. Friend has done in his constituency. It is important that parliamentarians apply leadership in such matters. I am confident, given the interest among colleagues, that they will do precisely that.

It is important also to ensure that our war memorials are in a fit state. A centenary is surely an opportunity to ensure that we revisit those extraordinary monuments that lie at the heart of most of our communities. I am pleased to say that over £5 million has been made available from Government to ensure that local war memorials are in good order. For details of that and the extensive work being done by Government Departments and agencies, I recommend the Government centenary webpage.

My hope is that the centenary of the first world war will provoke a wider interest in history and that it will enrich the teaching and study of the discipline more generally. It is not just about educating young people. I learnt about the wars of the 20th century from my parents and grandparents, who were contemporary witnesses. Young children these days do not have that advantage. In a curious reversal, to our surprise and delight, we have found that children participating in the £5.3 million battlefields project have been inculcating awareness of the great war among their parents, so it is bottom-up replacing top-down.

The Government intend to continue to work with the 60 or so countries worldwide who have a direct interest in the centenary. In Ireland the great war centenary falls within a decade of commemoration. It is an opportunity for reflection and conversation facilitated by the Queen’s historic visit in 2011, and it is set to mature further and strengthen one of the most important relationships for both countries.

This year a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cross of sacrifice is being erected in Dublin’s incredibly important Glasnevin cemetery, which I had the great privilege of visiting recently. Given the history, the significance of such a monument in the shadow of Daniel O’Connell’s tomb is very clear. History is often complex and nuanced, but no good is served by finessing its inconveniences.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. On the Commonwealth, I was privileged last night to entertain Corporal Mark Donaldson VC from Australia, and is this not an appropriate moment to remember just how much this country owes our cousins in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the troops who came from India and all over what was then the Empire and is now the Commonwealth, without whom we probably could not have seen through either of the world wars in the way that we did?

[Dr Murrison]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We have been working very closely with the Governments of all the countries he has cited and more, as he would expect. The high commissioners, particularly in London, have been very keen to engage. Indeed, several of those high commissioners serve as trustees of the Imperial War museum, which is absolutely front and centre, and appropriately so, of our centenary commemoration.

This is an opportunity to bring us closer together. It is, however, important to understand that there are very often complexities in the relationship, and we need to be prepared to address them without prevarication. My hon. Friend knows that in Australia in particular the “lions led by donkeys” mythology is prevalent in some quarters, and it is important to be able to address those concerns without attempting to avoid or sidestep them, because in so doing we come to a better understanding and much closer to the truth. We will be working particularly closely with our Anzac cousins, as my hon. Friend would expect, as our history runs long and deep. This centenary is a wonderful opportunity to make sure we are not seen to be taking that relationship for granted, but that we broaden and deepen it, and I am very confident, having visited Gallipoli this year, that that is on not only our agenda, but the agendas particularly of our Australian and New Zealand friends.

I have to say that the complexities I have cited in our relationships with other countries have not all been in predictable places. In the main they really have not been with Germany, Austria and Turkey; they have been in some unhappy corners of relationships with allies. We have discussed already where some of those may lie, but we must in particular respect and acknowledge attitudes of the sort that are prevalent in South Africa to events that are deeply troubling, such as the sinking of the troopship Mendi in 1917 and the treatment of non-European participants in the war effort. All of this has to be part of our centenary commemoration, and we must do nothing to avoid it, airbrush it or finesse it.

On the very cusp of the centenary of the war to end all war, our first duty has to be remembrance, but the measure of our success will be the extent to which we lift our understanding of the conflicts, causes, conduct and consequences, and the advancement of relations with today’s close friends and partners from both sides of the great war’s great divide.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

I am proud to open this debate on behalf of the Opposition, and I know that Members on both sides of the House are grateful for this opportunity to mark this important year of remembrance.

Let me begin by paying tribute to the Minister. He and I have been discussing these commemorations for over three years, and I commend him on both the way he has opened this debate and his diligent and genuinely cross-party approach to leading these commemorations.

There are few moments in modern society when we come together as a country to reflect on our shared history, and as we approach Armed Forces day and the 100th anniversary of the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand this weekend, and the other centenary anniversaries later this year, many people around the country will pause and think, perhaps for the first time, about the first world war and what relevance those events of a century ago have to our lives today. I know the Minister and I are agreed that these moments of reflection are not only rare but precious, and that is why our commemorations must be inclusive, engaging and, above all, respectful. Let us be clear—we are all agreed on this—that this is a commemoration, not a celebration.

On Armistice day 1918, the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, came to this House and announced the end of what he described as the war to end all wars. Today we know that it was not that, but it was the war that changed life in this country for ever. The first world war touched every family, affected every community and fundamentally altered our country’s place in the world. It took the lives of 16 million soldiers and civilians across the globe, including around 900,000 servicemen from Britain and the Commonwealth. It was a conflict that transformed society, bringing about profound social, political and economic changes that we can still feel today. The centenary commemorations provide us with a unique opportunity to reflect on that, to pay tribute to those who served and sacrificed for us 100 years ago, and to pass those memories on to future generations. The Minister outlined some of the ways in which the commemorations programme will help to enable that over the next four years.

The programme has our full support, and I would like to put on record our thanks to the thousands of organisations, community groups and dedicated volunteers who are making this happen across the country. I would particularly like to pay tribute to the following: the First World War Centenary Partnership, led by the Imperial War museums, which has brought together nearly 3,000 member organisations from 49 countries and is delivering more than 2,000 events; the 14-18 NOW programme, which is bringing the centenary to life with 50 artistic creations and exhibitions across the country; the Woodland Trust, which is planting four new centenary woods across the United Kingdom as a lasting memorial to the fallen; the BBC, which will deliver 2,500 hours of programming on the subject over the next four years; and the Royal British Legion, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Heritage Lottery Fund and many, many others. There are more than I could ever hope to have time to mention, but we applaud all of these groups for what they are doing. Each of them is helping to retell our national story. By bringing people together to revisit our shared history, they are making an important contribution.

I would like to say a particular word about the battlefield tours programme for schools, which is being delivered by the Institute of Education. There are few better ways to connect our young people with those who made the ultimate sacrifice on the western front than by taking them to walk the battlefields where so many fought and died. Anyone who has visited those cemeteries will know what a moving and powerful experience that is. There were 16,000 towns and villages across Britain in 1914, but only 40 of them—40 thankful parishes—would reach 1918 without having lost someone in the conflict, so every visiting school will be able to follow in the footsteps of soldiers from their own community.

Last month, I travelled to Serre in northern France to retrace the route taken by the Barnsley Pals battalions from my constituency. These were the men who responded to Lord Kitchener’s famous recruitment poster in 1914. They included miners, glassworkers, clerks, stonemasons and clerics, many of them friends and neighbours. They joined up together; they trained together; they went to war together; and ultimately, many of them died together. I walked the ground over which the Barnsley Pals fought at the battle of the Somme, and I stood in front of their graves in the pouring rain. Looking out from those trench positions that still scar the French countryside, I imagined what it must have been like. It was hard not be overcome by the emotion of what happened there. Later that day, we visited the memorial to the missing at Thiepval. As I read the names inscribed on the memorial, I suddenly saw my own name, “D. Jarvis”, staring back at me. It was a sobering moment that brought home the scale of the sacrifice, and an experience that so many visitors to the battlefield will have had.

Our country’s deployments over the past 13 years in Afghanistan and Iraq have now lasted over three times longer than the first world war; 632 servicemen and women have lost their lives, and we have felt the pain of each and every one of them, so it is hard to imagine now what it must have been like to live through a conflict that took the lives of six times that many soldiers every week, or to appreciate how much the country was wounded by the first day of the battle of the Somme, when 20,000 men were cut down on a single beautiful summer’s day on 1 July 1916.

[Mr Brazier]

I am very grateful to the hon. and gallant Gentleman for giving way during his really excellent speech. Is not the most remarkable testimony to the spirit of the nation at the time encapsulated in the words of a famous general from his own regiment, General Anthony Farrar-Hockley, who observed that on the eve of this, the largest military undertaking in British history up to that point, not one single soldier was listed as absent without leave?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am not entirely certain which General Farrar-Hockley he is referring to—there were two in my regiment. [Interruption.] The elder. But whichever one it was, the words he recalls are an absolutely fitting tribute to the steel with which young men from across our country faced adversity. He is absolutely right to take the opportunity to make that point.

Defence Spending

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. We have four or five Members left to speak. Mr Brazier, do you wish to speak in the debate? I am sorry to ask, but it will affect my calculations.

[Mr Brazier]

I wish to speak if there is time, Madam Deputy Speaker, but as I did not put in to speak in advance, I will understand it if I am squeezed out by other people who did.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I will set the time limit at six minutes. You will probably get six minutes, Mr Brazier, but it might be a little less. I will advise you when we get there. There is now a time limit of six minutes on all speakers to allow time for the responses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on obtaining this debate. I, too, believe that 2% is an absolute and probably inadequate minimum for defence spending.

It is sobering to think that exactly 100 years ago in June 1914 the eyes of this country were firmly fixed on the threat of civil war in Ireland. The prospect of a major war on the continent had crossed very few minds. Just a week before the Falklands war, most people in this country had no idea where the Falklands were on a map. Only three months before the war with Saddam Hussein, the Ministry of Defence had firmly ruled out the possibility of ever sending tanks into an operation outside the NATO area. So of all the threats that we appear to face, the gravest may be one of which we are barely aware. Given how many we face, that is sobering.

I make just three points, two of which are echoes of earlier speakers. The first is an echo of comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), the new Chairman of the Defence Committee, in an excellent speech. The man who had risen in just five years from being an obscure academic to become the youngest brigadier in the second world war was asked what he thought should be our highest priority when the Berlin wall came down and defence cuts were made. Enoch Powell replied that above all we had to keep the armed forces’ thinking capability—the ability to operate staff at the highest levels and the ability to develop doctrine together.

The point has already been made. It is critical. We must redevelop—because we have lost it—a facility that combines the lessons of history with the very good work on ongoing doctrine, and we need to make sure that we keep the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters and the other ones and that they are staffed not just by regular officers; as both Monty and Bill Slim said in their memoirs, we need a broader range of people involved in them.

The second point is an echo of the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) put so well: the situation of the Navy is parlous, and rebuilding that, including maritime reconnaissance within the Air Force, must be the highest priority.

On the third area—the only one where I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay—I must respond to what was said about the reserve forces. The practical fact is that modern regular manpower is very expensive. I suspect that all of us present in this Chamber want to spend more on defence, but when it comes to any affordable defence budget we must learn from our allies: America, Canada, Australia, even New Zealand have a much higher proportion of reserve forces.

This is not just a question of a boutique decision, and it is not just a question of the Army. America and Canada do not throw away the skills of pilots who have spent half a career with the regular armed forces; instead, those pilots go on and serve in the air guard or the auxiliary squadrons of the Canadian air force. Those countries thus get two bites out of the expensive costs they incur. Across all our English-speaking counterparts, a large proportion of the ground crews and others are provided by reservists.

Even more importantly, we are in serious danger after two deeply unpopular wars of losing public support for defence altogether. The only adult uniformed presence in 350 communities in this country is through our reserve forces. It is essential for us to build up this capability and its connection to the nation.

Finally, I am immensely proud of our forebears—we have heard plenty of examples of them from around the Chamber—who fought in the two world wars. I hope to God that my two sons in uniform will not face the same thing. The first duty of Government, however, must be defence of the realm. There is nothing magic about a particular number, but the strongest message the Prime Minister could send to the NATO meeting he will chair is that while he remains Prime Minister Britain will be committed to 2% for defence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

This is not about a long-term plan; it is about basic competence, which the NAO report has clearly called into question. The report warns that there are “significant risks” to the Army’s operational capability because of the Government’s incompetence in handling these reforms. That is why we have called on the Government not to proceed with their redundancy programme until they have seen evidence that the recruitment of reserves has increased enough to fill the gap.

Defence Ministers have developed a habit of returning to a small number of stock phrases and soundbites, usually when their record is under pressure, and I look forward to the Minister’s trotting out a few of them today. No doubt we shall hear—as this has been their mindset from the start—that the Government had no choice but to make these reductions, because they had inherited a £38 billion “black hole” from their predecessors. Let me, for the umpteenth time, quote from the National Audit Office’s 2009 report. It states:

“The size of the gap is highly sensitive to the budget growth assumptions used. If the Defence budget remained constant in real terms, and using the Department’s forecast for defence inflation of 2.7 per cent, the gap would now be £6 billion over the ten years”—

not the one year that has been cited by some Government Members. No doubt the Government do not want to talk about the fact that the “black hole” has now increased to £74 billion because of the 9% spending reduction in 2010. No one seems to know where they got the £38 billion figure from. I suppose they think that if they repeat it for long enough, people will actually believe in it.

Remarkably, it was the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who first claimed, in September 2011, that he had eradicated the “black hole” in less than a year. Six months later, the present Secretary of State claimed that he had plugged the gap. Perhaps the Minister will tell us who exactly should be credited with this feat. Those two individuals have clearly missed their vocation: if they can make a £38 billion “black hole” disappear in less than 12 months, they should have gone to the Treasury rather than the Ministry of Defence.

At a time when the Government are sacking highly skilled, experienced and brave servicemen and women and scrapping key elements of defence equipment, Ministers must be honest with our forces and the public about why they underspent their 2012-13 budget by almost £2 billion. They also tell us that the UK still has the fourth largest defence budget in the world. That may be true, but we on the Opposition Benches believe such a statistic has little meaning if the allocated budget is not actually being spent, and it is on this count that the Government have failed spectacularly. They gave us aircraft carriers without aircraft. They scrapped the Nimrod programme when three of the aircraft were almost 90% complete, leaving the MOD reliant on Twitter to counter the maritime surveillance threat. They have also sacked regular soldiers before waiting to see whether increased reserve numbers would be able to meet the shortfall.

As the NAO report summarises, the Government

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

If the Minister reads the report, he will see that the fact of the matter is that recruiting reservists will be more expensive than having regulars, and that cost will have to be picked up by the Treasury some time in the future. I refer him to page 8 of the report if he wants to read that later.

It is clear that when deciding the future size of the Army, the Government decided on cost savings as their first principle, rather than any strategic underpinning of their decision. The NAO report makes clear on page 6 that

“The future size of the Army was determined by the need to make financial savings”—

an approach which has characterised the MOD under this Government.

Commentators and the Select Committee agree that, blindsided by the desire to achieve savings above all else, strategic considerations have been sacrificed in favour of reductions in personnel and capability. Unfortunately, some people are having to carry the can for this—unfairly, I would suggest. The current Chief of the Defence Staff offered perhaps the most candid description of Army 2020 when he told the Select Committee on Defence:

“I remember the genesis very clearly. It was a financially driven plan. We had to design a new structure that included the run-down of the 102,000 Regular Army to 82,000, which is pretty well advanced now, to follow a funding line that was driven by the austerity with which everybody is very familiar…It triggered the complete redesign of the Army.”

[Mr Brazier]

I have written a reply to that report because I do not agree with it, but all the report says is that there are extra costs associated with recruiting for the next year and a half until the new system is in place, and it also queries some of the figures the MOD has put forward, but it nowhere actually suggests that a man or woman who is employed only for 40 days a year could cost more than a regular soldier. It—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This debate finishes at 5 o’clock on the dot, and we have not yet heard from the Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

First, I am sure that everybody in the House would wish to join the right hon. Gentleman and me in sending our deepest condolences to the relatives of those who died in that tragic accident. It is a poignant reminder, coming so close to the end of the combat campaign, not just of the risks our service people undertake every day in the face of the enemy, but of the intrinsically dangerous nature of what they do, day in, day out.

There is an ongoing review into the circumstances of the accident. At the moment, there is no evidence of any enemy action being involved in the incident. I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman a timetable for the completion of the review because it will take as long as it takes, but as soon as we have information that we can publish, we will do so.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s assessment of the security situation. Does he agree that one of the highest priorities after the main withdrawal must be ensuring that we can still provide security for the teams from the Department for International Development that are carrying out essential social and economic work?

[Mr Hammond]

Once the UK forces have drawn down from the combat role in Helmand, we will still have a small security team, largely composed of civilian contractors, based in Kabul. We will work closely with the Foreign Office and DFID to ensure that their officials and the civilian contractors whom they employ in the ongoing aid effort, are properly protected.

Defence Reform Bill

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I join my hon. Friend the Minister and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) in their tribute to the five young men who lost their lives and in expressing thoughts and prayers for their families and loved ones. Our colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), has lost a researcher, who served with 3 Military Intelligence, with which several House of Commons researchers are also associated.

The House will be relieved to hear that I will be brief. I congratulate the Minister on the quiet and typically modest way in which he has taken the Bill through Parliament, listening at every stage. I will not say much about procurement except that I feel oddly comfortable with the outcome. I expressed several concerns throughout the Bill’s passage about the possibility of going as far as a GoCo, but we would not have obtained concessions from the Treasury and the wider civil service had the MOD not tried it.

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the concessions from the Treasury, but without the detail of the corporate plan, which is yet to be laid in the Library, we do not know exactly what those flexibilities are.

[Mr Brazier]

We do not have the detail, but we do know that there is now more flexibility on people and in other crucial areas, such as the annuality of budgets, which are extremely important for running an operation such as procurement.

I want to leave one thought on procurement. Some 25, 26 or 27 years ago, when working as a management consultant, I was privileged to take part in a study comparing the procurement methods of seven different countries. Our procurers in the then procurement executive—it has changed its name several times since—were at least as good as the average and arguably better. The majority of the problems in the system fell into one of two categories. Either the customer within MOD changed its mind or was unclear about its needs, or things were laid down from outside, some of which appear to be being addressed. As a result of the unsuccessful attempt to create a GoCo, we have ended up with a better outcome than we would otherwise have had.

I support all the Government’s amendments and I am pleased that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View is with them, too, although she has indicated one area in which she would like to go further.

I of course knew when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made his pledge on the reserves that it would be honoured. However, not only has it been honoured exactly, but the Government’s wording of the clause is better than I originally proposed and has been well thought through. They particularly thought through the complicated federal nature of the reserve forces and cadets associations. The clause deals neatly with a problem, which I hope will never occur again but happened some 15 or 16 years ago, when the centre got out of touch with its regional branches. Leaving the real power with the regional branches, which are elected, covers that issue nicely. Parliament will get a good report whatever happens. I am grateful to the Government for agreeing to the proposal and to the Members on both sides of the House who supported the original measure.

I end by saying—I hope that you will indulge in me in this, Madam Deputy Speaker, because, strictly, it is beyond the amendment—that when we originally debated the matter in the House, there was great concern about recruiting for the reserves. I expressed the view that it had been seriously mishandled under the new assimilated structure controlled by the Regular Army. I also expressed confidence in Major General Chris Tickell, who had taken over.

Since then, things have moved a long way. My local TA infantry battalion got as many soldiers in January and February as it did in the previous 10 months. That is still only two thirds of what it needs if it is to grow, rather than just tread water, but it is a huge step forward. Today it has eight young officers under the age of 30, whereas a couple of years ago it had only two or three.

I firmly believe that things will move in the right direction, but I think that the steady hand on the tiller of this annual report from the RFCAs, which really do get it, will play a profound role, and I am grateful to the Government for giving way on that. I support all the Lords amendments.

[Martin Horwood]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), who displays great knowledge of these issues. I am sure that the friends and family of Oli Thomas will very much appreciate the comments that have been made across the House, as I am sure will my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams). He would have been here at the beginning of the debate to respond to the Minister’s comments had the expected times for votes not changed rather suddenly. I hope that people will understand that. I am sure that all Members across the House would wish to express their sympathy to the friends and family of all the servicemen who lost their lives in that terrible accident.

I welcome the Lords amendments, which I think strengthen Parliament’s role in scrutinising the implementation of defence policy, which is very important. I know that several of my noble Friends had concerns about the process of building up the new reserve force and about the technicalities of the GoCo idea. It is very welcome that the Government have been open-minded enough to bring forward their own amendments to reflect those concerns and increase parliamentary scrutiny.

On the volunteer forces, we have an ambitious plan to change the whole chemistry and make-up of our armed forces. I think that will leave us with armed forces that are more flexible, more light-footed and more cost-effective, and in a time of genuine austerity that must be borne in mind. On the concerns that have been expressed on both sides of the House about exactly how well that will work, whether it is too ambitious and whether it will at some stage pose unexpected challenges, I think that it is right to have this extra level of parliamentary scrutiny over the process, so Lords amendment 6 is extremely welcome.

Lords amendment 7, which relates to the GoCo, now seems slightly academic, given that we are unlikely to see any proposals for a GoCo in the near future. However, were such a proposal to come forward at some point, I think that it is important to have the safeguards in place to ensure not only that a draft statutory instrument is laid before the House before the actual order is laid, but that we have the report beforehand on alternative options and impact assessments for each one.

In tabling amendment (a), the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) is perhaps trying to gild the lily. I think that she is trying to conjure some mild controversy out of what is now a consensus on the issue. She said that she had remaining concerns about wholesale outsourcing, but of course that is only about the outsourcing of outside supplies, so it does not really change anything in that respect. It is only about whether in future that outsourcing is managed directly by a Government agency or by a more independent and commercially orientated organisation.

Many of us have expressed doubts about that idea. I expressed doubts on Second Reading about whether we should have yet another tier of decision making in between the armed forces and the actual decision-making process and the eventual supplies. However, I think that the formula we have come up with, whereby the different options will be re-examined at the time any such proposal comes forward, is a good one. We would not normally insert another 12-week time scale into legislation of this kind, so I am not sure that that is absolutely necessary, but I appreciate the spirit in which the amendment was moved.

I think that the Lords amendments have made a good Bill even better. I join the consensus on both sides of the House in this good-natured debate by saying that this is the right Bill to bring forward at this time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dunne]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your indulgence not only of me, but of the right hon. Gentleman, the former Defence Secretary, for making that point. It gives me the opportunity to say that there is a clear determination from the Secretary of State downwards to bear down on the issue within the Department. My colleague responsible for personnel, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), is having weekly meetings with the officials who are responsible within the Department and there is a clear determination throughout the ranks, in particular the Army, to ensure from the very senior levels down that there is a major focus on getting the institutional and behavioural change that the right hon. Gentleman talks about.

We are doing some practical things to try to improve recruitment. For example, the bounty for regulars going into the reserves has been doubled relatively recently. We have also introduced a bounty for completion of phase 1 training and a subsequent bounty for completion of phase 2 training to encourage applicants who start the training process to see it through and to have better results at the end of the process.

[Mr Brazier]

I strongly endorse the remarks of the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), who understands these matters so well.

Of the two measures that the Minister has mentioned, I particularly welcome the second one. On the first, it seems to many in the reserves that the transfer rate is excessively generous. The fact that the other two services have chosen not to adopt it, although they both seem to be doing well in this regard—the Navy has a particularly good record in getting ex-regulars to join, especially as pilots and in other key skill areas—suggests that it should perhaps be a temporary measure.