Defence Reform Bill

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Moon]

We talk as if the members of our armed forces are delicate little flowers, whose sensitivities are such that debates in this House have them crying into their cocoa at bedtime. The reserves and the regulars, for whom we all have huge respect, want to ensure that the service in which they proudly serve is organised and run efficiently and effectively. They, and this House, do not have that trust at the moment, and that is what we are looking for.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

May I just ask for short interventions? Many Members still wish to speak. Let us make sure that everybody’s voice is heard.

[Thomas Docherty]

On new clause 6, we have all heard, in the Defence Committee and elsewhere, that the biggest disincentive to joining the reserves, of whichever service, is getting time off work. These are the words of the Secretary of State’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt):

“a lot of reservists find it difficult to get time off for deployment or training courses”.—[Official Report, 23 April 2013; Vol. 561, c. 273WH.]

I am sorry that she is not in her place today. Perhaps she is training. [Interruption.] She is away on a course and we wish her all the best. Even the Secretary of State’s PPS has acknowledged that this is a huge challenge.

The White Paper sets out an ambitious goal of increasing the annual training requirement to 40 days, and I think Members on all sides of the House recognise the importance of that. I hope the Secretary of State will support new clause 6—his Liberal Democrat colleagues will, for reasons I will explain in a moment—because it seeks to provide a simple way to address that goal: reservists would receive an additional two weeks unpaid leave from their employer, provided that their firms had more than 50 employees. The hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) made the point that we have to careful about the impact on small and medium-sized enterprises, and it is right that we provide protection to smaller companies. The proposal is sensible and measured, because reservists will receive their military pay at no cost to their employer. In the rare cases of resistance from an employer, we propose that complaints are referred to an employment tribunal for arbitration.

I must confess that I am confident that the Liberal Democrats will vote for new clause 6 because the idea was originally developed by them and was passed at their party conference only seven weeks ago. I suspect that the former Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), has had a large hand in writing their defence policy, and that, in the regrettable and unforeseen event of there being a Division, he will vote for the new clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Having missed some of the recent debate, I am unclear as to which clause we are precisely discussing—and I really cannot tell from the hon. Gentleman’s speech.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Dr Julian Lewis.

[Dr Lewis]

If the hon. Gentleman had not been absent, he would have heard the great deal of discussion that took place about the priority of defence in the nation’s schedule of priorities. If he had made that bogus, so-called point of order having been here, I would have had some time for him, but given that he did not even have the courtesy to listen to the debate before making it, it was unworthy.

The reality is that a nation gets the defence forces it is prepared to pay for and it can decide what level of services it will fund—whether that involves cuts in the Army, the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force that could be avoided.

The next question is whether this scheme for the reserves was linked to the proposed cut in the size of the Army. As I said, if this scheme had been put forward on its own, I could have wholeheartedly supported it, but it was not. It was specifically put forward as a compensating factor for the Army’s regular strength being reduced by 20,000. We were told that that reduction would be compensated for by the 30,000 increase in reserves. Now we are told that that linkage no longer exists. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire asked what we will do if we find that in fact the reserve scheme is not working. If I understood him correctly—I think I did—he said that, by the time we discovered that we were not going to get the 30,000 reservists, it would be too late to regenerate any of the loss in the 20,000 regulars. [Interruption.] He seems to be indicating that I have understood him correctly. If that is the case, I take great exception to the fact that this linkage was ever made in the first place.

If we are to be told that we have to accept cuts in this country’s defence capability, we should be told that honestly. We should not constantly be confronted with shifting goalposts. If the recruitment of 30,000 reservists may or may not be achieved, and if the 20,000 cut in regulars will happen nevertheless and is irreversible, we should have been told that at the outset. [Interruption.] Somebody says, “We were.” Who said that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In yesterday’s debate on women and the cost of living, I asked the Economic Secretary to the Treasury a question about the bonuses paid to men being double the size of those paid to women. I spoke to her in the Lobby tonight. Her reply yesterday was about pay, but my question was about bonuses. Is it right and proper for that to be clarified in Hansard tonight, and perhaps by the hon. Lady in person?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

It is not a point of order, but it is certainly a point of clarification, which the hon. Gentleman has achieved.