2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome the work of the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) in securing this debate and leading the campaign. I do not think that there will ever be a cause in his parliamentary career that is dearer to his heart than this one, as an ex-Fusilier.

Alnwick in my constituency is the traditional heartland of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, which is one of the parent regiments of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. In Alnwick, the red and white hackle is a familiar sight, especially on St George’s day. It was a particularly welcome sight on the streets of London this morning—so much so that it caused me to miss a question in the House, because I was with the large numbers of Fusiliers outside, whom we were so pleased to welcome here. The regimental museum is also in Alnwick. People in Northumberland, as in other parts of the country, have watched with pride as they have seen what are often frightening television shots showing members of the Fusiliers serving in so many of the increasingly televised conflicts that we have seen in recent years—in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and of course on the streets of Northern Ireland as well.

The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is one of the best recruited regiments in the British Army, and the recruitment figures demonstrate that. That is what has led a number of us, such as the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, to get into correspondence with the Ministry of Defence and with Ministers as soon as the decision was made. It appears from MOD figures that the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers has consistently had the best recruitment record over the period that the figures cover, apart for the final year. It has the best track record on being at or near establishment over the last few years. Indeed, the Ministry of Defence admits that the figures for 2010-11 are artificially low, owing to a nine-month pause in infantry training, which affected regiments differently, depending on where in the year their training slots were in the infantry training centre programme. When that feature is added in, we see that the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers has a superb recruitment record. That led us to pursue the matter further with Ministers and to seek a further response from them.

However, that response came in words carefully tailored by the Minister’s civil servants—the reply I received was from the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is in his place. He wrote to say:

“As I am sure you will appreciate this was a complicated piece of work and for this reason I am unable to provide the detailed information for recruitment catchment areas that you sought,”

although he then drew my attention to various websites where we could look at some of the sources on which the work was based, which we did. There were probably a number of mistakes in that work. I strongly suspect that the modern county of Northumberland was used in references to Northumberland as a recruiting area, rather than the county that stretches from Tweed to Tyne, which is the traditional Northumberland Fusiliers recruiting area, which also includes substantial urban areas. However, the letter went on to demonstrate quite clearly that the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers should not be one of the five battalions that go, saying:

“After the removal of four battalions, the method for predicting future sustainability became less statistically discerning.”

Let us think about that. I think it should win a “Yes Minister” prize for obfuscatory circumlocution—or, to put it another way, dodging the issue with fancy words. A little further, the letter says:

“Therefore to determine the fifth battalion to be removed from the order of battle required the application of criteria that went wider than demographics”—

in other words, “We told the officials to find some other reason which would enable us to disband the 2nd Battalion.” The letter continued:

“Historical manning performance and the need to maintain equity of opportunity meant that the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers…was the next appropriate regiment”.

What that “equity of opportunity” is I do not know, but it certainly does not apply to those who wish to serve in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in the north-east of England or the many other recruiting areas that have been mentioned today.

I also want to talk about the extraordinary consequence of creating a single-battalion regiment, which is in defiance of policy to date. In the last round of changes, under the previous Government, there was an explicit desire to get away from the idea of single-battalion regiments. For example, in his letter to the Chief of the General Staff, Brigadier Paterson, the Colonel of the regiment, sets out the position:

“During the last Options For Change the Army Board stated that large Regiments were the future for the infantry for all the well rehearsed arguments of operational capability and sustainability…What has changed for that policy to be reversed and for single battalions to be created deliberately?...Single Battalions fail to meet the criteria of sustainability…neither do they offer the variety and career opportunities of larger Regiments.”

We have been through the process of losing cap badges before in Northumberland, because my constituency is also the regimental headquarters of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, which lost its cap badge when it was amalgamated with a less well recruited regiment—the Royal Scots—to form a battalion in the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Indeed, one of the arguments strongly used then was the argument against single-battalion regiments, yet here we are, creating one.

The other important consequence we must consider, which I would like to mention in the brief time available to me, is the consequence for the Territorial Army. In 39 years in Parliament, I have seen the TA in my area go up and down and up and down as changes of policy have led to changes in the extent to which use was made of the TA. We cannot do it like that, however, because that does not build up the core of officers and non-commissioned officers needed to run a really efficient TA. Remarkable things have been achieved, and TA soldiers have given wonderful service in regular units in all the conflicts that we have mentioned, but we are now expecting a major TA expansion without having the people in place to ensure that the necessary training and officer management are available for the increased force.

We all know why this decision has been taken. Political reasons took the place of military logic, and in such a blindingly obvious way that I do not know how anyone in the Ministry of Defence thought that anybody would be fooled by it. How did they imagine that nobody would spot what was happening a mile off?

[Bob Stewart]

May I put to my right hon. Friend the possibility that the decision was made not in the Ministry of Defence but in another street—namely, Downing street?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am familiar, from my various spheres of work in the House, with the way in which missives from Downing street can bring about sudden changes in the development of policy, and it would be no surprise if evidence emerged that that had happened in this case. This is the wrong decision, for the wrong reasons and with the wrong results for the efficiency of the Army and the defence and security of this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robathan]

I do recall the phrase, and that is not what has happened.

Let me now explain in some detail how the application of the criteria that I listed earlier led us to the outcome announced on 5 July. Some of this may sound a little dry, but it is important for the House to understand the care that was taken in reaching these decisions.

Drawing on demographic data for the age cohort across the United Kingdom from which infantry recruits are drawn—the 15-to-29 age group, according to the way in which the Office for National Statistics segments the population—and taking account of historical trends in terms of the percentage of that cohort who were likely to join the Army, an assessment was made of which regiments were likely to be the least sustainable in the future in their current configuration. That work also included a comparison of each regiment’s historical outflow so that the likely recruiting requirement could be determined. On that basis, the Army’s analysis showed that the regiments likely to be the least sustainable in future were the Royal Regiment of Scotland, the Yorkshire Regiment, the Mercian Regiment, and the Royal Welsh Regiment. It was therefore decided to move one battalion from each of those regiments.

After the removal of the four battalions, and given the criterion that there should be no cap badge deletions and no regiment should lose more than one battalion, the method of predicting future sustainability, and therefore which battalion should be added to the four whose future had already been decided, became less statistically discerning. To put it another way, it was impossible to distinguish between a number of regiments on the basis of the future sustainability criterion alone.

[Sir Alan Beith]

In his letter to me, the Minister used those figures and there was a prediction that the Royal Regiment of Scotland would be one and three quarter battalions short on sustainability in the future. When we compare the risk to operability of that level of difficulty with the predictions for the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, do we not find that the military logic is overpowering?