Lord De Mauley
Main Page: Lord De Mauley (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Armed Forces: Reserves
Lord De Mauley Excerpts
Lord De Mauley
To move that this House takes note of the contribution of the armed forces reserves to national security.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the council of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association, colonel commandant of the yeomanry and colonel of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry. I joined the TA in 1975 and served for 30 years, commanding my regiment in 2003-04.
In my early years the reserve forces were just recovering from the ravages of cuts by Harold Wilson’s Labour Government. A proportion was dedicated to supporting the British Army of the Rhine in the event that the Cold War suddenly warmed up, and the rest were a general reserve for home defence and other tasks. We were a genuine reserve, and it was clear to us that we were to be used only when our country’s back was to the wall. As such, we had to accept that we would tend to be issued with second-generation or third-generation equipment, most of which worked some of the time, and that payment for our time would be, shall we say, perhaps a bit more than notional. Broadly speaking that was how matters remained, with occasional minor changes, until the early 21st century, when Blair’s Labour Government had a radical rethink.
The strategic defence review determined the numbers would be substantially reduced but that what was left would no longer be a reserve but would be required to be available to be mobilised to support the regular forces on operations. In respect of the latter, in the short term not much changed at the sharp end, especially in terms of funding for training, so perhaps not everyone was fully aware of the implications. Suddenly, however, in 2003, brown envelopes started to drop through reservists’ letterboxes instructing them to report for duty in Iraq with a fortnight’s notice. This was a bit of a shock to most, particularly to wives and employers, by no means all of whom had even known they had a reservist in their midst. That was a painful period, and those of us who were in charge at the time had to manage things very sensitively to avoid risking devastating our units by wholescale mobilisation without adequate forethought, lest the bulk of those who returned from Iraq hung up their boots to enable them to rebuild shattered careers or marriages, leading to a decade-long recovery period for the unit in question.
Things were not helped when, in 2009, Gordon Brown ran out of money and removed the entire reserve training budget while we were still trying to prepare people for Afghanistan. In 2010, the reserve was suffering an increase in net outflow of those who had justifiably become disenchanted with their situation because the degraded proposition offered them was not properly met.
A decade and a half later, things are very different. In the FR20 White Paper, the Government allocated £1.8 billion of additional funding over 10 years. Most now serving have joined in the expectation of being mobilised for operations at some point in their reservist careers. Training is of a much superior quality, and the equipment is effectively the same as that of the Regular Forces. One of the most significant and important of several key improvements introduced by the Cameron Government was that on 1 October 2014, the Reserve Forces’ and cadets’ associations were given a statutory duty to report annually to Parliament on the state of the United Kingdom’s Reserve Forces. For years, the Reserve Forces, which are managed by the Regular Forces, had been pillaged for funding whenever things got tight, which they frequently do. Indeed, now is no exception, but the difference now is that there is a channel of communication direct to the Government and Parliament so that they—we—can know that it is happening. The next EST report is due to be published imminently, and I should be grateful to know from my noble friend when she expects that to be.
The concerns today are of a different order of magnitude from what they have been historically, but there are concerns none the less. The 2017 EST report, on which I shall draw, made a number of points, all important. Because of time constraints, I shall focus on just a few: first and, for me, most importantly, recruiting. As is the EST, I am extremely concerned about the viability of the recruiting partnership for Army reserves.
The process was designed to be centrally managed and, even if it worked properly, does not recognise the fact that the characteristics of the reserves—who, by their nature, are recruited locally—mean that they desperately need local resources. I say “even if it worked properly”. Frankly, it is a disaster. I am told that for five months late last year, not a single recruit emerged from the system. As a result, units have had to find workarounds to undertake functions that should have been done by the national recruiting centre.
Last year, the EST recommended a full contract review of the Army recruitment partnership. This year, it may go further. Operation Fortify introduced the initially temporary regimental sub-unit support officer. This post has made a huge positive difference in addressing the inadequacies of the central system. It has undoubtedly proved its long-term usefulness. It was at one stage suggested that this post become permanent. Indeed, if it does not, attestations are likely to decline, pipeline losses will increase and, hence, the Government’s planned manning levels will be almost impossible even to meet, let alone to maintain. Can my noble friend exercise any influence in that direction?
The Royal Auxiliary Air Force, by contrast to the Army Reserve, has already exceeded its manning targets—which, in pure numbers were of course more modest. The performance of its six new squadrons has been excellent. How has it managed to perform so well? Interestingly, apart from not being subject to the recruiting partnership for Army Reserves—lucky them—unlike in the Army Reserve, as we shall see later, work on maintaining and improving the Royal Auxiliary Air Force’s physical training estate has largely carried on. That is indicative of several things that are going better in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.
Secondly, and related to recruiting, I turn to medicals. These remain the cause of the lengthiest delays in the enlistment process. Although matters have improved slightly, it is patchy and relies on proactive candidate management by units. Stories proliferate of candidates who have needlessly walked away because of overlong processing. Every unit reports a large proportion of candidates being referred for further medical examination for reasons such as non-recurring childhood ailments, emotional instability because of stress in the wake of, say, a family bereavement, or the over-rigid application of a body mass index. In too many cases, rules have been applied without adequate background knowledge or common sense. Can my noble friend give any news of improvements in that area?
There is a waiver system which can allow someone to join to join a specific and, perhaps, less physically demanding role, but it is not properly understood and is applied patchily. Unlike the Army Reserve, however, the Royal Auxiliary Air Force has been able to use it effectively to challenge initial medical screening decisions.
My third point concerns the use of the reserves. It is those reservists who are fully trained who expect to generate real capability, and it is from their use that they derive their professional satisfaction, yet frequently, their ambition to serve on operations and in other capacities is supported by cancellation on spurious grounds of cost saving. The size and shape of the reserve is now predicated on its ability to deliver complementary capability to the Regular Forces. The reserve’s relative size alone demands that it is now used proportionately. Cost is, unsurprisingly, the most frequently cited reason given by operational planners for resisting, reducing or cancelling reserve involvement in operational activity. This is particularly disturbing when the required capability and expertise is found wholly or mainly in the reserve, but the requirement is either completely dropped or absorbed into a less capable regular alternative.
The Regular Forces, meanwhile, is subject to increasing overstretch due to undermanning—the so-called saving which is taken as a contribution towards the budget imbalance. It would be logical to use the reserves to make up the shortfall in regular troops, but this is not happening. The EST strongly recommended that the MoD, Joint Forces Command and the single services review consider the terms under which reserves are included on or in support of operations and other important activity to develop protocols which make their inclusion easier.
My next point is about retention. Avoiding the loss of expensively and time-consumingly trained reservists is even more important than recruiting new ones, not least to sustainable effectiveness. Furthermore, effective recruiting depends on experienced people conducting the training, providing leadership and acting as role models. Use on operations of reserves is also key to their retention. Repetitive and boring continuation training can also quickly turn off a seasoned hand, yet the first casualty of the cuts is too often overseas training opportunities.
Reservists need access to a range of resources and training facilities not held at unit level. While some of the establishments providing the necessary facilities have embraced their reserve obligations, we still hear too often of last-minute changes and cancellations of courses. Often units are told that courses have been cancelled because of poor take-up, yet in large part the problem’s resolution was within the control of the training establishment. The very fact that so many reserve course places are allocated so close to the course start date demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of, or sympathy for, the pressures of their civilian work on reservists.
Many training establishments are constrained by support contracts that operate only on a nine-to-five, five-day week regime, while reservists are mainly available for training at weekends. Contract owners and managers too often seem reluctant to review contracts to make courses more reserve-friendly. Also, strongly related to retention, there is considerable evidence that, when in-year savings are applied—typically caps on reserve service days or reduced availability of training areas—they tend to realise very little in the way of real savings, especially when compared with the considerable negative impact that they have on recruitment and retention of reserves.
I turn to equipment support, particularly relating to vehicles. Crucial to retention as well as to effectiveness, many Army units, especially those whose role is implicitly vehicle-based, rely heavily on local provision of some of their main vehicles to complete their training. But it is the paucity of equipment support for those units that hold equipment that is of real concern. With very few exceptions, the EST judged that equipment support provision on most reserve units is “badly broken”, to use its words. There are two elements to this. First, commanding officers have now lost their independent specialist—the officer commanding the Light Aid Detachment, who could advise on and assure equipment support at first line and the quality of service being returned from third line. Secondly, most units are suffering from significant shortages of skilled civilian support, often with 75% or more gapping of civilian posts. Although the EST has raised this in at least its last two reports, there does not seem to have been much improvement.
On the reserve training estate, the deductions that the EST draws are that it remains in a sustained period of only just being kept viable in an increasingly degraded condition. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation has allowed expenditure on estates to fall by 37% over the six-year period to 2016-17. Preventive maintenance expenditure has reduced almost to zero. The reserve training estate is consequently building up what the EST calls a bow wave of annually increasing maintenance requirements, with little confidence that funding will be available to address that growing need in the near term. Because no meaningful investment is being made, alternative strategies for provision of a low-maintenance, appropriately located, fit-for-purpose reserve training estate will take a protracted period to implement.
I mentioned earlier that the Royal Auxiliary Air Force was in a considerably better situation. While things started off better, too, in the Royal Naval Reserve, budget pressure seems now to be threatening the previously ring-fenced Maritime Reserve FR20 funding, potentially including two important projects; both of them were underpinned by FR20 funding, which now appears to be earmarked to bailout measures unrelated to the reserves and, therefore, beyond that ring-fence.
Despite everything, the EST acknowledges the enormous progress that the Armed Forces have made in delivering a reshaped reserve with a new sense of self-worth and purpose. Many reserve units are well on track, not only towards meeting their manning targets but towards creating meaningful capability on which defence can rely with confidence. As the EST says, the challenge confronting the services is, first, to convert reserve numerical strength into meaningful and routinely useable capability. Secondly, it is to transition from a reserve concentrated on growth into one in a steady state—and, thirdly, to preserve the support mechanisms that a reserve ecosystem thrives on, while being much better integrated with its regular counterparts. I beg to move.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. Noble Lords have raised a number of important issues, which I am not allowed the time to summarise. Several of the matters raised involve money, but they are not just about money, and they are not just about the amount of money. Some, especially recruiting, are in part about accepting when something is not working, and changing course; and some are about spending money in a more effective way. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, also emphasised the importance of using the reserves to encourage and maintain their sustained capability. In summary, though, the reserves are in good heart and on track towards achieving the objective set them in 2014. I exhort the Government not to allow that encouraging situation to evaporate by spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar.