Cadet Units in Schools

Lord Freeman Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Freeman (Con)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Lingfield, I am a very strong supporter of the cadet forces. We need more cadet units and I am very grateful for and appreciative of the efforts taken by the Ministry of Defence and, in particular, by my noble friend Lord Astor to ensure that we are on an upward and, I hope, sustainable track in supporting more cadet units. My experience, like that of many of your Lordships, was at school, having served in the Combined Cadet Force. Then it was compulsory. I am not in favour of compulsion, but everyone was in full uniform and received weapon training. That is very expensive, partly because of the cost of provision of armouries, let alone safety; those were the days. Today there are many fewer combined cadet forces and, clearly, cost is a factor. So I ally myself behind those, and with those, who call for a further expansion and I am delighted at the support that has been given.

I will very briefly mention one initiative which I am associated with: the military ethos in schools programme. That involves former military personnel—who I am told are already in 460 schools throughout the United Kingdom—explaining the ethos of the military and explaining and using the discipline and determination that is expressed so well by many in our Armed Forces, helping to improve not only the self-discipline but the ambitions of more than 16,000 children. I thank Her Majesty’s Government for their continuing support for that programme.

Finally, I will touch on the connection I have, partly because I have served as president of the Council of the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association. At the time I served in that association it had 50,000 reservists. Today we have an ambition to get back to something like 30,000, which is a very tall order. I hope that increasing the activities and numbers of school cadet forces will feed through to participation in our Reserve Forces in later life. It is vital that we have 30,000 reservists as soon as possible, because our Regular Forces are being reduced significantly. Initiatives taken at school, and school cadet forces, can help.