Armed Forces

Lord Glenarthur Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Glenarthur (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend for the opportunity that this debate affords. In earlier defence debates I made clear my deeply held concerns that the reductions to the capability of our Armed Forces have been too draconian. A sound foreign policy can be achieved only if it is backed up by flexible and credible armed services. I fear, very much as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, has just said, that our capabilities have now become markedly depleted, and that cannot be helpful in a strategic context. Nevertheless, the skills and fortitude of our regular and reserve service men and women are much to be admired.

Today, I will concentrate my remarks on the volunteer reserves. My past and present interests as a member and subsequently as chairman of the National Employer Advisory Board, where I worked with very many of the noble and noble and gallant Lords who are speaking today, including the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Richards, whose maiden speech we look forward to, and as honorary colonel and honorary air commodore of reserve medical units, are all recorded in the register of interests.

As chairman of the National Employer Advisory Board, I played some part in early work on a forerunner of the review of reserves, which preceded the White Paper published a year or so ago. I am at one with the idea that the reserves should be incentivised and deployable and that the “proposition” to attract and retain them should be an appealing one. As we move towards 30,000 trained and deployable reserves—a tall order by any stretch of the imagination, despite my noble friend’s optimism—we need to be much more nimble in how we attract individuals. It is the individual reserve units that are mostly responsible for recruiting, aided by the reserve forces’ and cadets’ associations.

However, the reserve units themselves need improved resourcing in terms of personnel and budgets in order to make progress. The targets are highly ambitious for recruiting but there is little or no uplift in funded permanent headquarters staff to help deliver the planned growth. For example, 612 (County of Aberdeen) Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force, of which I have been honorary air commodore for 10 years, had manning at 64 in December 2013 against a target of 70 doctors, dentists, nurses, paramedics, professions allied to medicine, technicians and others. It faces a target of 121 by 2018. The figures may seem small in themselves but this is no small ask, not least when the NHS, from which many of these individuals come, faces its own problems. I have heard it said that budgetary disaggregation, particularly for marketing, is rarely programmed activity and is often conditional—a kind of “spend now and spend quickly” attitude—and I am bound to wonder whether this is wise or ultimately productive, even if it suits MoD and Treasury accounting.

Decent accommodation and other infrastructure are essential in attracting and retaining reservists. My squadron at RAF Leuchars, where it is based, is enthusiastic about self-help for office and training accommodation, and it is very well supported by the station—but, frankly, many of the buildings that it uses are old, tired, tatty and leave a lot to be desired. I am less than convinced that the system by which relatively minor building and refurbishment works are approved, tendered and subsequently contracted for does not lead to unnecessary MoD expense. Setting a standard, approving a budget quoted by a local firm and letting the responsible commanding officer take on that responsibility and get on with it might save the MoD a fortune.

The MoD departmental costs associated with minor works have a history of being substantial and, to my mind, very largely unjustifiable. Therefore, what assurance can my noble friend give that, when the Royal Air Force moves out of Leuchars next year, the incoming Regular Army units will give equal priority to their own and implanted reserve units to ensure modern and suitable facilities equal to those of the regulars with whom they will share the same barracks? The overall attitude by the regulars to the volunteer ethos, skills and professionalism of reservists is crucial to the success of the whole force concept, to which my noble friend referred. I cannot emphasise that fact more strongly.

Having won the enthusiasm from an individual to join a reserve unit, what can be done to encourage him or her to remain within it? We have to think much more flexibly in this. The individuals who join are just that: individuals. Their circumstances vary and we should consider how best to make it easier for them to play a flexible but full and complete part without compromising standards. For example, why not introduce a commitment to achieve a reduced annual bounty for those who have considerable experience over many years and are current specialists in relevant fields in their civilian careers—for example, in the medical world—but cannot easily commit to the full training bounty requirement of 15 continuous days per year and six weekends?

When I was honorary colonel of what was then 306 Field Hospital—later 306 Hospital Support Medical Regiment—although the 15 days’ camp was a requirement, individual specialists came together for only two weekends a year. It is a nationally recruited specialist unit, and it is from its members’ crucial clinical and related skills rather more than their military skills, albeit within a military ethos, that the patients whom they have to treat benefit. Could this perhaps be replicated elsewhere among other medical reservist units?

Why does the current pay system for reserves apparently rely on them signing a pay sheet for each day that they attend? Surely the commanding officer is accountable for attendance, and hence responsible for training and pay. As far as I know, regulars do not have to sign on. This seems to be a very simple matter. I hope that my noble friend will take away this issue and review it in order to simplify it.

There is a number of mandatory lectures that reservists have to undergo that are not about their military training or specialist skills but are much more prosaic. They relate to health and safety—inevitably, I suppose—fire, manual handling and that sort of thing. Why can they not be completed online with pay apportioned appropriately, based on time for a percentage of the work completed, as if the individual had attended in person? Why is it necessary for them to take a training day in order to complete stuff that can be done much more simply?

I believe that the MoD needs to be much more progressive in how to create an attractive offer for ex-regulars to become voluntary reservists. It should surely be seamless. My noble friend touched on this point, but can he say what is being done to help reserve units to identify those who are leaving regular service, associate them geographically or professionally and so encourage added value to the recruiting effort locally? Are there difficult data protection issues here and how might they be overcome? What is being done to ensure that incentives to transfer from regular to reserve service are uniform across the services? My noble friend referred to this but my understanding is that financial transfer rates for the Army are more generous than those for the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Why should that be?

While on the subject of generosity, in an age of the whole force concept, why cannot railcards be issued to reservists in the same way that they are routinely issued to their regular counterparts? I understand that this may be under review or consideration but I hope that my noble friend may be able to impart encouraging news, either today or very shortly.

When I relinquish my appointment with 612 Squadron in a few weeks’ time, I shall certainly be sad but I shall also feel proud to have come across and been associated—both in it and in 306 Squadron—with some immensely gifted and brave individuals. Each of those units has regularly deployed individuals or groups of individuals to Iraq and Afghanistan over recent years. The clinical skills, enthusiasm and zeal with which they have conducted themselves have saved countless lives. Some of what they have had to deal with has been harrowing but their sheer professionalism has always been to the fore. With that tribute to them, I also pay a strong tribute to their civilian employers in the NHS, the private sectors of healthcare and much more widely, without whose support and understanding none of the activities of reservists would be possible today or in the future.

I shall end with a plea to my noble friend to ensure that the tri-service approach to employers is co-ordinated and not at variance, so that employers understand and do not feel confused by different service requirements or the approach that those services make to them, and so that they feel that the advantages of reserve service at least outweigh the disadvantages of reservists’ training and occasional mobilisation.