Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are intending to review the Strategic Defence and Security Review in relation to maintaining the size of the army at 82,000 personnel and increasing the size of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to reopen the strategic defence and security review. The national security strategy established clear national security objectives and the SDSR set out a funded plan to achieve them, all based on a clear-eyed assessment of the risks and threats that we face. Our energy is now devoted to its delivery, including the desired size of each of the armed services.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

SDSR 2010 reduced the size of the Army from 102,000 to 95,000. Three years later, in Army 2020, this was further reduced to 82,000. Despite paying Capita £440 million to take over Army recruitment, this September we had an Army of just 76,000 trained personnel. But lo and behold, last Thursday the Government changed the definition of “trained personnel” and tell us that we now have an Army of 80,780—5,000 more this month than we had last month. Do the Government have any idea of the true size of the British Army, and when will they get to grips with recruitment, as both the Navy and the RAF are smaller than they promised they would be?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the key question is whether the Army is configured with enough strength to deliver the demands that we place upon it. We are clear that it is. The noble Lord is absolutely right that we have a way to go on recruitment, but the figures are heading in the right direction—that is, the inflow figures are looking encouraging. The change in definition of “trained strength” is simply a reversion to previous methods, which included phase 1 trained personnel as part of the trained strength, with their ability to engage in homeland resilience and in basic tasks that we place upon them within the UK.