Lord Walney
Main Page: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Walney's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Fox
We will continue to recruit the highest calibre possible. Some reductions in redundancies have been achieved by slowing down the number of those coming into the armed forces, but we cannot avoid redundancies through that process, because we need to continue to recruit, not least for the campaign in Afghanistan.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
In the light of the Secretary of State’s announcement that 170 trainee pilots will not be retained by the RAF, will he say how much it costs to train such a pilot in the first place?
Dr Fox
I am not sure that that figure is available, but I will try to find out. It is important that when we are unable to continue training, we will offer those concerned alternative careers inside the RAF where possible. However, it is inevitable that if we reduce the number of aircraft, we will have a reduced requirement for pilots. Those trainees will not continue to the end of their traineeship because there has been a reduction in the size of the aircraft fleet, which, as I said, is a necessary part of the spending reductions required to bring the budget into balance. We did not create that budget; we inherited it.