Armed Forces: Reserve Forces

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My noble friend picks up an interesting point. We do not currently keep statistics about Reserve Forces membership. It is not asked for and nor is it necessarily supplied, so it is not possible to give an accurate figure. We have an estimated figure of 2,400 clinical staff in the reserves, but this excludes auxiliary staff who may serve in other, non-medical reserve units.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I had not intended to ask a question but I was rather shocked by the response to the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. It seems from what the Minister said that we do not quite know how we are going to provide these people from within the National Health Service; that we have no knowledge of exactly how many people are part of the Reserve Forces anyway; and that there is no central ability to monitor any of this. Can the Minister reassure me that we have got a grip on this and that we are not stepping into the unknown?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I think that the noble Lord somewhat misunderstood me; perhaps I was not clear. I said that individual trusts do not necessarily have a note of which of their people are reservists when they are away. However, the overall tally of reservists is monitored for numbers and a note is kept of the numbers we have and how many we will need. We hope that the consultation paper will clarify how we can keep a record of that.