Reserve Forces

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of the reserve forces.

May I say what a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger? May I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for the debate? I have called it because the defence of the realm is the most important duty of Her Majesty’s Government, and the reserve forces are an ever more important part of that. The recruitment and retention of reserves is an important issue for the House, and this is a good opportunity to hold the Minister to account for the way in which the Ministry of Defence is tackling it. Progress has been made, but I am sure the Minister will admit that more can and must be made. What better way to hold any Minister of the Crown to account than on the Floor of the House?

My understanding is that Her Majesty’s Government intend the armed forces to comprise the following numbers of servicemen and women by 2020: 29,000 in the Royal Navy, 31,500 in the RAF and 82,000 in the Army. They are to be supported by 30,000 Army reservists and 5,000 Royal Navy and RAF reservists. As of 1 October, the trained strength of the tri-service volunteer reserve stood at 25,970—an 11% increase on the year before. However, the target of Her Majesty’s Government is for the tri-service reserve to total 35,060 by 1 April 2019. Maths was never my strong point, but I reckon we have 9,000 reservists to go to get to that target—a 35% increase on where we are now. Broken down by force, the target would be 30,100 reservists in the Army, 3,100 in the Royal Navy and 1,860 in the RAF. That would seem to be a tough challenge for Her Majesty’s Government to meet, and I look forward to the Minister giving us the confidence that they are on track to do so.

The reserves are an important part of our defence. I know a little about the subject because in a previous life I served, in a humble capacity, as a member of the Territorial Army for eight and a half years. During the cold war, Trooper Hollobone was prepared to stand in a trench to hold back the Russian hordes advancing over the north German plain. I am pleased that that never came to pass, because I am not sure that I and my few pals would have been able to do very much in the face of the Russian onslaught, although we would have done our best.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I should point out that my long-standing friendship with Trooper Hollobone goes back to my university days. However, my only military experience with him on the front line consisted of the very nice lunches we had at the Honourable Artillery Company—which, I should point out, he paid for.

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[Mr Hollobone]

I welcome that helpful contribution. The hon. Lady is known throughout the House for her experience in military affairs. She is in charge of the all-party group on reserve forces and cadets, and she is a distinguished serving member of the armed forces parliamentary scheme. In other words, she is a lady who knows what she is talking about, and she gives the Chamber very wise counsel. There are many very good things about Her Majesty’s armed forces, but one of the bad things is that they can be too rigid in applying themselves to future challenges. The threat of cyber-warfare is a big unknown, and we have to be flexible and adaptable, and to think outside the box in meeting that challenge. The hon. Lady is absolutely right: we need to get people on board who understand cyber and IT. If we have to change our recruitment and retention processes to make sure that such people are contributing to Britain’s defence, we should do that, and we should do it quickly. The announcement of the extra expenditure suggests that the door of Her Majesty’s Government is open to such thinking. I very much hope the Minister will pass the hon. Lady’s wise words on to the Treasury, No. 10 and all the others who make these big, important decisions.

[Mark Field]

I would like to echo the words of the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon).It is very positive that the Government have recognised the great danger of cyber-attacks not only in the military sphere, but in the commercial sphere. Given that the Bank of England has been so robust about the importance of resilience and the potential gaps in that respect in the commercial sphere, does my hon. Friend agree that Ministers should look again at having a reinsurance package in the cyber area, rather like what Pool Re provides in the terrorism area?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

Having completed that course myself, I know that it is a very challenging experience. The deaths of the applicants were tragic. The publicity around the horrendous circumstances of that incident will, funnily enough, encourage others to come forward, in a perverse way, because they will have seen how difficult it is to get into the special forces. My understanding is that the exercise in question was not actually run by the special forces, and I would imagine there is quite a lot of concern among the special forces that the tragedy has been branded as their responsibility. My clear understanding is that it was not run by the special forces. Part of the challenge and the attractiveness of the special forces to potential recruits is the very difficult nature of the task presented to them, and we must not dilute that in any way.

One thing I am sure we can all agree on is that pro rata, we have the best armed forces in the world and the best special forces in the world. We have centuries of experience in developing our military capability; we know what makes people tick and we know how hard we can push people. Sometimes, tragically, it goes wrong, but those are a minority of occasions. The bulk of the training that both regular forces and special forces receive is some of the very best in the world, and we should be very proud of that.

Like the hon. Lady, I welcome the announcement of extra spending on special forces, as well as extra spending on cyber-warfare. In providing the capability for both, the reserve has a golden opportunity to contribute. We will not tackle these issues just through regular personnel; we have to attract reservists with specialist skills.

[Mark Field]

On a budgetary point, while the commitment to additional spending within what we might call the defence budget is obviously welcome, does my hon. Friend share my view that we need to be a little cannier about the way in which we utilise the soft power that comes with the 0.7% in the Department for International Development budget for a range of areas, such as community cohesion in foreign lands? We can utilise elements of that budget for precisely this sort of element of the reservist side. Even if we cannot commit ourselves, as many of us would like to, to a 2% or even higher percentage of GDP for defence, at least elements of what would traditionally be the defence budget can come through the important soft power of DFID.

[Mr Hollobone]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. I am all for maximising the military component—that is a clumsy phrase—of our defence spending. Using our soft power budget legitimately to enhance our hard power capability is fine. I am all for, for example, sending armed forces personnel on aid programmes in other countries to become familiar with the language, culture and how those countries work, because that will help our hard power defence effort.

I am pleased that the Government are committed to spending 2% of our GDP on defence. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government will not enshrine that in law, because if we have enshrined the defence spending into law, enshrining the 2% commitment in law should be no issue. I am confident that a majority of this House would support doing just that, if the Minister were so minded.

As I understand it—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—there is an issue regarding medical reservists, who will make up about 50% of Defence Medical Services by 2020, with some specialties such as neurology and urology being provided entirely by the reserve forces. There is, understandably, concern about the approach some NHS trusts are taking on medical reservists—the NHS is hard pressed, and we need all the doctors we can get—but there are benefits for crossover expertise between doctors working in the NHS and doctors working with our reservists. Some years ago, I had the privilege of visiting our front-line A&E facility in Afghanistan, which I think is the most advanced A&E facility in the world. It is manned by NHS doctors, who can bring their expertise back to the UK. There are lots of crossover benefits, but there is considerable range of practice within the NHS regarding the ease with which reserve doctors are allowed to leave their NHS posts to fulfil their reserve training commitments.