Defence Reform Bill

Patrick Mercer Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

I am genuinely baffled. I do not know where the hon. Gentleman was before he came into the Chamber, but reservists already receive pay when they are on training. This proposal is not about additional training time; it is about meeting requirements for the training they have to undertake. If his only concern is about the funding element, I can reassure him that there is no additional spending cost. It actually—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman stops chuntering for one second, I will finish. There will be no cost to the business and no additional cost to the Ministry of Defence, because it is already providing pay for that training period. Having given him that reassurance, I look forward to his confirming that Liberal Democrats will support us in the Lobby, in the unfortunate event that we cannot just adopt the proposal as a whole and someone calls a vote.

I am conscious that many others wish to speak; I will therefore finish with this thought. This Parliament is sovereign. It is up to us to send a clear signal that we want to support our armed forces, whether they be regular or reserves, on land, on sea or in the air. It is crucial that we provide a robust target for the MOD to do what it should be doing and ensuring that we have an adequate number of regulars and reserves to meet the aspirations that we all have for them.

[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Ind)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). Many of his remarks I agree with; some I disagree with. However, I particularly admire my close and hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier)—who sadly has gone for a cup of tea—and my other close and hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). They have opposing views, but they both have the good of the nation and the armed forces at their heart. I have no doubt about that.

I think I am right in saying that of all the ex-regulars and ex-Territorials in the House, I am the only one who has been a professional recruiter. My last job in the Army was as a colonel in the Army training and recruiting agency. I use the word “agency” with a curl of the lip: it was not a command or a military formation of any sort, which was one of the reasons I resigned from the Army—because of its disgraceful conduct, particularly over recruiting. I will return to that in a moment. I also had the privilege to belong to and to command a battalion that, at the height of the Territorial Army, had to find permanent staff instructors, adjutants and the like for up to four Territorial battalions—our third and fourth battalions, and what were then called the 1st and 2nd Battalions the Mercian Regiment.

That is where I first heard about STABs, which stands for stupid TA—and then a word that means “illegitimate people”—and about arrogant Regular Army “illegitimate people”. That is an example of the desperate confusion and rivalry between regulars and Territorials, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury made such clear reference, from the first and second world wars, and so on. I am a little out of date now, but in my experience that was a deeply divisive and extremely unhelpful view. In the Regular Army, we had to provide a lot of those individuals, which absolutely was a nuisance. None the less, anybody who looked at the colours of my regiment—or, indeed, of the fusiliers or any of the infantry or cavalry regiments in the British Army—would have seen that the majority of the battle honours on those colours were won by battalions and regiments from the Territorial Force or the Territorial Army. It is a fact; we cannot get away from it. Any Regular Army individual who ignores the importance, the potential or the sheer enthusiasm of the reserves—the TF, the TA or whatever we want to call them—is simply daft.

However, there are reservations I would like to express about the future of warfare and the type of forces we need to fight those wars. Turning to new clause 1, my experience as a commanding officer is that I was told in the late ’90s that my battalion was about 40 men under strength and that we could not recruit more than that, which, in a recruiting famine, would be quite impossible. I talked closely to what was then called the recruiting group of the Army training and recruiting agency, listened to its advice and did precisely the opposite.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman has first-hand experience of recruitment. Does he agree with the earlier comment of the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) about recruiters being staffed from the sick, lame or lazy?

[Patrick Mercer]

I was deeply offended by that remark. If I may, I would gently suggest that it sounds like a comment from someone who left the Army as a junior officer, without having to provide the sort of individuals that we provided for our recruiting offices, who were the very finest, Brecon-trained senior and junior non-commissioned officers inside the battalion.

[Rory Stewart]

May I respectfully suggest to my hon. Friend that my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) was not saying that as his own view; he was talking about the reputation that was attached at the time?

[Patrick Mercer]

I entirely agree, in which case, in my 25-year experience, that is completely wrong.

Moving swiftly on. The Army and training recruiting agency, as it was at the time, could not and would not recruit. We were 40 men under strength when I took command; inside a year, we were 120 men over strength—in a recruiting famine when the economy was apparently buoyant and there were difficulties in finding manpower. What was going wrong with recruiting in the late ’90s is going wrong with recruiting today. I dread to hear people talking about recruiting offices not being open at the weekends; I dread to hear that people are not being recruited especially for the Territorial and the Reserve forces.

In my experience the only way to produce a battalion with an extra company was by fully understanding where to recruit and how to recruit, and by using our own resources. When we realised that recruitment was not particularly for the TA, we took TA recruiters with us, ensured that the particular conditions of the Reserve forces and the Territorial Army were understood and sent those recruits straight to the TA rather than try to confuse them with the Regular Army. I make no pretence of fully understanding the impact of social media, on which Capita and other firms base the core of their recruiting effort—that was different in my day—but I do know that unless we get out with capable and experienced people, seek recruits in the places where they are most plentiful, and physically present the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the reserve forces, we will not recruit people. We simply will not, and I would be happy to debate that with anyone who thinks it is incorrect.

My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay tells me that TA numbers are falling, while the Secretary of State for Defence seems to disagree. I am not quite sure, but there seems to be a serious divergence between the two. I would respectfully say that the Secretary of State has mentioned in the past that applications for the reserve forces were going up. On the basis of my experience, however, I would say that applications are very different from enlistments and that the problem is even worse in the reserve forces than it is inside the Regular Army.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I would like to put it on the record in Hansard that recruitment to the TA in Northern Ireland is at a high level, and it has been so over a number of years. From his experience, the hon. Gentleman will know that recruitment to all the services—the Royal Navy, the Air Force and the infantry—has met levels higher than in the rest of the United Kingdom. There are parts of the United Kingdom, then, for which levels of recruitment are high, and Northern Ireland is one of those areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Mercer]

I am grateful for that intervention. Recruitment in the Province was always good—despite the troubles—and I hope that it is even better now.

[Mr Baron]

On the point of TA numbers, let me confirm that the figures released last week showed a fall in TA recruitment. That was clear to see, and it was reported by the media and mentioned in various circles. That is what the report showed.

[Patrick Mercer]

I thank my hon. Friend.

[Mr Philip Hammond]

As a supplementary to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), what he says is absolutely true. The fall was 130 over the course of 12 months—0.6% of the trained strength. That is unwelcome, but statistically not a relevant number.

[Patrick Mercer]

There we are: we see the opposing views of the two sides. All I ask is for the Secretary of State for Defence to be clear about it, and to continue to be clear about it. I find new clause 1 to be sensible; it has my complete support. New clause 3 posits some extremely interesting questions, and we have had a good debate about it this evening. However, I think that the point about the changing face of warfare is terribly important.

We have heard a lot of talk about cyber-warfare and other specialist forms of warfare. If we open our history books, we see that in the late 1920s there was a school of thought which held that the fighting of savage tribes could be done entirely from the air. That was tried by an emergent Royal Air Force in Wazirista, and it completely failed, because there were not the boots on the ground to support the Royal Air Force in the excellent work that it did.

Of course there are specialisations within the reserve forces and the Territorial Army which are desperately important, but what our regular forces depend on is a very high level of fitness, a very high level of training, and an ability to deploy instantly. One of my hon. Friends, who is no longer in the Chamber, observed that there was always a period of time before any reservist—any Territorial—was up to snuff. That is no criticism, but, as Members who have served in infantry battalions know, preparing an individual for combat is akin to training a professional athlete. The level of fitness is extraordinarily important. I challenge any civilian holding down a full-time civilian job—and I do not say this with any form of disrespect—to be at such a level of fitness for instant deployment.

What we want for the future is the ability to nip problems in the bud—to avoid confrontation and conflict—and we therefore require deployment that is instantaneous, or as near to that as we can make it. I must say, with the greatest respect, that no reservist can achieve that. It is not in the nature of reserve forces. The clue is in the phrase “reserve, not regular”. I say that with profound respect for all Territorials and all reservists, and for their naval and air force equivalents.

[Mr Gray]

I broadly accept what my hon. Friend has said about fitness, but does he not accept that a significant number of Territorial Army regiments are absolutely ready for deployment in the way that he has described? I am thinking particularly of my own regiment, the Honourable Artillery Company, but I am also thinking of the TA special forces regiments, which are as good as their regular counterparts.

[Patrick Mercer]

I accept that a very small number of Territorials are ready for instant deployment, but I have to say that the Territorial Army units that I have seen—none of which have been so-called special forces, and which I shall not name—have been a very, very long way from being ready for instant deployment. That is just my experience, but I fear that the Territorials who came to support me on operations were never up to snuff until we had given them concerted and extensive periods of training, including fitness training.

I think that if we wish to avoid trouble, it is quite wrong for us to reduce the size of our regular forces until our Territorial or reserve forces are fully in place, fully equipped, and fully trained to deploy. I understand that the standards are different, and I respect the fact that reservists need a period of training before they can deploy, but I think it irresponsible to allow our regular forces, with their instant deployment capability, to be run down before we have an adequate replacement.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), and, indeed, rather daunting to follow so many right hon. and hon. Friends—some of them gallant—who have so much personal and very relevant experience and knowledge of this subject. My special interest is the relationship between the armed forces and employers, and I believe that the Bill presents an opportunity in that context.

With a more integrated role for reserves will come a more open and supportive relationship between armed forces and employers. A number of the new clauses refer to business, implicitly or explicitly, and would have an impact on it. That is why I was so keen to speak at this point. As a small business owner and as someone who has been in business for more than 20 years and has employed reservists, I understand that, for many of them, successful service in the military depends hugely on the support of their employers. That will become even more important given the increased role of reservists in the future armed forces, and it is right for us to recognise the valuable contributions that employers make to our national security by hiring them.

Equally, however, it is important that trained-up reservists are provided with accredited qualifications that the armed forces can provide, and these will give a real service to employers. We must recognise the skills employees will gain from reserve service and how that will benefit employers and society as a whole. Ultimately business needs one thing more than anything else: certainty. It just wants to know what is expected of it with sufficient notice and what it can expect in return. I am delighted that this Bill commits to providing employers with full information about what hiring a reservist entails.

Too many businesses currently have no experience of hiring a reservist and the establishment of a national relationship management scheme will strengthen the partnership between the armed forces and employer organisations, leading to a much more open and predictable relationship in which all parties are fully aware of what is required of them.

One of my concerns with new clause 3 is that it will provoke confusion. It will delay or prevent payments being made to small enterprises when their employees are mobilised. This extra finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, who find it most difficult to plug the gap when their employees are away, is vital. These firms do us a great service by employing reservists and it is only right that they should be fully compensated.

My other concern with new clause 3 is about the delay in the delivery of the transferable skills. This Bill does not just compensate firms; it provides them with real benefits for deciding to hire a member of the new Army Reserve. Time with the reserves can greatly enhance an employee’s effectiveness through high-quality training, leading opportunities and the chance to gain specific civilian-recognised qualifications while on duty. By accrediting reservists with recognised qualifications, we not only help them progress their careers, but provide real incentives for employers to take them on in the first place. Businesses will know that while their employees are away on duty they will not be engaged in unnecessary training exercises, but will be gaining tangible and valuable skills. This will also encourage more people to consider serving with the reserves. The fact that they will be able to make a genuine contribution to our national security while increasing their employability in their chosen career path will be a real pull, attracting high-quality individuals into the Army Reserve.

This will help more than just those who are currently employed, however. Reserve service can help provide people who are currently out of work with boosts to both their skills and their self-confidence, helping them on to the job ladder. Joint industry-led apprenticeships will provide unemployed young people with a trade and accredited qualifications, but, more than that, reservists will learn how to work as part of a team, how to solve problems and how to present themselves with maturity. These skills are harder to define than others, but are no less valuable

Time with the Army reserves is a great preparation for life in the workplace, enhancing employability skills and boosting self-confidence. It is excellent news that this Government will be placing clear emphasis on the development of reservists, and on building and maintaining an open and productive relationship between employers and the armed forces. We owe a great debt both to the individuals who protect our national security and to the businesses that employ our reserve troops. I am delighted that this Bill will make sure that we are repaying both those employers and the reservists themselves by providing them with the training and skills to flourish both in the field and in the workplace.