Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend and I have made it clear that those who travel to fight with Daesh in Iraq or Syria will have been committing a criminal offence. Daesh is a proscribed organisation, and we have to make sure that if these people ever do return from Iraq and Syria, they do not pose a future threat to our national security. However, they have made their choice: they have chosen to fight for an organisation that uses terror and the murder of civilians as a modus operandi.

[Mr Paul J. Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the size of the Army.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

We are committed to maintaining the overall size of the armed forces, including an Army that is able to field a war-fighting division. While Army recruitment and retention remain challenging, over 8,000 people joined the regular Army last year and since April applications are over 20% higher compared with the same period last year.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but in the year I was born—1989—the Regular Army’s strength was 140,000. In 2006, when I joined the Territorials, it was 102,000. Yet, in recent years, we have seen the Army fall below a regular strength of 82,000—the Government’s stated target—to only 80,000, and that includes a 40% fall in the armoured strength of the Army. Does the Minister not accept that this is an unacceptable degradation of British Army strength?

[Mark Lancaster]

No, I do not. It is important to note that the Army is currently 95% manned. I do accept that there are challenges. Having probably the highest employment rate we have had in recent years does not help when it comes to recruiting to the Army. There is also, as we discussed earlier, the changing nature of Britain, which means we have to fight harder to make sure that all parts of society will join the Army. However, this is also about the offer, and I must say that when the Leader of the Opposition says he cannot see a situation where he would deploy the Army overseas, that is hardly a good recruiting tool to get young people who want to join the Army to do exactly that.