Scottish-recruited Units
Debate between Pete Wishart and Madeleine Moon(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Pete Wishart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I cannot remember the number of veterans we have in Scotland, but it was revealed recently—somewhere in the region of 80,000. There are certainly substantial numbers—all of them determined to protect their former ancient regiments, and quite right too. He is right: the regiments bring history, tradition and culture into the new regiment, and that must be worth maintaining.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is also about national identity? In Wales, we face potentially losing the 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards, which recruits, almost uniformly, from Wales and the borders. A regiment’s national identity is also important in giving a coherent community and regional identity.
Pete Wishart
Without any shadow of a doubt it would continue to exist. We have a firm, clear commitment that the existing battalions will be not only maintained but developed. [Interruption.] If it is an independent Scotland, the battalions are unlikely to be British, but they will be maintained and continued.
Mrs Moon
Everything the hon. Gentleman has said in relation to the golden thread applies also in Wales. There have been suggestions that a political decision will be made not to remove the Scottish regiments for fear of influencing the devolution debate. The reverberations of that in Wales would be tremendous. Some 9% of the British Army are recruited in Wales from 3% of the population. I am talking about some 10,000 people.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. It is good to see that the cause of Scottish independence is securing support and could have an influence on the recruitment of units in Wales.
I hope the Minister will clarify some matters for us today, because that is the intention of this debate. It is unfortunate that the Secretary of State himself is not here today, but I appreciate and respect the fact that we have the Minister here. In even the darkest days of the amalgamation debates of 2004, Geoff Hoon always turned up. He always took the flak and got incredible respect for that. We really needed to have the Secretary of State here today to address our points unequivocally and end this damaging uncertainty.
There has been a suggestion, which has a degree of credibility, that this debate on our names and badges is a smokescreen and masks the Government’s true intention, which is to get on with the job of brutally decimating the Scottish defence footprint.