John Bercow
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Defence Reform Bill
John Bercow Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 2—Duties and powers of reserve forces and cadets associations—
‘(1) The Reserve Forces Act 1996 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 113(1) insert—
“(1A) In deciding which of the matters set out under subsection (2) should be transferred or assigned to the associations, the Secretary of State should take account of—
(a) the cost effectiveness of associations as compared with wider defence operations; and
(b) the ownership of the particular site.”.’.
New clause 3—Report on Future Reserves 2020—
‘(1) Within one month of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State shall make and lay before Parliament a report on the viability and cost effectiveness of the plans set out in Reserves in the Future Force 2020: Valuable and Valued, Cmd 8655, together with his recommendation on its further implementation.
(2) Further implementation of the plans shall be halted 40 days after the laying of the report unless both Houses shall have resolved to approve the recommendation from the Secretary of State contained in the report.’.
Provides for a Government report detailing the viability and cost-effectiveness of the plans set out in the White Paper on Reserves (Cmd 8655). Both Houses must approve the report and the Secretary of State’s subsequent recommendation in order for the implementation of the reforms to reserve forces to continue.
New clause 4—Mental health provision for members of the reserve forces—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall publish annually an analysis of mental health provision for members and former members of the reserve forces.
(2) The report shall include information and annual spend on such services.
(3) The Secretary of State shall within one year of this Act coming into force bring forward proposals clarifying provisions for the transfer of medical records belonging to former members of the reserve forces to the NHS and for the monitoring of the health needs of former members of the reserve forces.’.
New clause 6—Leave entitlement for reserve forces—
‘(1) The Employment Rights Act 1996 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 63C insert—
“63CA Right to time off for reserve forces
(1) An employee who is a member of a reserve force (as defined in section 374 of the Armed Forces Act 2006) is entitled to be permitted by his employer to take time off during the employee’s working hours in order to undertake training activities connected to the reserve force.
(2) An employee’s entitlement to time off under subsection (1) is limited to 14 days maximum.
(3) An employee is not entitled to paid remuneration by his employer for time off under subsection (1).
(4) This section does not apply to employees of companies with fewer than 50 employees.
63CB Complaints to employment tribunals
‘(1) An employee may present a complaint to an employment tribunal that his employer has unreasonably refused to permit him to take time off as required by section 63CA.
(2) An employment tribunal shall not consider a complaint under this section unless it is presented—
(a) before the end of the period of three months beginning with the day on which the time off was taken or on which it is alleged the time off should have been permitted, or
(b) within such further period as the tribunal considers reasonable in a case where it is satisfied that it was not reasonably practicable for the complaint to be presented before the end of that period of three months.
(3) Where an employment tribunal finds a complaint under this section well-founded, the tribunal shall make a declaration to that effect.”.’.
A reservist would be entitled to two weeks statutory additional unpaid leave from their employment (where the company has more than 50 employees) for the purpose of reserve forces training, for which they shall receive their military pay.
New clause 7—Publication of data on reserves—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall publish quarterly recruitment figures and trained strength numbers of the reserve forces against adjusted quarterly targets.’.
Amendment 3, in clause 49, page 31, line 32, leave out ‘1 to 3’ and insert ‘1 and 2’.
Amendment 4, page 31, line 35, at end insert—
‘(2A) Part 3 shall not come into force unless the receommendation referred to in section Report on Future Reserves 2020 has been approved by both Houses, and may then be brought into force on such day or days as the Secretary of State may by order made by statutory instrument appoint.’.
Mr Brazier
It is a huge pleasure to speak to new clause 1. Let me also say how much I enjoyed serving on the Public Bill Committee, through which we were so well guided by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne).
New clause 1 seeks to establish, on a permanent basis, a power for the council of the reserve forces and cadets associations to report annually to this House and the Secretary of State on the state of the reserves, and will restore to the reserves a powerful independent voice.
I hope you will indulge me, Mr Speaker, if I give the House a bit of history. In 1908, when that great reforming Secretary of State, Haldane, set up the Territorial Force, as it was then called, on its modern basis, it was recognised that if the force was established simply under the Regular Army, it would not prosper. Therefore, the county associations—what we now call the RFCAs—were given control of recruiting and property management for the TF, as it then was. Just six years later, at the outbreak of the first world war, there were 250,000 Territorials stood to arms. Thirty units went over to the continent in the first wave. Sir John French, our commander over on the continent, remarked:
“Without the assistance which the Territorials afforded between October 1914 and June 1915, it would have been impossible to hold the line in France and Belgium.”
Sir John French was of course referring to the beginning of the war, but even at that stage, the same split view, which I am afraid we still see today, existed in the Regular Army. Lord Kitchener, as Secretary of State, announced on the very day that he took up his post that he could
“take no account of anything but Regular soldiers”.
He derided the Territorial Force, which was already fighting over in France, as “a town clerk’s army” and said that it got its orders from “Lord Mayors’ parlours”. However, had it not been for the vigorous lobbying of Parliament by the county associations—the forerunners of the RFCAs, with which my new clause deals—his efforts simply to break up the TF and use it as a source of spare parts for the Regular Army would have been successful, and the remarkable process whereby it delivered almost half our fighting units by the end of the war and scored 71 Victoria Crosses in the process would never have happened.
The system continued for nearly a century. Indeed, in 2003-04, by far the largest deployment of reservists in post-second world war history took place. At one point, one fifth of all our forces in Iraq and, just afterwards, one eighth of all our forces in Afghanistan were from the reserves. It is no accident that two years ago the RFCA council elected as its chairman General Sir Robin Brims. The RFCAs elect people to such positions and have a structure that would be recognisable to those in all parts of the House. It is almost like a party structure, although RFCAs are not party political. General Brims commanded the remarkable capture of Basra. Getting into the centre of the city was an almost bloodless exercise and almost the only thing that went seriously right in the British engagement in Iraq. His deputy is Major General Simon Lalor, who is known to a number of people in the House and who headed the reserves very effectively during the last two years of the Labour Government.
