Defence Reform Bill

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

A whole string of changes affecting the recruiting group are already taking place, and I am sure that the Secretary of State will address some of them. The key point—I am really grateful for the hon. Lady’s support in signing my new clause and in raising questions in the Select Committee and so forth—is that we would not have lost 18 months if people had listened to the RFCAs, to which all this was painfully obvious 18 months ago, instead of having some regular officers arrogantly cracking on without talking to the units or the RFCAs.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

rose—

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Brazier]

I hope my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) will understand if I take an intervention first from my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood).

[Mr Ellwood]

I would be happy to give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), but that would be out of order. I declare an interest as a member of the reserves and a former member of the regulars. I am able to relate to what is being said by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier). Does he recall in his time that the recruitment officers were manned by “the sick, lame and lazy”, as they were called? These were the people in the regular battalions who were sent to the recruitment offices because they could not keep up with the rest of the battalion. Would he like to see the commander taking a greater interest in who is signed up as a yardstick for promotion, so that numbers are kept up to par?

[Mr Brazier]

I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend’s point, but to be honest, the long-term solution is to sort the software out so that people do not have to go into the recruitment offices at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brazier]

I wish I could show my hon. Friend some of the e-mails and texts I received before the debate. I know this is not his intention, but if Parliament passes his amendment, that will strike a hammer-blow to morale in the TA. Many Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the future of the reserve forces. Many Labour Members fought very hard when we were having the battles towards the end of the last Labour Government, and I am delighted that the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), is present, as he took a very close personal interest in this, and I note that the problems that arose at the end were not of his making. I urge Members on both sides of the House to think very seriously before they send that message to the reserve forces.

[Mr Ellwood]

This Bill is the starting gun for allowing TA recruitment to move from 18,000 to 30,000. Anything that is done to delay that recruitment will cause confusion in the TA, and that is exactly what we do not want at this difficult time of change.

[Mr Brazier]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. and gallant Friend.

I want to bring my remarks to an end as many other Members wish to speak. A number of noteworthy people have come through the Territorials and the other reserves—I have said nothing yet about the RAF and naval reserves. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), was recently commissioned into the Royal Naval Reserve and the Air Force Reserves heritage goes back to two of the three highest scoring fighter squadrons in the battle of Britain. The reserves have produced a number of distinguished individuals, including the grandfather of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, Sir Winston Churchill, and our greatest general in the last war, Bill Slim. People fondly imagine he was a regular officer who went to Sandhurst. He was not; he was a Territorial who sneaked in through the back door of the Birmingham officer training corps because his brother was a student there and nobody realised he was not a student too. There is also David Stirling, who founded the SAS. Again, people think of him as a Scots Guards officer. Yes, he was; he was a Scots Guards reservist. He had done his officer training at Ampleforth combined cadet force and then, through mountaineering, he had developed the qualities of character and team leadership that were so vital for setting up the SAS.

There are three reasons why we need reservists. First, because we can keep far more capability if we keep some of it at much lower cost—about a fifth of the cost—at lower readiness. Secondly, because they bring the energies, extra skills and imaginations of the wider civilian community into the armed forces. Thirdly, because that keeps the link with the local communities, which just after Remembrance Sunday we should all remember.

New clause 1 will give a strong independent voice back to the reserves. I am very grateful to the Government for accepting it and I must ask the House once more not to be persuaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay on new clause 3, because that will send a devastating message to the Reserve forces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some perfectly sensible points, many of which I agree with, and I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) that his campaign has been conducted in an extremely measured way. My difficulty with his new clause is that I think it addresses a point he is not that interested in. I think he wants to reduce or stop the running down of the regulars, yet, so far as I can see, his new clause would stop the beneficial changes to the reserves that all of us—including him, I suspect—want to see.

[Mr Ellwood]

It is too late; the redundancy notices have already gone out.

[Mr Baron]

If I could just answer the question. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) for his kind words, but let us be clear: there have been three major tranches of redundancies in the regulars already. I think a fourth one is due shortly, although I do not know the Secretary of State’s exact intention on that. The plan to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists essentially hinges on our ability to recruit those reservists, but the plan is clearly in trouble, and if we do not stop now, if only briefly, to re-examine the logic and ensure it stands up and properly scrutinise the viability and cost-effectiveness of the plan and the widening capability gap, we risk heading towards false economies and unacceptable capability gaps, which people will not thank us for. It is not unwise, therefore, to say, “Pause briefly and let Parliament properly scrutinise these plans.”

--- Later in debate ---

Let us look at the figures in the impact assessment. The case for deploying reservists centres on the figure of 3,000 annual deployments. That sounds somewhat low, given that the original purpose of the plan was to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists, and that we would be using those reservists more frequently. Here, however, we have a projected usage rate of 3,000 annual deployments. Of course it will bring the projected cost down if we artificially bring usage rates down.

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting argument. At its core is whether those on the Front Bench made a promise to increase the size of the TA before the regulars were downsized. Did he ever hear the Secretary of State say that he would guarantee that that number of reservists would be recruited before the regulars were downsized by the proposed number?

[Mr Baron]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has asked that question. It completely misses the point, and illustrates the weakness of the Front-Bench position. I am not saying for one moment that the present Secretary of State has said anything other than what he has said. My point is that the plan under the previous Secretary of State was very different only two years ago. I do not want to labour this point, but we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset no more than half an hour ago that the original plan was not to wind down the regulars until the reservists were able to take their place. We heard that from his own lips. I do not want to enter into a war of words between the present and former Secretary of State, but we know that the plan has changed over the past couple of years, and that is another reason for scrutinising it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ainsworth]

The growth of the reserve element in all the services has huge potential benefits, such as a connection with the population at large that the small regular armed forces that we inevitably have today and will have tomorrow can never achieve on its own. Equally, as other Members have said, it brings skills into the armed forces that cannot be kept up to date within the regulars themselves. So there are those potential improvements.

Government Members have talked about a potential gap of three years, but it is not just a question of that: I am worried about the potential ongoing downgrading of capability if we do not get this right. In order to get into the reserves the calibre of people that will be absolutely necessary for the kind of operations we have unfortunately had to carry out in recent years, and will undoubtedly have to carry out in future, the skills required by every rank must not only remain at their current level, but must improve. That is for the obvious and simple reason, which everybody knows, that the huge reputational damage to such operations, to our armed forces and to our nation, of errors in such operations can be profound. We must therefore ensure, given the cuts that are inevitably taking place, that we maintain within the regulars the quality of not only the original recruits but of the training given to them, in order to lift capability. We are blessed with armed forces with a capability level that, in some ways, is higher than that in any other nation on earth, in my opinion, but it will need to be higher still.

[Mr Ellwood]

I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman and the experience he gained as Secretary of State, but I genuinely worry that he is fighting the last war. The conduct of warfare has changed. I hope he would agree that we will not be doing “boots on the ground” in the manner in which we have done so badly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The size of armed forces concertinas—it has done so over the past 400 years. I hope he would agree that withdrawal from Afghanistan will have a huge impact on the size of the standing Army, both Regular and Territorial, and batting for the old numbers that we had five years ago is out of touch.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I totally accept that. I like to study history and I know that after conflicts, the services—generally the Army more than the other services, but those, too—have generally been decimated in times of peace, only to have to be regenerated in times of danger thereafter. So I am not trying to fight the last war. I am saying that as we struggle with these enormous economic challenges and the cuts that are almost inevitable, we have to do everything we can to maintain the quality of our personnel. That applies to the regular forces as it applies to the reserves. Even at a time of downsizing, we can surely do that—we have to try to do it because of the reputational damage that inevitably flows from our failure to do so. There is nothing “yesterday” or “last war” about that approach; this is about the kind of operations we could be involved in tomorrow, of whatever scale, and the need for quality personnel.

New clause 3 calls for a level of scrutiny that is wholly justified by the importance of the decisions, and the changes of direction and structure, that we are implementing and that the hon. Member for Canterbury has fought for so valiantly and successfully for so long. That is why I support it, even if he does not.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

As I have said before, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) has made some sensible points that need to be taken seriously. I recall my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) telling the House that the regulars would not be reduced until the reserves had been built up to take their place. He said:

“of course, the rate at which we are able to build up the reserves will determine the rate at which we are able to change the ratio with the regulars.”—[Official Report, 10 October 2011; Vol. 533, c. 9.]

That was a good thing for him to say.

[Mr Ellwood]

Was that before or after a decision was taken to downsize fundamentally our contribution to the international security assistance force in Afghanistan?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

From memory, I believe it came after that decision, but I cannot be certain. It was a good thing for the then Secretary of State to say. Quite apart from that, it is a good thing for Governments to keep their promises. However, I thought I should briefly tell the House why I shall be voting with the Government tonight. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) said, although new clause 3 highlights the problem, it does not provide the answer. I think that what my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay really wants to achieve is not the halting of changes to the reserves, but the halting of changes to the regulars, which his proposal does not mention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

The right hon. Gentleman is flying another kite. I am not making that commitment at all. We support the thrust of the reforms to the Regular Army and the uplift in reserves, but new clause 3 seeks to obtain a proper understanding of whether the reform is working, whether it is saving money, whether it is offering value for money and what is happening with the recruitment targets. We need much more clarity and openness about all those things. The Defence Secretary can say that these are spending pledges or things we do not know. He can attack the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay for not properly understanding the reform. However, he needs to address what is being said rather than what he thinks we are saying, and that is the whole point.

We talk about allowing adequate uplift in the reserves to meet the shortfall, and we heard from the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox). He remarked only last month:

“When I was secretary of state, I said we would only decrease the numbers of regulars when we had guarantees that we would be able to get the numbers—training and equipping up of the reserves—to match.”

Members of the armed forces and of this House deserve to know from the Defence Secretary when that policy changed and why.

We support new clause 3 because we want the Defence Secretary to take more responsibility for these reforms. We consider it better to pause until the MOD has managed to get recruitment back on track as a plan accepted by Parliament than to be forced to ditch the entire reform a few years down the line when it is clear that it is not working. A pause before progressing the reforms would give him time to fix the problems, to provide us with the figures, to prove his plan is cost-effective and to show that he can meet the time frame he has set.

[Mr Ellwood]

I, too, welcome the hon. Gentleman to his position. Will he place on the record his thoughts on the fact that our commitments in Camp Bastion and in Afghanistan are to be downsized, with 9,000 troops coming home? In that situation, would a Labour Government keep the armed forces, particularly the Army, at the same size, bearing in mind that downsize, or return it—[Hon. Members: “This is about reservists.”] I am asking about regulars for the moment. Would he retain the regular forces at their current levels bearing in mind that we are reducing a major commitment in Afghanistan in the middle of next year?

[Vernon Coaker]

I have said on countless occasions—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is generous. He talks about this uplift replacing the duties on the regular forces. That is why I posed my question. I am asking him what the commitments will be. What does he see as the commitments that will keep reservists busy, in the sense that our overall commitments have been reduced?

[Vernon Coaker]

I have given the hon. Gentleman the answer to his question, which he asked again. If he does not like or accept the answer, that is fine, but I will not keep repeating it. He was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the previous Secretary of State for Defence when he made the commitment about uplift and about the relevant number of reserves having to be reached before the number of regulars was reduced. I wonder what comment he made to the then Secretary of State about that at the time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I absolutely agree.

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend was absolutely right to mention my concern. I think that we have similar views on the desirable size of the armed forces, but I remind him that we had a vote on military intervention in Syria not long ago and this House decided fundamentally not to participate in that. I wonder how the House would vote on all the scenarios my hon. Friends have just mentioned. That will have a huge impact, and I worry about how this House is involved in that, but that is a concern on the size of the armed forces that we actually need.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

If my hon. Friend thinks that Syria is a reliable or predictable template for the future, I urge him to be very cautious indeed, because it has special circumstances. I see no resiling by the Conservative part of this Administration from the Foreign Secretary’s statement to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2009 that a Conservative Government would seek to help shape the world in which we found ourselves and not simply to be shaped by it, and I entirely support that. I think that we need to have the means to back it up.

I will conclude by making this point: we are where we are. I have sought to set out why I believe we are where we are and what I believe we need to do for the future. I must say to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay that the Chair of the Defence Committee, our right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire, made a good point when he observed that the new clause would require the Government to put on hold the process of enacting the provisions for enhancing the reserves, and I know that he feels strongly about maintaining the number of regulars. The numbers of regulars are reducing, in accordance with the timetable set out two or three years ago. Therefore, the imperative is not to put the reserve generation on hold, but to ramp it up as fast as we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Thomas Docherty]

No, I will not. We hear quite enough from the hon. Gentleman at other times.

It is not the Royal Army: we have a Royal Navy and a Royal Air Force, but a British Army. I make that point not to take up valuable time, but because the Secretary of State seems to think that it is the job of Ministers of the Crown, not of Parliament, to make decisions about the Army.

In an earlier exchange about the Back-Bench debate, the Secretary of State said from a sedentary position that it was a Back-Bench vote. The problem with his approach, and the one advocated by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), is that if there is an annual report that Members of Parliament want not only to debate but to vote on, it is clear that the Secretary of State’s intention would be to ignore any such decision.

This is our last chance to tell the Government that although the House supports the broad thrust of the Army reforms, they are clearly not going according to plan. The Secretary of State has already demonstrated that he has the courage to change tack, as he did on the aircraft carriers, when something is clearly going wrong. I am genuinely surprised that he is not prepared to say, “This is not going as well as we want. We need to slow the rate of progress, so that we do not end up in a disastrous position.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Drax]

I agree. I look forward to hearing whether that point is dealt with in the winding-up speeches.

Many hon. Members have said that wars have changed and perhaps there is no need for battalions of infantry. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) said that there was no longer a need for the number of battalions that we used to have. May I give three examples where boots on the ground would be needed, quite apart from any conventional war that we might have to fight? First, God forbid that the Northern Ireland troubles ever rose from the ashes again. We had 32,500 men and women in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. With a professional Army of 82,000 men—a large majority of whom are not bayonets, to use the Army lingo; many are back-up forces—we would be pushed to man that one commitment.

Secondly, the Falklands has been mentioned so many times. Baroness Thatcher was looking at cutting our armed forces just before the war broke out—I think my historical facts are right—and, as I understand it, afterwards she said, “Never again am I going to take our armed forces for granted.” Thirdly, for a big evacuation, potentially from a friendly country—let us say Kenya—we would need, without aircraft carriers, boots on the ground to secure an area around which our citizens could be extracted. This takes huge resources, immediate resources, professional resources.

I say to all those who work in the reserves, alongside whom I have worked, that I have enormous respect for them. This is not a question of denigrating the reservists. I have a huge amount of respect for them all and thank them from the bottom of my heart, as does the nation, for what they do. All I am saying is that the ratio of 70:30 should be reviewed and it should be 90:10 instead. Finally, my military sources tell me that senior officers say one thing in public, but that a very different message is given in private.

[Mr Ellwood]

It is a pleasure to participate in this important debate. I wish we had more such debates in the House of Commons and more regularly. It is a pleasure to follow my neighbour down in Dorset, my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), as it is to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), whom I congratulate on his Defence Committee appointment, and my hon. Friends the Members for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous).

This has been a powerful debate. I congratulate, as others have done, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier)—he says not to do so, but I will anyway—on the work that he has done. I congratulate also General Sir Graeme Lamb, with whom I know my hon. Friend worked closely in his work on the armed forces. New clause 1 is welcome, providing for an annual independent assessment of what the reserves are doing and, I hope, for an annual debate in the House on the reserve forces as we move forward.

New clause 3 is a little mischievous. It calls for further implementation of the plans to be halted, which means that things stop and we drop tools at this point. We do not know the time scale. That has not been clarified by the debate. I was a little concerned when my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) said that we should not be doing this in the first place if it is the wish of the House to go against the Government. That really worries me, because what is the genesis of new clause 3?

I am also concerned about Labour’s position. Labour Members were supportive on Second Reading and in the Committee, on which I served, but today they suddenly changed their tune. On their watch the MOD had to be put in special measures, because they burnt a £38 billion black hole in the budget.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Ellwood]

I am afraid that I do not have time to give way to the hon. Gentleman. Of course, Labour also cut TA training completely in 2009, so it is difficult to take lessons from Labour Members. It is opportunistic to join this argument now, as others have said.

[Mr Baron]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Ellwood]

I will, but very briefly.

[Mr Baron]

I think that my hon. Friend has inadvertently misrepresented what I said. I was commenting on the previous Secretary of State’s plans and his commitment to the House that there would be no wind-down of regular forces until the reservists were able to take their place, which my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) confirmed only a few minutes ago.

[Mr Ellwood]

I hope that the Secretary of State will respond to that point, because in an earlier intervention I asked the question to get to the heart of that aspect.

I am concerned about the message that would be sent to our allies, both NATO allies and the United States, if Parliament halted or interfered with the recruitment drive that the Bill is designed to enable. The redundancy notices for the regulars have already gone out, so it is clear that there is no quid pro quo and that we cannot stop this plan and keep the regular forces at the size we would allow. The Bill allows a method of influencing, and indeed improving, recruitment, through the relationships with employers and so forth.

On the capability gap, an important question was asked: how will the wider world perceive that? Any pause in the recruitment of reservists would be dangerous, because the TA is at a lower state of readiness. The idea is to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists. Are they the same? No, of course they are not, but that raises the question of what world we are now working with.

I was interested in what my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said. He touched on some of the concerns about how the conduct of war is changing. I asked those on the Opposition Front Bench to say exactly what it is, with our withdrawing from Afghanistan and reducing in size, to have a standing commitment, and what the armed forces, however they are comprised, will actually do, because the balance between war fighting, stabilisation and peacekeeping has changed. The idea that we have to win over local support is now more central than it ever has been. Infrastructure, development, local governance and the drive for agriculture have all been mentioned. All that is secondary to the war fighting that takes place, but in Afghanistan and Iraq the war fighting was conducted and completed relatively quickly. We lost in those cases in the peacekeeping and nation-building. That is where it is very interesting to see the TA provide value, because it has the linguistic skills and can come in when skills in banking, cyber-technology, civil service and governance are required.

[Mr Brazier]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The new commander of Sandhurst in the sand, which will be our most long-lasting legacy in Afghanistan, is of course a TA brigadier.

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a long-term aspiration in helping Afghanistan.

My concern is whether this House will ever again entertain putting boots on the ground. I would like us to have a large standing Army, as others have mentioned, and to be that leader in the world, carrying that big stick. I ask that question because of my concern about the vote this place had on Syria. It was a very simple action that we would have been participating in, yet this House voted against the Government. Others say that perhaps that is not a yardstick for potential future interventions, and I quite understand that, but it could be that, because of the ghosts of Afghanistan and Iraq, interventions in future will have a light footprint and will be very different. I simply pose a question as to what our armed forces need to look like: do they need to look like what we have had in the past, or should they adapt to the type of footprint we will need in the future?

[Dr Julian Lewis]

The vote on Syria was absolutely different from any other vote, because it was not just about humanitarian assistance; it was about helping al-Qaeda take over another country, and many of us who support humanitarian assistance would not support that.

[Mr Ellwood]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend, who I know has spent a lot of time looking at the issues. The point I am trying to address is whether that situation will be repeated in the future. Will this House have an appetite to commit troops with boots on the ground or will it say, “What has it got to do with us? We cannot guarantee that we will vote on it”? We have to be prepared and ask ourselves what it is that our armed forces—[Interruption.] If hon. Members want to intervene, they may do so.

[Mr Gray]

Does my hon. Friend not realise that people such as me, who were very cynical before this debate but who have been persuaded by the argument that it would be wrong to put the target in legislation and have, therefore, moved towards the Government’s side, are now being persuaded by his argument in favour of a smaller Army, which is actually against what he is trying to achieve?

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend misunderstands me. I am not saying we should have a smaller Army; I am saying we should have faith in building up reservist forces with the capability to meet the challenges of the future. As a regular, I believe that the regular forces could easily adapt and be used in various situations, but I also have faith, as a result of the models we have seen in America and, indeed, Australia, that other skills sets can be used and that we can build the Territorial Army to match our requirements, not just for the security of our country and the protection of our overseas territories, or because of our NATO commitments, but because the conduct of war itself has changed. We need to consider that.

As a consequence of withdrawing from Afghanistan, we do not have one entire brigade training to go there and another recuperating after being there. The size of our armed forces needs to concertina. The new model army and the Glorious Revolution have been mentioned, but what happened to that army after the revolution? It was disbanded completely. This House needs to be able—very quickly—to expand and contract the size of the armed forces and be willing to do so as needs change. I do not believe it is right to have a massive standing Army when we are still uncertain about what we want it to do.

That is why I do not believe that the proposal in new clause 3 would be the right thing to do, because it would put a pause on developing the TA. It would stop us recruiting and building up the capability that we would be able to use in all the scenarios mentioned today. I urge hon. and right hon. Members to think very carefully about the damage new clause 3 would do and the message it would send if they vote in favour of it. It would be dangerous for the armed forces and dangerous for the Reserves.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I defer to the military knowledge and experience of those who have spoken before me. The House has had the particular advantage of hearing the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and it will now have the advantage of not hearing me repeat them.

My constituency of Harborough has a squadron of the Leicestershire and Derbyshire Yeomanry. It is suffering from poor recruitment and I have one practical solution to offer those on the Ministry of Defence Front Bench and the Secretary of State in particular. In order to avoid the attrition rate—the wastage rate—of those who express an initial interest in serving in the reserves, the Territorial Army as was, we should bring them into the units and give them weapons training much more quickly, rather than wait for them to go through medical tests and so forth. Once we have grabbed them, got their interest and introduced them to the practical, military side of the reservists and their camaraderie, we can then decide whether they are fit for the role they wish to play or whether we should deploy them in a less front-end activity. That is a simple, practical proposition and I trust it would enable the Secretary of State and his Ministers to produce the 30,000 reservists and not to lose so many on the way to achieving that number.