Armed Forces

Viscount Slim Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Slim]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for allowing me to speak for a few moments in the gap.

I would like to cast a fly over the Minister. By cutting the numbers in the Army, which a number of noble Lords have discussed already, we are starting to get a problem of recruitment, selection and volunteering into the Special Forces. As the pool gets smaller and smaller, getting the right people in the right numbers is becoming—I will not say acute, but it is becoming tricky. There are whispers in the corridors that perhaps the standards are too high and perhaps you could lower them a bit, and that is very dangerous talk. If you dilute the product, you are not special. You become ordinary.

Something somewhere has to be done about this. We must not lower the standards of selection within the Special Forces. I say this very quietly but in public. I do not expect a reply. It is not something for public discussion. But I am forewarning the Minister that the standards and the success of the Special Forces, as we have long experienced, lie in the concentrated selection of the volunteer individual. That is what makes the exceptional operational efficiency of the Special Forces.