Armed Forces: Reserves

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, from whom we have heard much about the Royal Marines Reserve and its proud history, of which I was fairly ignorant. I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord De Mauley for introducing this timely debate.

The external scrutiny team’s 2017 report is encouraging. It is to be welcomed that FR20 now looks as if it can be successfully achieved on time and on budget. However, it would perhaps have been better if we could have debated the 2018 report today. I note that the 2017 report, signed by General Brims, is dated 21 June 2017—exactly a year ago. I think it likely that the 2018 report, if it has not already been signed, must be very close to completion.

I declare an interest as an honorary air commodore of 600 (City of London) Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force, a position I am honoured to have held for the past 12 years. The report notes that among the three services, the RAF Reserve alone has already achieved its manning and trained strength targets, according to the set timescale. The 600 Squadron has 170 people; that number is rising. They are in good shape and represent a wide variety of different trades. At any one time, a number of them are deployed at home and overseas. As part of the RAF’s 100th anniversary celebrations, I have had the opportunity to visit many Royal Air Force establishments. I almost always find members of my squadron deployed to the squadron or station I visit.

While I cannot claim any experience of the Royal Naval Reserve, it has been well covered by my noble friend Lord Sterling and the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery. I also have 10 years’ experience in the TA, or Army Reserve as we call it now, in both the Cambridge University OTC, through which I obtained my commission, and 4th Battalion the Royal Green Jackets, now 7th Battalion the Rifles.

The degree of adaptation necessary for the RAF reserves to fit into the new “whole force” concept is less than is the case with the Army Reserve. The reasons for this are several. Whereas the normal means by which personnel discharge their obligation to give two weeks’ continuous service a year is different—in the Army Reserve many units still deploy as a unit to annual camp—RAF reservists typically spend the two weeks backfilling regular units at home and abroad. I therefore think that the dividing line between regulars and reservists is less obvious in the RAF than in the Army. The Navy is also closer to the RAF in this regard. Of course, the Army, in terms of the relative weight in numbers of reservists to regulars, is much more dependent on reserves, which form more than a quarter of target strength, whereas in the other two services it is 10%.

As my noble friend Lord De Mauley and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, have explained, the Royal Auxiliary Air Force is in very good shape, and new or restored squadrons based at St Mawgan in Cornwall, Aldergrove in Northern Ireland and Woodvale in Lancashire have improved the geographical coverage of the service. As far as the Royal Air Force is concerned, the development of the whole-force concept is proceeding well. The acceptance of reservist personnel by their regular counterparts has taken root, at least to some extent. The “whole force” concept assumes an output of trained strength based on a combination of regulars together with full-time and part-time reservists, in addition to outsourced civilian organisations, many of whose personnel are former servicemen and servicewomen.

For this concept to reach its full potential, it is necessary for commanders to have the flexibility and mindset to use the reserves quickly at short notice, without the need to legislate prior to mobilisation. For example, 4624 Squadron was engaged on a training weekend at Brize Norton when Hurricane Irma struck last September. Some personnel were able to be mobilised immediately and deployed with regulars to the Caribbean. A further opportunity to test how easily reserve forces might be deployed will be provided by Exercise Saif Sareea, to take place in the Gulf this coming October.

I ask the Minister: are there plans to make the annual training commitments for reservists more flexible? For example, RAF part-time reservists are required to undergo 27 days’ training a year, of which 15 days should be continuous. This rule was set in 1909 for reservist rifleman, but it is no longer appropriate, particularly for Royal Auxiliary Air Force personnel. Most exercises undertaken by regular formations do not last two weeks and many are shorter than one, so there are not many opportunities to join a two-week exercise. Would it not be better to remove the requirement for reservists to do periods of continuous training and allow them to do more periods of shorter duration? One size no longer fits all.

Speaking for 600 Squadron, I understand that we engage well with some employers, particularly large companies, but less well with SMEs, which are of course less able and less willing to lose their scarce human resources for military training. Many of them are unfortunately still slow to recognise the improvement in output that their reservist employees will deliver to their companies. Will the Government consider providing tax benefits to companies that employ reservists, or at least setting up a compensation scheme to mitigate their loss of output during periods when their employees are engaged in annual training or deployed for longer periods?

I strongly endorse what my noble friend Lord De Mauley said, particularly about the tightness of funding. The Government have committed to spend 2% of GDP on defence, but I understand that the costs of the intelligence service are now included in that, as are pension costs, so we actually spend only around 1.6% of GDP according to the old method of counting. Perhaps in the new, more uncertain and unpredictable world that we inhabit today, 3% would be a more appropriate share of GDP to commit to defence, remembering that keeping the country safe and free is the Government’s first duty.