Armed Forces: Reserves — House of Lords, 2018-06-21
Topic: Defense
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for introducing this debate. Much of what he said I agree with. There has been little disagreement between noble Lords on these issues I suppose I ought to declare my own reserve credentials, although they are from so long ago that I had almost forgotten them. In 1963, for two and a half years, I was in the University Air Squadron, where I rose to the dizzy rank of acting pilot officer—a rank so junior that the RAF has since abandoned it. This was in the heyday of the Cold War. In today’s money, I believe that the RAF spent at least £50,000 training me to be a pilot and introducing me to the traditions of the Royal Air Force, which changed my life so much. I certainly would not be here today without that experience. It probably also saved me from a criminal prosecution, because who wants to be a hooligan when Her Majesty gives you an aeroplane to be a hooligan in I have no recent experience of the reserve and, therefore, like all hack politicians, which I suppose I must now accept I am, I reverted to Google. I found an organisation that at first sight sounded rather tame—the Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations, of which the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, is president. As I went into its role, however, I found that an entirely inaccurate assessment. Among other things, it has a statutory obligation to report on the health of the reserves. It does that with an external scrutiny team, to which the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, referred, which is a pretty heavyweight team. It consists of a chairman who is a former three-star general. There are five members—one two-star, one one-star, a captain, a colonel and a civilian—and a two-star clerk. Of course, all the service personnel are retired officers. It reports annually—however, to some extent, not that you would notice The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, suggested that we should be discussing the 2018 and not the 2017 report, and I have a lot of sympathy with him. But what happened to the 2017 report, you may ask? Certainly, I did once I started my Googling. After some effort, I discovered that the Secretary of State responded to it some six months later. The report was dated 21 June, and he responded some six months later, on 19 December. If noble Lords are curious as to why they have never heard of this response, it is largely because the Ministry of Defence failed to issue it. Technically, it has been published today in a Written Ministerial Statement, dated 21 June, which means that it is exactly one year after it was presented to the Secretary of State. It is a pretty poor performance, taking six months to publish a letter. I have always believed in the cock-up and not the conspiracy theory of history, and I am sure that this was a cock-up. As an ex-bureaucrat, I always sympathise with cock-ups, but it would have been nice to have an apology. In fact, we almost got a cover-up—not of Nixonian proportions, I have to admit—in that the WMS carefully avoids mentioning the date of the letter it publishes. I hope the MoD thinks of offering some sort of apology The response was bland. Indeed, of all the recommendations, I do not think there is a single one where the Secretary of State agrees to do something new or different as a result of the report. It was Panglossian in nature The report itself is an excellent document and much more balanced. It is, in a sense, quite positive, comparing where the reserves are now with two or three years ago, when the new reserve force 2020 programme was launched, but it leaves me with a number of concerns. I will confine my remarks to the Army, because it seems both larger and to have more problems than the Royal Air Force reserves or Royal Navy reserves, which the report is genuinely fairly positive about. The first area that comes to mind is the absolute shambles of reserve recruitment in the Army—the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, touched on this. The Capita performance was dreadful. This came to the attention of the external scrutiny team, which repeated its view that this should be fully reviewed again; it is likely to repeat that even more strongly this year. The situation was saved by the Army itself, which devoted considerable local resources to recruiting. Because it was doing Capita’s job for it in the local area, the numbers in the Army reserve, with a little cheating on the side—quite significant cheating, really—have roughly reached the target of 30,000. The cheating consists of labelling anybody who has completed phase 1 training a member of the trained reserve. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has brought out—much more richly than I could—the difference between the phase 1 reserve basic training and even the old definition of phase 2 training, where they have been trained in trade, is quite significant. The relabelling, incidentally, probably caused a bounce in the numbers of about 1,500. My second concern regarding recruitment is over the whole concept of effectiveness. The report puts a question mark over the whole training and involvement of reserves. The central issue here is how we measure the effectiveness of these reserves, because there is almost a sleight-of-hand concept whereby you have lost 20,000 trained soldiers but you have 30,000 reserves, and it will be all right. How many reserves are needed to make up a fully trained soldier? That must surely be a question that we have to address to know whether replacing full-time soldiers with reserves is valid. On replacement in the specialist trades, it is very clear—overly clear—that only by taking people who are doing specialist day jobs in their day-to-day life do you get that effectiveness. When it comes to combat roles, I am sure we simply must not think in terms of one for one Another area that has been mentioned is development. The report particularly brings out the problem of developing an effective officer cadre but the emphasis is on the need for involvement in real operations—I think the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, touched on this; the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, certainly did—and a requirement for continuity of training, to keep up both the skills and morale of the individuals I move on to retention and duration. Military people are very expensive, because they do not really do anything. They do in civil emergencies, but most of the time we are training them to be capable. Therefore, if we do not have the military personnel capable for a reasonable period, the expense of training them to be capable is enormous. Retention is therefore crucial to get this in-depth training, development and good value for money. How do you get retention? People need to feel capable and wanted, and to feel that they are being used well Finally, on money, in Future Reserves 2020—FR20—£1.88 billion of ring-fenced money was allotted. That has created the improvement found in the report, but that money will soon run out. The reserves’ needs will have to be set against other challenges in defence—to paraphrase the Secretary of State’s response—and, frankly, that is code for cuts. The Armed Forces have worked hard to make our reserves more effective. I hope the Government will not let this slip away.