Army Restructuring: Future Soldier — House of Lords, 2021-11-25
Topic: Defense
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I thank the noble and gallant Lord very much indeed for his initial reaction and for his very helpful observation that this is an Army that he would like to join, as I understood him to say. I think that says a lot The noble and gallant Lord raises important issues. He first of all mentioned the reduction in the number of personnel. I think he will be aware of this, but in the past we tended to have numbers in boxes and on pieces of paper, which was very comforting, but actually they did not reflect the number of people whom we could call on if the chips were down. For various reasons, the numbers were perhaps inaccurate, or people were unavailable, and they were not a regular or reliable indicator of who we had to hand. The intention behind all this is that, when we talk about these figures, they represent men and women who are on hand, ready to serve and can be called upon The noble and gallant Lord mentioned recruitment. I repeat what I said to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, that recruitment has had fairly positive progress in the past two or three years, and we hope that can continue. On the reservists, again, as I indicated, we have always had an interest in the reserve side of our Armed Forces. There is nothing to suggest that that is diminishing. The whole point about the new structures and flexibilities is that that will be increasingly attractive to them. He made the important point that that is only as good as the willingness of the reservists to be more involved and the willingness of their employers to release them. Attempts have been made to ensure that that is a more flexible territory, whereby reservists benefit from getting long periods off. On the whole, employers have a very positive attitude to reservists, so we hope that that attitude of co-operation will continue On AI, the noble and gallant Lord is quite right: it continues, as we discussed during the passage of the Armed Forces Bill, to be an intricate, complex and challenging environment. He is aware that, as far as the MoD is concerned, there is a defence strategy coming out fairly imminently, so I cannot say any more about that, other than to reiterate what I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that we are very clear that we must recruit to the Army people with skills that we need—and we will need the skills of people conversant with those areas of activity. The noble and gallant Lord makes an important point that we want to be sure that we have personnel who are of a calibre to cope with that new environment In relation to overall resilience and the Army’s ability to respond to the MACA requests, we have seen that very vividly and impressively articulated in the response to Covid—it is an important point. Bringing in recognition of the reserves and the appointment of the new company in York acknowledges that we need a way of steadily addressing that resilience issue so that we have a core of people poised to respond to these situations. We do not then necessarily take other forces away from what may be important deployed activity. I wish to reassure the noble Lord that implicit in the new structure is this essential component of flexibility and fluidity, so that there is much more movement and much more of a focus on having people available—maybe in smaller units; I accept that—to go to the job when the job needs to be done, wherever that job arises.