| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Soames: I hasten to give my hon. Friend that absolute assurance. That must indeed be the case, and I think he will find that the ACGS will be proud to pay.
Sir Geoffrey Pattie: I should be interested to hear whether he is actually proud to pay, but I am glad to know that he will have the opportunity to pay.
The Territorial Army wants the chance to go overseas and train and exercise alongside regular units. Therefore, as much of the training day budgets as possible should be oriented towards making the training as exciting as possible, because that is why people join. In the context of "one Army", I should like mission statements to be developed for all TA units. It is important for members of the TA to know whether they will be used as independent units or whether they are individual people who will be used as gap-fillers. Work remains to be done in issuing those mission statements.
The idea of integrating the TA properly into the"one army" concept should not work against the concept of having a very senior TA officer at what I would describe as the pinnacle of the officer structure. Let us face it, to attract the brightest and the best into the TA and then retain them, which is equally important, it is important that they see the opportunity to get right to the top-- by which I mean an appointment at two star level.
I very much welcome the Bill and I hope that it will soon pass through the House.
Mr. Menzies Campbell (Fife, North-East):
Those who have spoken have set admirable examples of brevity and relevance, which I shall do my best to follow.
I hope that once the Bill becomes law it will re-invigorate the reserve forces. It will give a new reason for the commitment and training that is already required. It will help retention, which was mentioned, and do much to increase morale, which many people acknowledge has been fragile in recent years.
It is right that members of the reserves will be able to be involved in activities that, although not of a strictly military nature according to the traditional definition, such as peacekeeping, are none the less activities in which our regular forces will be employed rather more frequently in future than any of us may have expected. If there are more opportunities and more possibilities of using the training that is currently required, those who undergo that training will be less likely to want to leave, which is bound to
have an effect on the high turnover. We should remember that members of the reserves often bring unique skills to the theatre of operation, especially in medicine and interpreting--skills which I understand are frequently in short supply in the Regular Army.
Broadly speaking, as the speeches have shown, the Bill enjoys the support of the House and has been given a fair wind, but several issues need further consideration. Some have been mentioned, but I shall mention others simply to place them on record. I do not necessarily require the Minister to respond today or even by letter immediately afterwards--I simply put down markers for issues which may require more detailed consideration in Committee.
On high-readiness reserves, I am worried about the possible problem of discrimination due to employers not being prepared to take the risk that an employee might be called out for up to nine months at relatively short notice. There is an obvious possibility of discrimination, but there is another, perhaps more insidious, possibility--that an employee's prospects for promotion in an organisation might be affected if the employee were subject to the high-readiness reserve commitment. It may be asking a great deal of human nature to expect an employer, choosing between two candidates of equal experience and qualification for one position, to manage to put out of his or her consideration the fact that one of them might be subject to the commitment involved in membership of a high-readiness reserve. That will require monitoring on the part of those responsible for such matters once the Bill has passed into law. Although one hesitates to talk about the need for specific organisations or structures for that purpose, that issue will be, at least in the first instance, a live issue in the mind of employers and--perhaps more significantly--of employees.
The Minister spoke about the maximum term of service that those who sign a special agreement to serve can be called up to serve. Notwithstanding the way in which he dealt with it in his speech, that issue will be revisited in Committee and perhaps even on Report. I do not wish to canvass the competing arguments that have been made about that issue, but obviously it needs further consideration.
I shall briefly discuss those who will come to be called sponsored reserves. We need to demonstrate realism about that proposal, for the following reason. We were all extremely impressed--as we should have been--by the extraordinary support that British Aerospace gave the British air effort in the Gulf war. We should remember, however, that British Aerospace was already in Saudi Arabia, there was a pre-existing infrastructure and it was actively seeking to demonstrate how well it could support the Tornado aircraft because it was actively seeking to persuade the Saudi Government--which it subsequently did--to acquire 48 of the aircraft. Those were special circumstances and it behoves us to be careful in making too many long-term judgments on the basis of such circumstances.
The other point about sponsored reserves which seems to be significant is as follows. It is envisaged that there will be active members of the reserves with a minimum training commitment, but to what extent will they be trained to survive on the battlefield? If they are expected to perform those functions, for which there appears to be the possibility of a contract, that may well place them in
circumstances in which their capacity to survive could be severely tested. That may or may not fit easily into their other obligations, but it is an issue that must be considered.
Like others, I am worried about the notion that national health service trusts are writing into the contracts of some of their specialists that they cannot join the reserves. The fact that, even in the Gulf, we needed to deploy a field ambulance unit from Glasgow from the reserves shows the extent to which, in time of crisis, reliance on reserve units is necessary in the medical field. It would be a curious reflection on the responsibility that national health service trusts accept or bear if they were to persist in actions of the type described. I hope that the Secretary of State for Health may find it appropriate to take up the issue with national health service trusts which have embarked, or may be about to embark, on implementing such proposals.
Manpower is another issue. The purpose of reservists is to ensure that in a crisis the services can draw on skilled and trained people. The Minister will accept that there would be a certain amount of reservation--no pun intended--in the House if it were felt that the purpose of the proposed legislation was to overcome circumstances in which there were too few regulars by using reservists.
A written answer on 12 March 1996 at columns507-8 shows that only seven out of 54 Army regiments are currently at their full establishment level. No doubt, this is a matter of which the Minister is well seized and he is seeking, so far as is available to him, to take steps to remedy it. I believe that in the House and in the country there would be some resistance to the notion that the purpose of increasing training and opportunities is to provide not a supplement but a substitute.
I welcome the proposal in clause 56 in relation to the possibility of the involvement of reserves in humanitarian, disaster relief and peacekeeping operations. The Minister may be aware that some non-governmental organisations, particularly Oxfam, have expressed some reservations about this as they are concerned that the humanitarian, disaster relief and peacekeeping roles should not be expanded to include the direct provision of relief. They have raised certain issues about military involvement not always being seen as entirely neutral but rather as political. They also raised issues about cost-effectiveness and referred to the mismatch of culture--the mentality of the soldier being always one of solving the problem, whereas the success of relief operations sometimes depends on a rather different approach. Those issues will have to be considered in Committee stage.
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood):
It always gladdens the heart when the grand hussar of British politics opens a debate--never more so than on this occasion. He never transmits with the mute button on, he comes over strength five, loud and clear. I agreed with every word in the speech of my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces.
It is most encouraging that the reserve forces should have my right hon. Friend's enthusiasm behind them at this important legislative juncture and that Her Majesty's
Government, far from setting in place a series of reductions, can be instituting a framework that will offer the reserve forces opportunities to be used infinitely more widely in the defence of the realm and in peacekeeping operations.
We should bear in mind the examples set by the United States. I refer to the air reserves. For example, 60 per. cent. of the air defence of the continental United States is done by the Air National Guard and the United States Air Force reserve. In the Gulf war, 50 per cent. of the air transport was carried out by reserves from the United States air forces. We also have the supreme examples of Israel and Switzerland. The operational capability of Israel's air force, which has a large militia component, is second to none.
An honorary air commodore is sitting in front of me and an honorary colonel is sitting behind me, so it behoves me to be brief. What my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) said needs to be borne in mind. At RAF Northolt in my constituency, which is the only No. 11 group sector station of erstwhile Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain that is still a flying station, we have No. 1 Maritime Headquarters Unit of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. When I visit it, I am always struck by the extremely high calibre of the personnel--officers and other ranks, men and women. There is now a galaxy of talent, a wealth of expertise and professional skill in the civil community which our armed forces need to use more effectively. The Bill will enable them to do just that.
In the reform of the reserve forces, I urge the Government to retain, as much as possible, formed units. The territorial connections of units of the reserves in all three armed forces are exceptionally important. I ask that Her Majesty's Government be imaginative and to recognise that modern simulation, for example, enables much more worthwhile training to be done in a relatively short time and means that there is a premium on the expertise, or the potential expertise, of the part-timer and the reservist which was not previously available.
When we are looking at sponsored reserves, again on the air side, I urge Her Majesty's Government to use sponsored reservists in the flying training schools so that they wear a uniform and so that the instructors are not--how should I put it--blazered and flannelled but clearly military, not just in orientation but in dress and appearance. With respect to the airlines, I hope that Her Majesty's Government will recognise that often airliners will have to be taken up, commandeered and put to military use. In those instances, I urge that the crews be required to be members of the sponsored reserve. The contractors who are providing the engineering personnel more and more at Royal Air Force stations should be sponsored reservists as well.
Finally, I refer to peacekeeping. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries pointed out, the Royal Auxiliary Air Force has exceptionally valuable capability, as the Gulf war experience proved--including aeromedical and air movements expertise. The Royal Air Force regiment squadrons can be used to secure airheads in particularly troubled and difficult zones.
6.1 pm
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |