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4.59 pm
Patrick Mercer (Newark): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar). His points about PAX were extremely well made and apposite.
In the two years during which I have been in the House of Commons, I have never heard the armed forces spoken of here except in the most glowing terms. Is it not a disgrace that, on a Thursday afternoon, so few of us can be here to fight their corner?
I pay tribute to the two services that do not seem to have had much of a crack of the whip in the Gulf, as far as I can see. We must remember, as my gallant colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) pointed out, that the Royal Navy played an extremely important part in the Gulf conflict. Although its role was clearly minor, that was no fault of the Navy. And without the Royal Air Force, the Gulf campaign simply could not have been won. Air supremacy was crucial and ground operations could not have continued without the dedication of the Air Force, which had been at war not just during the Gulf campaign itself, but for the 12 years before that.
I want to go on record as expressing my undying admiration for those two services, which are both equipment intensive. The Army is manpower intensive. At the end of every conflict, be it the last Gulf war or the Balkans campaigns, a series of cuts are introduced on the armed forces, probably on the pretext of there being some peace dividend. I refer first to "Options for Change", which, as a serving officer at the time, I found extraordinarily hard to admire. Secondly, I refer to the strategic defence review, which got the personnel bills so badly wrong that 3,000 were added back to the figure for cuts, although this Government have never met that.
Without doubt, the White Paper that is coming up in the autumn will cut the forces again, yet look at what has happened even in the brief period since the end of the Gulf war. There have been two operational deployments. One was a stealthy deployment of a complete company of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment, which more than doubled the combat power of British troops in Afghanistan—what price now the fingers being stuck in the mangle? The other involved sappers going out to the Congo. Neither was particularly technical. Both depend on manpower. The crucial point, which I shall make throughout my speech, is that if we ignore manpower—if we go for equipment rather than manpower and for fire rather than manoeuvre—we will get it wrong yet again.
Before we look down the list of what the Army believes is going to happen to it, I shall, if I may, pay a quick tribute to the Queen's Royal Lancers. The regiment is associated with Nottinghamshire and it recruits in my constituency. It fought in the Gulf and did a good job. We are told, however, that the six main battle tank regiments are about to lose a squadron each. It is not widely known, but those six regiments do not have enough tanks to go round anyway. Only two have enough to achieve full manning all the time.
It looks as though we shall lose about 400 Royal Armoured Corps soldiers, so I say this to the Minister: let us not get it wrong with our armoured soldiers. The battle for Basra depended heavily on Royal Armoured Corps troops. If we lose 400 trained, motivated, battle-
hardened Royal Armoured Corps soldiers, we will regret it. The four armoured reconnaissance regiments need their fourth squadrons back. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that that is where those 400 sabres ought to go.
Mr. Keetch: The hon. Gentleman knows something that I suspect a lot of people do not appreciate: the Royal Armoured Corps not only provides excellent equipment—the Challenger 2 was undoubtedly a success story in this campaign—but the soldiers can dismount from their tanks or AS 90s with weapons to act as infantry in support of infantry operations, particularly in peacekeeping roles. Armoured soldiers and armoured regiments, even light reconnaissance regiments, can multi-role in a combat environment, which normal infantry often cannot.
Patrick Mercer: That is an extraordinarily good point, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is quite right. The Royal Armoured Corps is immensely flexible and, with the advent of Apache attack aircraft, I have no doubt that the Royal Armoured Corps soldier will have to become even more flexible.
Let me now turn to the problem in the infantry. Whatever Ministers say—whatever Labour Members say—it is an established fact, or at least an established rumour, that two battalions will be scrapped. It seems that 600 posts will be saved in the infantry. This is to happen before any announcement in the shape of a White Paper. Forty battalions will be reduced to 38.
There is no doubt that the regiments that will be looked at most closely are those with second battalions. I suggest that if disbandments prove necessary, the Minister should look closely at regiments that cannot or will not recruit. Let me also tell him that we need foot soldiers above and beyond anything else. Forty battalions are stretched to the limit; 38 will find it impossible to operate.
This is all predicated on what is happening in Northern Ireland. The idea is to close down over the next two years and allow largely infantry formations to become available for disbandment. I plead with the Minister to consider the lessons of history. Every time this has happened before, we have immediately needed our manpower, or else we have ended up stretching the serving manpower to a point approaching breaking point.
I have no time to give examples, but the Minister knows them as well as I do. Regiments are sent to Northern Ireland apparently for six months, and then told while they are there that they must stay for eight months and must lose their Christmas holidays and holiday deposits—and of course there are all the ramifications involving families, girlfriends and other loved ones. That is simply not acceptable. It is the tangible face of overstretch.
I was interested in what the Secretary of State said about the Royal Irish Regiment. He said that it would not be disbanded. He is right, but the regiment has four battalions. It does not take the brains of an archbishop to work out what will happen if the garrison in Northern Ireland is reduced to 5,000, which is the aspiration, and a regular brigade is left there. What price the three
battalions of the home service force of the Royal Irish Regiment? Let me borrow a phrase from the Secretary of State. I simply do not accept that the three battalions of home service soldiers are safe. They are not: I challenge the Government to prove the contrary.My next point involves a dreadful old saw of mine. Yesterday, in the Select Committee on Defence, we heard from the Chief of Defence Staff that recruiting was going in the right direction, and we heard the same from the Minister today. We have heard that there are more people in the Army now than there were a year ago. I am sure that that is true, but let us look at the reality. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are 50 men below strength, and the Highlanders five below strength. As the Highlanders are brought up to strength by a company of 110 Gurkhas, they are actually 115 below strength. The King's Own Scottish Borderers are 35 below strength, and the Royal Highland Fusiliers 80 below strength. Most telling of all, two of the regiments that were warned for operations in the Gulf, the Black Watch and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, are below strength by 100 and 95 respectively. If they had suffered that number of casualties on operations, they would no longer have been combat effective.
I do not accept the Government's excuse on recruitment. I do not accept the Ministry of Defence's assurance that things are going in the right direction. These units are in a parlous state. Meanwhile, other units that are recruiting well are not allowed to bring their recruits in to train. I made that point earlier, so I will not labour it.
Let me return to the Minister's earlier reply about a blockage in the training system. We brought the problem to the Government's attention last year, and it was apparently solved. Now constituents of mine who want to join their county regiments are told that they cannot. It does not add up. I would love an explanation, because I have laboured under a complete lack of comprehension of the problem for several years. If the Minister can explain it, he is a better man than I am, but I do not suppose he needs to be told that.
Mr. Francois: For all the reasons that my hon. Friend mentioned, which I entirely agree with, there is no logic in reducing the number of infantry battalions, but if for some bizarre reason the Government were to seek do to that, it would be even more perverse to try to reduce those battalions, such as the Royal Anglian Regiment, that have an excellent record of recruitment and retention. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Patrick Mercer: I am grateful for that intervention. My mother's family served in the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment. My constituency abuts Lincolnshire. The loss of any battalion from the Army would be a disgrace. The loss of the Royal Anglian Regiment, swept away by a bureaucrat's pen after 300 years' dedication to the Crown, would appal me.
I am grateful for the House's forbearance. The Government know that they will try to cut the Army. The Minister may deny it but we have quotes, which we have already used today, from the MOD:
- "There may well be units to be disbanded, but it's not been finalised."
The Minister said earlier that we must not be afraid to change. He is absolutely right. We must embrace change. We must adapt. We must be modern and forward thinking with the armed forces. We must expand them, not reduce them.
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