4 PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE USE
OF RESERVES
17. The Department is changing the structure of the
Reserve Forces. The Territorial Army is being restructured to
fulfil its primary role to augment the Regular Army for large-scale
operations, and, secondly, to support smaller scale enduring operations
whilst the Regular Forces are stretched. Responsibility for the
Royal Naval Reserve and Royal Marines Reserve has been unified
under a single Commander of Maritime Reserves and the Royal Navy
is working to agree a detailed requirement for its Reservists.
The Royal Air Force has adopted a 'Total Force Concept' where
Regulars and Reserves are becoming more closely integrated.[39]
These changes have been planned and are now being implemented
with little understanding of their cost or that of the Reserve
Forces as a whole. The Department acknowledged that it ought to
know more about the cost but that the picture is complicated.
The Department is planning to apply an existing costing mechanism
to build a better picture of the cost of the Reserve Forces and
it intends to consult the National Audit Office about the results.[40]
18. Currently, the Royal Navy is not as heavily committed
to operations as the other Services and consequently few Royal
Naval Reservists are deployed. Despite shortfalls in Regular Naval
manpower and overstretch on operations and standing tasks, almost
no use is being made of Reservists in these roles either.[41]
As Figure 1 shows, only three Royal Naval Reservists are currently
on deployment. The Department said that it is making worthwhile
use of its Reserves but their roles were now mainly in guarding
ships and personnel. The Royal Navy was currently looking at where
it needed to use Reservists.[42]
19. Under the Reserve Forces Act 1996, a Reservist
can generally only be deployed for a maximum of 12 months in any
three year period. Taking into account the needs of Reservists,
their families and employers the Department has further undertaken,
where possible, to limit the deployment of Reservists to a maximum
of 12 months in every five years. Thus, of some 9,000 Reservists
deployed on operations in 2003, most will not be available again
until 2008. Use of the Territorial Army has been so intense that
a significant proportion of its trained strength (around one third)
cannot be called out for a number of years without compromising
the Department's undertaking on frequency of deployment. In the
event of a demanding large-scale operation it is likely that Reservists
would be called out according to the 'one year in three' criteria.[43]
The Department is running some risk at current levels of deployment
of the Territorial Army and may in future have less capability
to deploy to a large operation. The intention under new structures
is that the Regular Army should take more of the burden in future
on enduring operations.[44]
20. In order to improve recruitment by making better
use of resources, the Regular Navy, Army and Royal Air Force have
taken over responsibility for recruiting Volunteer Reserves. The
Department undertakes analyses of demographic and societal trends.
Forecast reductions in the number of working age people and the
changes in the health and physical fitness of the population mean
that recruitment may become more difficult.[45]
The Department is looking more towards the Regular Reserves, ex-Regular
personnel, many of whom might be interested in becoming Volunteer
Reserves.[46]
21. The Department also monitors information on areas
of diversity such as race and gender. However, the Department
does not collate statistics on the educational background of its
Reservist officers to demonstrate, from a wider socio-economic
perspective, whether or not the top ranks of the Reserve Forces
are representative of all sections of society as this information
is not held centrally.[47]
22. We asked the Department for data on the numbers
of Reservist Officers who were commissioned from the ranks, with
an indication of how far they progressed.[48]
The information provided by the Department is summarised at Figure
4. It shows that a significant proportion of Reservist officers
are being commissioned from the ranks. The Maritime Reserve has
the highest proportion of officers commissioned from the ranks,
and the proportion in the Territorial Army personnel has been
rising.
Figure 4: Reservist officers commissioned
from the ranks
39 C&AG's Report, part three Back
40
Q 10 Back
41
C&AG's Report, para 3.20 Back
42
Q 4 Back
43
C&AG's Report, paras 3.6 and 3.11 Back
44
Q 44 Back
45
C&AG's Report, para 4.6-4.7 Back
46
Q 102 Back
47
Q 71 Back
48
Q 101 Back
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