Armed Forces: Redundancy

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, this is no new announcement. The department briefed the press at 2 o’clock yesterday but those being briefed were not allowed to leave the building until the WMS was laid. That is exactly what happened when the noble Lord’s party was in power; nothing has changed. We have gone out of our way to keep both Houses informed and will continue to do so. In the Oral Statement on the SDSR in October, the Prime Minister announced that the MoD would reduce the Armed Forces by 17,000 and that this would necessitate redundancies. That has been discussed in this House, including in an Urgent Question two weeks ago.

Yesterday, the Defence Secretary updated the other place, as I did here in a WMS, on the dates on which the various areas of the Armed Forces will look for redundancies. The RAF published its details yesterday; the Army and Navy will do so in April. Decisions on specific individuals will not be made until September. I must make it clear that we are not hiding anything and, as I have said before, I am always happy to organise briefings for any noble Lords in the MoD.

The noble Lord asked me about 2020. We have a clear view. As stated in the SDSR, the Future Force is structured to give us the ability to deploy highly capable assets quickly when needed but also to prepare a greater scale and range of capabilities if required. The aim is to do so affordably and in a way that minimises demands on our people, with five central concepts: readiness, reconstitution, reinforcement, regeneration and dependency. This flexible approach will allow us more effectively to counter the threats that we are most likely to face while maintaining the ability to respond to different threats in future.

The noble Lord asked me about further cuts. I can confirm to him that there is still a lot of work to be done on this; we are having a lot of discussions in the department, and I assure the noble Lord that the House will be the first to hear.

The noble Lord asked me about Afghan redundancies. Those engaged in combat operations for which they are in receipt of operational allowance, within six months of deploying on or recovering from those operations, on the day when the redundancy notices are issued will not be made redundant unless they are volunteers for it. I hope that that makes it clear.

The final question was what will happen when a serviceman or servicewoman is made redundant. All personnel will be entitled to receive support to transition to civilian life. Personnel leaving under the redundancy programme will qualify for the level of resettlement support for which they would have been eligible had they completed the commission or engagement on which they were serving when made redundant. We expect most if not all personnel to qualify for the full resettlement programme and the comprehensive services offered by the career transition partnership—the arrangement between the MoD and Right Management Limited. The package includes training courses, job-finding and individual counselling, CV and job interview preparation, analysis of transferable competences, conversion and skills enhancement training and information services. Under this package, job-finding support is available for up to two years after leaving the military.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I remind the House of the benefits of short questions, rather than speeches, so that we can get in as many noble Lords as possible.