Defence Command Paper Refresh

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The Ministry of Defence recognises, as does the defence industry, that skills are important. About two weeks ago, I spent a great afternoon at the National Cyber Force, up at Samlesbury, with further education colleges from around Lancashire, including Blackburn and Bolton, and Greater Manchester, which came to bring young people amazing opportunities. We recognise that if we invest young, we will get the skills we need. It is absolutely the case that without the skills, defence will be starved of the oxygen we need to do our jobs.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I, too, wish the Secretary of State well and thank him for all that he has done. While I welcome the £2.5 billion additional investment in stockpiles and the improvements to readiness, he will know that unless we have highly trained service personnel in place to use them, then they are useless.

The refresh document says:

“People: our most important asset.”

In relation to people, the UK now has the lowest number of soldiers since the Napoleonic wars, which I think is quite dramatic. Will the Secretary of State strategise to increase our strength in numbers, to recruit young and capable people who want to defend this great nation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? On the plane, I sat next to a guy from Belfast who is 20 years old. He has signed up to the Army for 25 years. He wants a future—can we give him that?

[Mr Wallace]

That young man will have an excellent future in the armed forces, for as long as he wishes to stay. The Army is still recruiting; we have not all stopped everything. It is important to remember that we need to embrace our reserves. We have talked about that for a long time, but we have not done it. A single armed forces Act would help us do that. The Army will be over 100,000 people, of whom 73,000 will be regulars, but I believe the reforms in today’s refresh will make sure we are scalable should we wish to increase it. Whatever we do and whatever parties in this House come with pledges in the next election, we must ask ourselves whether it is just about funding people or will we be funding their equipment, vehicles, houses and barracks to go along with them. We cannot just have people without any of that, or we condemn them to a pretty miserable time, unprotected on the battlefield.