Defence

Debate between John Spellar and Madeleine Moon

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

When it comes to defence, we have to accept that without the right personnel with the right expertise and in enough numbers, the military cannot function. All the most sophisticated technology imaginable is useless if we do not have the skilled individuals to operate it. The planes cannot fly, the ships cannot sail and the vehicles cannot move without the people with the expertise. In essence, without people there is no military capability, and yet it is the people that we keep cutting.

Following the strategic defence and security review in 2010, there was a restructuring of the Army through a plan dubbed Army 2020, along with Future Reserves 2020 for the Army Reserve. The plan was refined in 2015. It proposed to reduce the number of Regular Army, or full-time, personnel from 102,000 to 82,000 and to increase the rebranded and re-enrolled reserve forces, or part-time personnel, from around 15,000 to 35,000 to make up the shortfall. On paper, that looks great. In April 2017, the Regular Army numbered 83,560 personnel and the Army Reserve 29,940. However, we need to dig deeper.

Reserve soldiers work hard as reservists, but many also have full-time jobs. They are required to complete a minimum commitment of days and training with the Army Reserve each year to be fully up to date and able to deploy in support of the regular Army. The completion of this training is not mandatory, but those who do not complete it are not considered qualified to fulfil their function during that given training year. Those soldiers who complete the training are awarded a tax-free bounty or bonus. This bonus shows how many reservists each year are ready and able to deploy quickly to support the Regular Army.

Over the last few years the number of Army Reserve soldiers has increased dramatically, from 21,030 in April 2015 to 29,940 in April 2017. That is an increase of 42% in the space of a few years. Those figures have been obtained from the Ministry of Defence through parliamentary questions. Given such an impressive increase, one would expect to see a proportional increase in those achieving the annual bounty as more and more reserve soldiers achieve their annual training targets. In April 2015, 14,270 achieved their bounty. That was 67.85% of the total Army Reserve. However, in April 2017, 14,930 got their bounty, representing just short of 50% of the total. That represents a 17.98% fall in the proportion of the Army reservists achieving their annual training targets.

The bounty is broken down into five levels. Each year that a soldier achieves a bounty, the next level is paid until they get to year five. Of the bounties awarded in 2017, 1,980 were for year 1; 1,470 were for year 2; years 3 and 4 were grouped at 1,310; and the figure for year 5 was 10,160. That is not a weighting one might expect, given the increased numbers of recruits. The numbers imply that the number of reserve personnel able to complete the training required of them in order to be considered fully up to date and able to support their regular colleagues has been pretty stable but not growing. Despite the 42% growth, the number of reserve soldiers able to fulfil the minimum commitment set out by the Government is still at the same level. The growth in the Army Reserve is a paper growth, not a real growth.

The Government’s expectation is that people will be able to marry up having a full-time job with the capability to operate at the same level as a full-time member of our armed forces. That assumption is being made as a result of a cost-saving decision to cut the Regular Army, and it is simply unrealistic. We now have a Regular Army of about 78,000 and an effective reserve strength of roughly 15,000, with both barely able to fulfil their required duties, especially as the Regular Army was previously more than 100,000 strong.

There is a further problem with the Government’s approach. We are reliant on experts to operate in a sensible and effective manner equipment that is often at the cutting edge of technology. Those skills cannot be replaced overnight. The Government’s solution was to cut those experts from the Regular Army and attempt to re-recruit them as reservists with a £10,000 incentive scheme.

As of 1 October 2017, 4,350 ex-Regular Reserve soldiers had been recruited using the bonus incentive scheme since its inception in 2013. The £10,000 bonus is broken down into four instalments, called key milestones, that are paid out over four years provided that the soldier has completed a number of days of training and tests. Considering that it equates to almost a quarter of those cut from the Regular Army in a similar period, 4,350 is a good number. However, of those who have entered the scheme, 3,320 made it to key milestone 1, 2,370 made it to key milestone 2, only 1,280 made it to key milestone 3, and just 480 reached key milestone 4 —a drop-out rate of 88.97%. Therefore, despite the offer of a £10,000 bonus, these ex-regular soldiers are also unable to meet the requirements of a full-time job while being a fully trained reservist that is capable of deployment. We risk having an undermanned regular force that lacks the skills and knowledge that come from the experienced soldiers that we made redundant, and an overworked reserve force that is doing its best to make up the shortfall while its people also try to get on with a civilian career. Once again, the apparent cost saving is elusive.

Returning once again to the ex-regulars in the reserve forces, each ex-regular at the rank of private is on a basic rate of £50 a day. Many earn much more than that, but let us just go with the basic. The total amount spent since the inception of the scheme on just wages and bonus payments is roughly a minimum of £26.3 million. For that £26.3 million, we get an 88.97% drop-out rate and only 480 reserve soldiers. That is before any consideration of the cost of restructuring both the Regular Army and the Army Reserve. We are cutting full-time capable soldiers and replacing them with people of whom we expect too much.

The Government have created a personnel problem in our armed forces that threatens to spiral out of control. We all acknowledge that the men and women in our armed forces, whether regulars or reserves, are dedicated professionals who are asked to do a difficult and demanding job, but their numbers have been cut to dangerously low levels and we are losing vital expertise. To make up the shortfall, we have put in place increased, unrealistic and unfair burdens on the reserve forces, which are also made up of honest, hard-working people, in the name of a cost saving that appears to be nothing at all.

[John Spellar]

The immensely frustrating factor in all this is that the Ministry of Defence and the services seem to be replicating exactly the same mistakes that were made in the “Options for Change” White Paper at the end of the cold war. They are pushing regulars out and creating an atmosphere in which people think that the forces are not recruiting, and they are damaging morale. Then, during the Christmas period, they spend however much they did on blitzing the airwaves to try to attract people in an atmosphere in which people are seeing those who have been forced out of our services.

[Mrs Moon]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Some statistics released today show that 71% of businesses in the service sector are finding it difficult to recruit from the skilled workforce, and the figure for manufacturing is 76%. We are operating in a climate where skilled people are at a premium. The armed forces had skilled people, but they sacked them and, rightly enough, the business community has grabbed them. We then tried to bring them back into the armed forces by offering them a bonus, but that has not worked. We have managed to keep only 480 of them. It is shocking, irresponsible and downright dangerous. This is an unpredictable world, and we cannot afford to play games. We are not showing our friends and allies our willingness and ability to support them and to support our own interests around the globe if we are not retaining and training our full-time personnel.