Military Personnel: Strike Action Cover

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As I indicated earlier, we exercise a robust test when we get a MACA request from another government department. Strict principles have to be observed, and we would never willingly offer help if we felt that it was available elsewhere in government or, indeed, from the commercial sector.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, MACA requests—that is, military aid to civil authorities—are being used routinely, when guidance states that military assistance should be used

“responding to emergencies or in maintaining supplies and essential services”.

Such requests create increased domestic pressure on our Armed Forces at a time when the Government are pushing ahead with cutting a further 10,000 troops from the size of the Army. Will the Minister confirm that the Government’s refresh of the integrated review will take account of this and halt any further cuts?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

To reply to the first part of the noble Lord’s question, it is the case that a proportion of our Armed Forces have been identified to be deployed to MACA tests—the figure I have at the moment is a total of 1,455. That is a relatively small proportion of our combined Regular Army and reservists. As I said earlier, we are comfortable with offering that help in terms of not compromising national security and not in any way impacting on our ability to do our fundamental task, which is the security of the realm.

As for the integrated review refresh, we are always vigilant about the nature of the threat, the character of the threat, and what we think we need to respond to it. We will be flexible and open-minded as to how to we submit our views to that integrated review refresh.