Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the effect of the reduction in armed forces personnel on (a) total armed forces numbers in Scotland, (b) individual regiments in Scotland and (c) the sustainability of all of Scotland's current regiments.

The hon. Member will be fully aware of the commitment made to the House by the Defence Secretary on Monday 22 March that the transformation of the Armed Forces will see no redundancies of our personnel or deletion of capbadges. He was also clear that there would be no further major unit deletions beyond those announced to the House. Whilst the announcement sets out some of the structural changes which will be implemented, this transformation requires significant reorganisation of force structures and so the Army will use the next several months to refine its work before releasing more detail.