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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. We must now move on to the next debate.
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The subject of the next debate is of particular importance to hon. Members from constituencies throughout the United Kingdom, but particularly from Wales. Two or three infantry divisions are under threat. We should have more time in which to debate that issue. Many hon. Members from throughout--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not a matter for the Chair. The hon. Gentleman must know that. He is in fact taking time out of the limited amount that is available. It is the hon. Gentleman who secured the Adjournment debate who has the privilege of leading it.
Territorial Army
12.31 pm
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): The number of right hon. and hon. Members, on both sides of the House, who have taken the trouble on the last day of term to be in their places demonstrates the strength of concern felt on this subject. I am grateful to the Minister for the Armed Forces, for whom I have the highest respect, who will respond to the debate.
The Territorial Army faces a double threat: on the one hand, a cut of more than half its combat elements; on the other, an insidious move to becoming a mere support organisation for the Regular Army. Such a move would destroy its ethos and its attractions to good-quality people. Ironically, it would also reduce its ability to provide the very reinforcements that the Regular Army needs in peacetime in places such as Bosnia.
What is at stake is no less than the purpose and capability of our defence forces as a whole. Infantry, armour, artillery and combat engineer units cannot be quickly rebuilt. Unlike doctors or technicians, they have no counterparts in civilian life.
I resigned as a parliamentary private secretary and signed up to a demand for a proper strategic defence review. I would have been the very first Member of Parliament to welcome such a review if it had been carried out in the same open-minded way in which others were carried out. Other countries have recognised that, with smaller professional forces, volunteer reserve units can replace capacity in a less costly fashion than their regular counterparts. The cost today of a volunteer reserve unit is typically around a fifth of its regular counterparts. That is why our English-speaking cousins, the other main non-conscript countries--America, Canada and Australia--have all chosen to keep a volunteer reserve force, excluding regular reservists, equal to or larger than their regular armies.
In America, in December, six of the 15 higher readiness National Guard brigades began forming two divisions deployable at just 90 days readiness. In Australia, the Seventh Field Force, one of many largely territorial brigades, is being prepared for overseas projection at just 90 days' readiness, with the extra resources that it will need for that. Yet in Britain, with our TA already down to less than half the strength of our Regular Army, further cuts are planned.
The second threat is equally insidious: a change of philosophy, transforming the TA from an army-in-waiting into an organisation with a mere augmentation and support role for the Regular Army. Such an organisation exists in the United States--the US Army Reserve, which works in parallel with the National Guard. Although the US National Guard, with its formed regiments and brigades, with its fighting spirit and local connections, has the lowest wastage in the English-speaking world--the Australians come a close second--the US Army Reserve, whose units have a support and augmentation philosophy, has the worst, at a miserable 37 per cent. That is what our planners seem to want over here.
We do not have to look across the Atlantic. The Navy has already emasculated the Royal Naval Reserve. There was a letter in The Times on Saturday from a regular naval officer, arrogantly putting down a letter from someone
who was ex-RNR, and saying how pleased the new RNR should be to have no ships and simply fill berths in regular naval vessels. What he did not say was that the RNR is now the worst-recruited part of the reserve forces and is unable to match its pathetically small new target establishment. It is appropriate that the chiefs of staff should have selected an admiral to head the relevant tri-service working party.
Time and again, volunteer reserve units have proved their worth when we sorely needed them, from the Queen Victoria Rifles, whose heroic defence of Calais when the Army was withdrawing from Dunkirk won extremely rare praise from the German high command that they were fighting, to 1990, when the National Guard Artillery Brigade, which was located next to our division in the Gulf, was commented on by our own Brigadier Hammerbeck. He said, "My God. I shall never forget their first bombardment. The enemy commander told me he'd lost 90 per cent. of his forces in the first few minutes." The highest scoring allied forces armoured unit in that campaign was the 4th US Marine Reserve Tank Battalion, commanded by a volunteer reservist. These units cost the American taxpayer a fraction of the price of their regular counterparts, which releases money for vital equipment procurement.
British TA units, such as the splendid 5 PWRR in my constituency, could do it too, if they were given the modest extra resources to raise their readiness state; indeed, many of them did so in the last war.
Mr. Bill O'Brien (Normanton):
Will the hon. Gentleman associate the Yorkshire and Humberside Territorial Auxiliary and Volunteer Reserve Association with his remarks concerning the unit in his constituency?
Mr. Brazier:
I am delighted to do so, and to mention the proud record of Yorkshire, north-eastern regiments and regiments throughout the country, too.
Does the Minister, for whom I have the highest regard, really believe the message that he is being given by his officials in the Ministry of Defence: that British reservists are so inferior to their American and Australian counterparts that they are unable to provide proper fighting units and formations at sensible levels of readiness? He will be fully aware of how heavily infantry units in Bosnia rely on reservists. He must also be concerned that we face a further decline in the Army's profile in the wider community as the light of the last military presence winks out in areas throughout the country with the closure of territorial and cadet premises. However, those are not my main arguments. My concern is a strategic one.
Since 1815, defence planners have told Ministers that the next war would be over in a few weeks and would involve few casualties. From our own experience, in the Crimea through to the recent Russian experience in nearby Chechnya, defence planners have been proved wrong--frequently abruptly and surprisingly. The current configuration of our Regular Army, which has been reduced to just two divisions, allows us to deploy a single division in an expeditionary force. The ability to build that into a larger force depends on the combat elements of the TA.
Ministers should have asked how we can provide stronger forces within affordable budgets by harnessing the remarkable enthusiasm in the wider community. Why
has no evaluation been done of the deployable reserve brigades that America and Australia are developing? In the struggle for resources, the truth is that regular officers have squeezed the TA out and bolted it on to the backside of its regular counterparts.
When our TA infantry and yeomanry regiments cost one fifth of their regular counterparts, how can it be cost- effective to consider reducing them to a rump? The short answer is: easily--if two conditions are met. First, there must be an all-regular higher command structure of the type unique to Britain. We do not have even one TA major general, whereas the Australians have three and the Americans have one for every state. I am proud of our professional Army; I am not so proud of the clique of regular staff officers in the Ministry of Defence. I look forward to meeting some of them at the Select Committee--if our Chairman so decides.
The second condition is that there must be a belief--our planners seem, once again, to entertain that belief--that we will not have to fight a major war for many years to come. The Falklands and the Gulf wars were both fought over open terrain in areas containing virtually no civilians, but we could get sucked into serious fighting, just as the Americans did in Vietnam and the Russians did in Afghanistan and Chechnya. It could happen in Iraq or in the Baltic region, if the latter catches fire. In that case, we will need a much larger Army, and very quickly.
Mr. Bruce George (Walsall, South):
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) for allowing me to intervene briefly. The fact that there are so many Members here in the early afternoon is a warning to the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence that messing around with what is left of our reserves would be difficult and dangerous. The Defence Select Committee has already had two sessions on the reserves, and will certainly have more after the publication of the strategic defence review.
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