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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. We must now move on to the debate on the Territorial Army.
Territorial Army
1 pm
Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important subject. It is a measure of its importance that it is only a month since my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) raised the same subject on the Floor of the House. The attendance today of my hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), for Canterbury, for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) and for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) and of the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth)--and, indeed, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell)--also testifies to its importance.
People may well ask why it is necessary to raise the subject so soon after the previous debate. There are various reasons, not least the fact that certain parts of the response by the Minister for the Armed Forces to the last debate--I say this will all due respect to the Minister, and acknowledge that he cannot, of course, prejudge the outcome of the strategic defence review--raised more questions than they answered. Therefore, I want to raise again some crucial points matters affecting the Territorial Army.
It is estimated that, over the past decade, some 750,000 people have, in one way or another, passed through the Territorial Army and received TA training. The TA's present strength is 55,000, and there are 35 infantry battalions. The signals coming from the strategic defence review are that it is principally the infantry battalions that are under threat, which could affect as many as 20,000 members of the TA.
My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury previously gave a very eloquent explanation of the TA's wide-ranging role. The TA has a very obvious military role, in that it gives us a consistent base of basic military knowledge that can be called on in times of national emergency. We should remember that there are even now TA members in the Falklands, and that we called on them considerably during the hostilities in the Gulf. I am sure that the House remembers Dr. Charles Goodson-Wickes, a former distinguished Conservative Member of Parliament who served in the House when the Conservatives were in government, and who went to the Gulf as a reservist. We have had up to 1,500 people reservists in Bosnia, among whom the TA is still playing a major role. So the TA has a military role--it is not simply a cosy organisation that might be needed at some stage, but is already very actively employed.
The TA has other subsidiary, although still important, roles--not least that of training civilians. At my branch of the TA, which is part of an extremely proud and long-serving regiment--the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment--I met Private Parker, a young woman who had been unemployed. She trained as a chef in the TA, and is about to go on to serve in the Regular Army for six months. She will then be able to take up civilian employment, having gained a range of qualifications that she did not have before she joined the TA.
The TA has a role in the welfare-to-work initiative, and, of course, uses and employs students who find that the TA offers a financial as well as a character-building advantage. It therefore has several subsidiary civilian roles in addition to its obvious military one.
The TA also employs a vast range of people. In our local TA branch, there are chartered surveyors and doctors as well as unemployed 17-year-olds, brought together and learning from one another. I therefore do not think that I have to persuade anyone of the value of the TA, but we have to ask whether, given the sterling work it does, it is really sensible to reduce its strength substantially in order to promote greater numbers in the Regular Army. There is a failure of logic in such a proposal.
The Regular Army is already about 5,000 under strength. In his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury, the Minister for the Armed Forces said that it should not be, that there should not be such gaps, and that we should not use the TA to plug those gaps. However, the gaps exist, and it does not seem sensible--if the Minister wants to dispute this, he can do so when he replies--to increase the gap by creating a greater requirement for the Regular Army, which is not up to strength now, and taking away from the TA, much of which is fully up to strength.
The Minister will doubtless say that last year was a wonderful year for recruitment for the regulars, and that we recruited 97 per cent. of our target, but if there are already gaps, we need to recruit more than 100 per cent. to make any impression at all. If we recruit less than the target, we are simply augmenting the gap. Any gap is regrettable, and it can be dealt with, but the way to do so is not by cutting wholesale into the territorials.
If we cut the number of TA centres and start reducing the number of TA battalions, people will not travel miles and miles to join the TA. The TA operates essentially at a local level, and people will not travel all that far if their local centre disappears.
I deal now with an issue to which the Minister failed to respond adequately in the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury. The role of the cadet forces had, quite rightly, been mentioned, but the Minister said:
If we cut huge numbers of TA battalions and greatly reduce its strength, it follows, as night follows day, that the TA centres will disappear. If they do, the army cadet force is simply not going to be able to function as it does at the moment. The latest figures suggest, so the Army tells me, that 30 per cent. of recruits have cadet experience, so the cadet force clearly has a major role to play in supplying and backing up the Regular Army.
My local battalion is an infantry battalion. No army can function without a capable infantry. I know that we are in the age of high technology, but no matter how much ground is won, the infantry are required to hold it. In army tactics, if a steady progression is being made into enemy territory, all sorts of technology can be used to win the ground--ranging from tanks to the most modern missiles--but there is no substitute for the infantry when it comes to holding the ground. Therefore, if the TA is to be cut, it seems rather odd that the infantry is under threat.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury):
Our most recent conflicts in the Gulf and the Falklands were fought over
Miss Widdecombe:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The two conflicts demonstrate the point that I was trying to make, and give force to his argument.
My local battalion is fully up to strength, which is more than can be said for many of the regulars. It stands at 503, and has a turnover of about 25 per cent. a year. Therefore, in any given year, 125 people are entering and leaving. Of course, those who leave do so with training and knowledge that they did not have when they joined, and that might be a future resource for the country. The battalion covers Kent, Sussex and east Surrey--although it is not the only battalion operating in those parts--and it has a Victoria Cross to its credit. We should remember that.
During the previous debate on the TA, the Minister made a rather odd comment. He said:
"I do not understand how the right hon. Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) has gained the impression that we are in any way diminishing the role of the cadets--we have supported them."--[Official Report, 8 April 1998; Vol. 310, c. 315.]
That is very odd, because the cadets use TA centres. The army cadet force is based on local centres that the TA provides.
"We did not undertake the strategic defence review to create a monument to the past, but to create effective fighting capability for the future."
He also said that the reserve
"is predicated on home defence".--[Official Report, 8 April 1998; Vol. 310, c. 316-17.]
The presence of a VC--the highest honour in active service--should show that there is rather more to the territorials than simply looking after home defence and plugging a few gaps.
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