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133 Territorial Army
26 OCTOBER 2009
Territorial Army
134
in six months. Once we lose the culture of attending a
drill night on a Tuesday or Wednesday, pretty soon that
slot will be filled with something else. People will start
going to the cinema with their wives, and it will be
almost impossible to get them back in on a Tuesday
night. We should not forget that a TA soldier will be
paid just one quarter of a day’s pay for a drill night.
They may receive two or two-and-a-half days’ pay for a
weekend, so they can do three months of training on
drill nights for the equivalent. That is why the concession
is so minor. I believe that the Minister said today that
giving one drill night back would cost £2.5 million, but
that is relatively small beer in the MOD budget. That is
why this is such a penny-pinching move, why it will
ultimately be so damaging to the Territorial Army and
why I call on him to think again, give greater concessions
and allow more drill nights.
Much of the debate has focused on training, and the
Minister has made it clear that he is convinced that all
soldiers being deployed to Afghanistan will receive the
appropriate pre-deployment training. Let us be clear
that regular units—formed units—may undergo some
18 months of pre-deployment training before they are
deployed on operations. At best, a TA soldier can
currently expect to be mobilised some three months
before being deployed to Afghanistan, the process
culminating in two weeks’ testing at the reserve training
and mobilisation centre at Chilwell. That is not always
the case; colleagues of mine have been mobilised at just
three days’ notice and have gone straight to the RTMC
to be tested.
The proposal is to have a system where the RTMC
will no longer be testing soldiers—it will be training
them. Already soldiers are being deployed to Afghanistan
at risk. The Minister said in the statement that no TA
soldier will be deployed at risk, but that was wrong.
This is a technical point, but I am concerned that if we
are no longer simply testing at RTMC, but training
there too, we will be deploying even more soldiers at
greater risk. That is fundamentally unacceptable.
The TA contains specialists—I am a bomb disposal
officer, although I am not currently in that role. Is the
Minister really expecting specialists such as me—a bomb
disposal officer—to be able to maintain their skills and
potentially be deployed to Afghanistan having had no
training for six months? That is ridiculous. I heard what
was said by my colleagues at the meeting that the
Minister attended this afternoon, so I know that he is
beginning to realise the strength of the feeling in all
parts of the House—it is being shown in this debate
tonight—that this is a fundamentally flawed decision.
Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): My hon. Friend
has referred persuasively to specialists’ training, but
does he agree that this is also about the training of
junior leaders and officers in the TA? If they do not
have interaction or training over a period of months
leading up to deployment, they have no capacity to do
their job and lead men in the field.
Mr. Lancaster: My hon. Friend makes a very important
point, on a subject that I was going to discuss, the
officer training corps at universities. One of the key
shortages in the TA at the moment is of junior officers—
there are simply not enough of them in units. One of
the key sources of junior officers used to be the officer
training corps, but they are now not going to receive
any training at all. We are cutting off that inflow of
junior officers, so I would be fascinated to know how
the Minister intends to replace it.
I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity
also to explain to the House exactly how the bounty
system will work for the end of this financial year. As
many hon. Members realise, not only do TA soldiers get
paid a daily rate but, providing they meet their minimum
requirements in days and in their military training tests,
they receive a bounty. That is a tax-free amount and,
depending on how long one has served, it can be up to
£2,000—or just under that sum. Having had their training
cut off, how are members of the TA going to achieve
their bounty requirements? It appears that commanding
officers might have the ability simply to wipe off days
and say, “There is no need to fulfil your man training
days for the year,” and that soldiers will only have to
pass their basic military annual training tests. Those
tests have already been reduced this year simply to
passing a first aid test, doing one’s personal fitness
assessment, which consists of doing a mile-and-a-half
run, press ups and sit ups, and a weapon handling test.
Is that really going to be the minimum requirement for
a TA soldier to get their bounty? Are we going to have
TA soldiers who pass a weapon handling test, yet the
first time they will get an opportunity to fire a weapon
is when they finally go to the RTMC, perhaps days
before they get deployed to Afghanistan? Is the Minister
really suggesting that that is adequate pre-deployment
training? I cannot believe for one second that he is.
I want to focus on the one Army concept, too. We
have made major advances in recent years in bringing
the two parts of the Army—the TA and the regular
Army—together. Now, when one goes on operations, as
I am sure that the Minister has seen for himself, one
cannot tell who is in the regular Army and who is in the
TA. That is a fabulous achievement for the TA over a
number of years. We run the risk of pulling the two
sides of the Army apart as a result of this decision.
After the reserve review, we formed some hybrid
regiments. For example, my former regiment, 101 Engineer
Regiment, will now have a regular headquarters, two
TA squadrons and two regular squadrons. With this
decision, the Ministry is basically saying to the commanding
officer, “We realise that you have one regiment, but you
now have two very different halves to it. You can train
this half, but you cannot train that half. This half can
go adventurous training, but that half cannot.” How
does that underpin the one Army concept? What will it
do to morale in the Territorial Army when they see their
regular counterparts able to train when they cannot?
Does the Minister not even begin to understand what
this decision is doing to separate the one Army concept?
Let me say a couple of words on the cadets. They play
a vital role in supporting future recruitment to the
regular Army and Territorial Army. Only last year, the
Prime Minister wrote to the Secretary of State for
Defence to ask him to increase the size of the cadet
force. How does this decision to reduce all funding for
the cadet force underline the Prime Minister’s request?
I want to end on the most important point, which is
the programme review for 2010. At the moment, TA
soldiers face a six-month cut in their training. All they
ask is for some reassurance that this cut will not continue
into the next financial year. We are asking TA soldiers