Member

The noble Lord mentioned the estate; that is a sore point with me. I tried to attack it—I use “attack” because it is the right word—because it is, as he said, very poor. There is too much of it, and some rationalisation could be done to make it better. However, the issue that the new Armed Forces commissioner will face—remembering that that individual will not necessarily have an Armed Forces background—is that they will not necessarily understand the difference between regular forces and the unique role that the reservists play. If they have, as I say, the old-fashioned notion that these are just weekend warriors or that it is a drinking club, that would be unfortunate because that is certainly not what the Reserve Forces are today; they have not been so for many years.