Louise Sandher-Jones

I will write to the right hon. Gentleman when we have a further update. I am not familiar with the Guardian front page that he mentioned, but I will dig it out of an archive. I am sure he will appreciate that it is from a bit before I started paying attention to these things. We agree that our reserves are a vital source of expertise, and they are a critical link, as the right hon. Gentleman and others have noted, to industry and wider society. Reserves are central to the credibility of our deterrence, the defence of our homeland, our warfighting readiness and our ability to fight a protracted conflict. There is a consensus in many areas that there has been too much complacency for too long, as well as a failure to appreciate the importance of our reserves, a failure to make the most of them and a failure to invest in them. That is borne out in the data, which the right hon. Member will be familiar with. When I left the Army in 2020, our volunteer reserve force was around 30,000, and it was 26,000 by the time of the last election, so when we came into Government we were determined to turn the situation around. Our strategic defence review has highlighted the need for the reserve force to have increased scale, greater access to specialist skills and greater workforce agility, which is really important. We have accepted the recommendations and committed to the 20% increase in the medium term, as the right hon. Member notes, as well as a number of sweeping reforms to grow our strategic reserve. I will quickly provide an update on those two lines of work.