Member

On the subject of our allies, it would be useful in encouraging a strategic reserve—at the moment I am afraid it is more hypothetical than actual—to emulate perhaps the Nordics, who insist that their reservists come back for a day or two a year in order to have a kit muster, a bit of a briefing and a bit of bonding. In that way they seem to hold people in, in a way that we simply do not. In this country, we still have the assumption that people will do their time as a regular, and then they will leave and not look back. I am sure the Minister would agree that that needs to change, and that it is a cultural rather than a management or structural issue at the moment. Until we get into the mindset that service is, if not for life, then ideally for a working life, I fear we will not be able to provide the Government with the sort of person-power that is necessary to sustain future operations in a pre-war environment.