Lord De Mauley (Con)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 46, 47 and 49 in my name. To understand the importance of these amendments, one needs to appreciate the significance of the nationwide membership of the RFCAs. The 2019 Sullivan report on the RFCAs, which recommended conversion to an NDPB, itself provides an explanation at paragraph 2.2.2, where it says: “A key strength of the RFCAs is their extensive volunteer membership (numbering around 8000), bringing with it a wide breadth of expertise and community links—without which the RFCAs would unlikely have access to the information and knowledge needed to discharge the duties … Their position as the link between Defence and the wider public, continuity of staff and expertise, and tri-Service drive enables the RFCAs to deliver across all functions, particularly community and employer engagement (the latter proven by the success on the Armed Force Covenant and Employer Recognition Scheme work strands). This is particularly valuable in cases where local knowledge and understanding may be limited in MoD customers”. What is proposed in the Armed Forces Bill is the removal of all the regional chairs from the central board—the new decision-making arm of the RFCA. If the Armed Forces Bill proceeds as drafted, the members who currently elect those chairs will be completely disenfranchised, with the consequence of a loss of defence’s connection with society and the advocates and supporters of the reserves and cadets across the UK. The members have made it very clear that this will be sufficiently significant that it will lead to a reduction in the membership to a negligible number. Is that really what the Government want, when they state in the strategic defence review their ambitions to increase the size of the reverses, to increase the number of cadet and to create a completely new homeland and critical national infrastructure defence force, and that a whole-of-society approach to defence is essential? In discussions with the MoD over the last 12 months, matters had developed to a point at which the MoD had agreed in writing, confirmed by a Government Minister at the RFCAs’ annual conference, that regional chairs would indeed sit as full members on the national board in order to protect the societal links and work done by the engaged and experience membership. Stepping back from that commitment, as the Bill does, is already being taken very badly by the membership. I do not blame the Minister; I do not believe that the implications of what is proposed have been explained to him. They cannot have been, because if they had he would not be proceeding with this. This is about something more important even than the Permanent Secretary’s perception of how he will improve his oversight of what, in the context of the MoD’s overall budget, is a relatively small amount of funding that the RFCAs receive and use on maintenance of the volunteer estate. It is about the country’s ability to defend itself in time of war, because the effect of Section 38 and Schedule 6 will do irreparable damage to the Government’s ability to defend the country through the use and expansion of the Reserve Forces, of which the RFCAs are a demonstrable key enabler. This will also have a damaging effect on the Government’s aim of growing the cadet forces, in which, again, local RFCAs are pivotal enablers. The Denny report, entitled The Impact and Value of School-Based Cadet Forces in the UK, identified that those with cadet service were statistically unlikely to be not in education, employment or training—something rather topical these days. Turning to Amendment 49, I mentioned earlier what the Sullivan report says about a key strength of the RFCAs being their extensive volunteer membership. I will give a couple of examples of how the membership helps defence. My first example is that in the first decade of this century, the country was mobilising reservists in large numbers to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to bolster the Regular Army. The Regular Forces live on the patch: there are welfare officers, commanding officers and RSMs’ wives—a whole machine that is wheeled in action to look after the welfare of the families left behind. For the reservists, who are scattered over the area from which their unit recruits, which can be several counties or several cities, there is no such welfare machine. That is when the RFCAs’ membership comes into action, visiting and offering help and advice. Reservists have the added complication of a civilian employer. An RFCA member who is an employer can visit them and explain what is happening and the legal position. I commanded a reserve regiment during the mobilisation of large numbers of reservists for Operation TELIC between 2003 and 2005. Without the support and influence of the RFCA, particularly with employers, the reserves would have responded less effectively. It allowed me to command and lead while employment matters could be successfully dealt with by the RFCAs. I know that other commanding officers had similar experiences. It was the RFCA that led on the work relating to employment that was subsequently woven into the Future Reserves 2020 White Paper. My second example is that, being apolitical, the RFCAs have been extremely helpful in defence, especially in the devolved Administrations. In Scotland, when the Government announced the expansion of the cadet forces in schools, one of the nationalist papers printed a story suggesting that this was about training child soldiers. Its apolitical position allowed the RFCA, through its members and connections, to persuade the Government in Scotland that that was not a fair representation. They agreed, and the story died. The SDR proposed increases in the size of the reserves and the cadets; the creation of a new homeland defence force; that defence should become a whole-of-nation responsibility; and that resilience in the civilian community needs to be improved. Therefore, it seems quite extraordinary that the RFCA’s membership, which could do so much to enable these things, should be abolished for no good reason. Further, as was said earlier, this is directly against the new Prime Minister’s drive on the devolution of power and influence outwards. Whereas the Reserve Forces Act 1996 included in its Schedule 4 detail on the grass-roots membership, this is completely and deliberately removed by Clause 4(2)(b) in Part 3 of Schedule 6 to the Armed Forces Bill. There would henceforth be no reference at all to membership in primary legislation, for the first time since 1908. Thousands of volunteers across the UK would immediately be disfranchised and lost. It has been suggested that the membership might be reinvented through secondary legislation; the Minister referred to this earlier. However, we all know that this is a poor way of doing it. It relegates the voluntary concept to a secondary level of importance and makes it much easier to amend, change and delete it. I beg to move.