Contribution
My Lords, I have added my name to these amendments for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, set out so clearly and cogently. I do not intend to repeat them all, as I agree with everything he said, but I want to make a couple of wider points centred on the requirement for a regional approach to our reserves and cadets.
There has been wide acknowledgment of the benefits that such an approach would bring. However, a couple of things have not been mentioned to the extent that they should be. First, there is the matter of footprint. The Reserve Forces and cadets allow us a military footprint across the United Kingdom that is no longer possible with our sadly depleted regular forces. This matters. It means that defence and defence issues can be represented locally by people who are local; the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, pointed out one example of where this has been an inestimable benefit in Scotland. That is one very important point.
My other point concerns the matter of identity. Within military organisations, identity matters—identity of the group. In the regulars, it is perhaps identification with your ship, your regiment or your squadron but, as far as regulars are concerned, it is identity with your locality. That is fundamental to it, and that identity is fundamental to the effectiveness of any military organisation. The noble Lord, Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, said that the Bill does not seek to destroy the regional aspect of the Reserve Forces. That may be true to an extent, but he knows as well as anyone here that the regional nature of the Reserve Forces is not just about the wiring diagram. It is about the authority that those regional forces have; that is absolutely fundamental.
In response to an earlier amendment, the Minister said that devolution is achieved through overarching strategic direction and that mayors cannot do what they like. Actually, though, that is the whole point: within certain limits, they can. The point of devolution is giving them authority along with responsibility. There is overarching strategic direction, although it will not necessarily work in the case of mayors because you could have a Conservative mayor and a Labour national Government; I am not quite sure how far the Conservative mayor would follow the national Government’s overarching strategic objectives, but we are not discussing that matter here today. So I accept that there is an overarching strategic directive, but it is strategic. It is not operational or tactical. Therefore, local authorities will have a great deal of freedom to decide things, but they will need the authority to carry through on those decisions. Authority goes along with funding in many instances, but with other things besides. That is one of the reasons why Schedule 6 is potentially so damaging for the Reserve Forces.
This speaks to what we would term “mission command” in military parlance. You give overall direction on the broad objectives that you want to see achieved, but you leave a great deal of freedom open to your subordinate organisation—in this case, the regional forces—to decide how it is to be done. Yet they must have authority along with that responsibility. If mission command is to operate effectively, at a superior level, you need to listen to your subordinates’ concerns when they tell you that something simply will not work so you must come up with a different plan. At the moment, as the legislation is framed, the link between the subordinate and superior formations will be, at best, neutered and, at worst, cut off completely.
Amendments 46 and 47 seek to ensure that the RFCAs are properly represented at a senior level and that their voices can be heard. However, that plays both ways. If their voices are not heard, they will lack authority at the local level. If they lack authority at the local level, it will have an impact on recruiting and retention, with lower morale and lower effectiveness. Nobody in this Chamber wants to see that, I know.
Equally, Amendment 49 seeks to ensure that the RFCA’s wider membership is enshrined in primary legislation and that its breadth and diversity are retained so that, again, the wider community and regional links are retained and have credibility across that regional community.
As I said earlier in Committee, I have concerns about Schedule 6 overall. If we are to retain it, I plead with the Minister to take these issues away and correct those bits of it that will restore the authority and the voice of the local Reserve Forces and cadets, in particular through the RFCAs.