Earl Howe (Con)

My Lords, I wish to intervene very briefly in support of my noble friend Lord De Mauley. I declare my interest as a former Defence Minister and as the Minister who was responsible for piloting the Reserve Forces Act 1996 through your Lordships’ House; I suspect that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, is the only person present who might remember that, having directly witnessed it. I declare a further interest in that my wife, who is the lord-lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, is the president of the South East Reserves Forces’ and Cadets’ Association. In mentioning my part in giving birth to the 1996 Act, I do not wish the Committee to suppose that I am opposed to changing it. I am not an old reactionary—at least, not in this regard—as I am the first to recognise that the world as it was in 1996 is not the world we are confronted with today. When it comes to the Government’s stated aim of placing greater emphasis on our Reserve Forces in creating a more lethal and integrated force model for defence, I am wholly in favour. However, in acknowledging the deficiencies of the 1996 Act against that policy backdrop, we should not at the same time downplay its strengths. One of its major strengths, as other noble Lords have emphasised and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, so well described, is to acknowledge the importance of ensuring the buy-in of the civil community in the delivery of well-supported, well-motivated, administratively efficient reserves and cadet units.