HC Deb 19 July 1961 vol 644 cc1242-8
The Secretary of State for War (Mr. John Profumo)

With your permission, Sir, and that of the House, I will make a statement about recruiting for the Regular Army.

I promised to keep the House in touch with progress in this matter. The latest figures show that as far as recruiting from civil life is concerned, we are having a good year. There is an increase of almost 12 per cent. over 1960. I believe that this encouraging fact is due to a great extent to the special measures which I announced in March and we are, of course, only now beginning to see their full effect.

It is now quite clear that television advertising is proving a most successful way of turning on the tap. It has produced an increase of about 20 per cent. in recruits over the same three months of 1960. I have, therefore, decided to extend the present television campaign during the late summer and the autumn. If the results continue to be good, I will arrange a further campaign for the winter and spring to begin after Christmas and extend into the middle of March. This will, in effect, double the scope of the original proposals.

I am anxious to link the Territorial Army as closely as possible to the recruiting drive. Within their ranks are men and women who have the future well-being of the Regular Army very much at heart and who have close contacts with families from which Regular recruits might well come. I am at present in the process of consultations with the Council of Territorial and Auxiliary Forces Associations to see how this can be done. The Council has promised to co-operate to the fullest possible extent.

There is, of course, another side to the picture, and this I call the plug. Clearly, if we are to reach our minimum target on time, we must do everything possible to stop soldiers leaving the Army once they are in it. Here, the picture is not so bright.

I have already told the House of the special measures we are now taking to ensure that recruits are reasonably treated and that they shall give the Army a good try. But we cannot afford to leave anything to chance and I have been carefully studying, with my colleagues on the Army Council, whether there are any particular features of Army life today which are causing discontent and which we can improve by removing legitimate grievances. I think that there are.

The chief one is the enforced separation of a substantial number of soldiers of the British Army of the Rhine from their wives and families because of the lack of married accommodation. I believe this is having a bad effect on the Army. We have vigorously attacked the problem and are now well launched on a programme which will result in the provision of an additional 8,000 quarters over the next three years. This will almost exactly double the existing number. Incidentally, it will effectively solve the separation problem. The first 2,000 of the new quarters will be ready within the next nine months.

As this programme will take time before its effect is fully felt, I propose that during the next two years married unaccompanied soldiers in B.A.O.R. shall have three free leaves a year to this country. I also propose that single men in B.A.O.R. shall during the same period have two free leaves to this country each year.

The House will recall that only recently I announced a new leave scheme for married unaccompanied Service men in theatres outside North-West Europe. My own visits to troops in the Near and Middle East have convinced me that conditions in some stations are still such as to make a tour of two years or more without any home leave most trying to single men. Accordingly, I propose that for the next two years single men in Cyprus, North Africa, Aden and the Persian Gulf shall have one free leave to this country during a tour of two years or more. These leave travel concessions will also apply to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.

I hope and believe that these steps will have a marked effect on morale, recruiting and prolongation. Therefore, the way is now open to launch a drive to get as many soldiers as possible to remain in the Army at the end of their National Service or their current engagements. To this end, I have decided to offer a bounty of £200 to Regular soldiers due to leave the Army before the end of June, 1963, with nine year's service or less, who extend their service by at least three years. This offer will be open as from today until the end of April, 1962. Similarly, a bounty of £200 will be offered to National Service men now serving who from today enlist on a Regular engagement.

I have already explained that I do not believe that we can make any accurate assessment of the success of our recruiting campaign until later in the autumn. But I believe that, taking into consideration the way things are going at present, and with the further measures I have announced, we shall succeed.

Mr. Mayhew

If the Minister is relying on these measures to make a substantial change in the Army manpower picture, I think that it will be disappointing. While the bounty proposals are welcome, is he aware that the application of this principle so far in the case of financial incentives to limited classes of National Service men to enlist for three years has been an almost total failure? While we welcome the provisions for leave for married unaccompanied men from Germany, far more to the point would have been an announcement of the speeding up of building of married quarters in Germany. It is scandalous that there should be a shortage fifteen years after the end of the war.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that careful independent surveys show that he will fail to reach his manpower target by months and that that manpower target, bearing in mind the number of tasks the Government give to the Army and the shortage of air mobility, is too low? What consideration has he given to alleviating the manpower shortage, by a most serious study of ways of acclimatising the new recruit? Has he received a report of the Army Operational Research Group's investigations into this matter and given consideration to the points often put to him from both sides of the House for recruiting for key service overseas and alleviating manpower shortages by better co-operation and integration between the Services?

Mr. Profumo

I shall do my best to answer the questions which the hon. Member has asked me. I do not think that we should correlate too closely the scheme which I announced earlier and which, I quite agree, was not successful because that scheme applied only to the technical corps who, on reflection, are the people most likely to have civilian jobs waiting for them. This scheme goes over the whole field, primarily of Regular soldiers, but also of National Service men. There are 54,000 National Service men still to serve and 7,900 Regulars whose contract of service will come to an end before the end of 1963.

My statement showed clearly that we are speeding up the building of married quarters in Germany. One of the great difficulties has been that of getting land and also the pressure on building which exists in Germany to the same extent as here. When the hon. Member reads my announcement, I think that he will see that it is a great improvement on what we have been doing up to now.

Everyone has his own ideas about whether we shall succeed or not. I believe that we shall succeed. To try to persuade him of this—because it is important that the Opposition as well as the Government should believe that we shall succeed—I can tell the hon. Member that the latest figures of recruiting for June, which have not yet been announced, are 27 per cent. above those for last year.

I have already announced what we are doing to try to acclimatise recruits. I think that we are doing a great deal and I do not intend to go any further because we would be in danger of destroying discipline, which is something we certainly must not do. I have not received a report from the Army Operational Research Group, but we are considering recruiting men from overseas. We already have 100 colonials in the Army.

Sir C. Osborne

Can my right hon. Friend say how much the two proposals —the pay increase and the extra accommodation in Germany—will cost, and whether these proposals have been put to the Chancellor before he makes up his mind about what he is to say next week?

Mr. Profumo

It is very difficult to tell exactly what these proposals will cost, because it depends on how many we manage to get in on the bounty. I think that my hon. Friend can work it out, as he is far better at mathematics than I am. It costs about £1 million per 5,000 new people. The cost of building in Germany is very difficult to estimate, because we do not buy the married quarters. The Germans build them and we invest in them and rent them. Therefore, it is not a cost in the terms which my hon. Friend has in mind.

The total cost of the leave programme will be £400,000 a year. I consulted my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer about this before making my statement.

Mr. Shinwell

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I personally welcome these proposals and hope that their results will be beneficial? The bounty is by no means an innovation. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, financial incentives have been provided before to induce men to remain longer in the Services, although the amount proposed by the right hon. Gentleman is in excess of previous amounts. Does he not realise that this increased expenditure, particularly the expenditure on married quarters in Europe, which is a very desirable proposal, is bound to cost a considerable amount of money? How does that square with what the Chancellor has said about a reduction in overseas military expenditure? Is it not likely overall, in Europe, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, to mean increased military expenditure?

Mr. Profumo

When the right hon. Gentleman reads his statement, I think that he will feel that our plains for further married quarters in Germany are good—I know that he agrees with them, but I mean good financially. If we were to invest millions of pounds of our own, with foreign currency, in real estate the right hon. Gentleman would be right, but the way in which we do this is to hire the quarters. That is the way in which it can be done most cheaply and most flexibly if at any time we have to cut down further on overseas expenditure. I know that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that nothing my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has yet said has shown that we do not have to have adequate defence forces, and that is the purpose of my statement.

Mr. B. Harrison

While admiring my right hon. Friend's faith, can he tell us which garrisons overseas will be reduced, as it will not be possible to maintain our present garrisons even if he succeeds in getting 165,000 men?

Mr. Profumo

I have told my hon. Friend before that I cannot support the argument that we cannot maintain our garrisons. We intend to continue to carry out our international commitments. If my hon. Friend wants information about any of our individual overseas posts, I will gladly try to answer a separate question.

Mr. Chetwynd

Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the increase in the bounty will do the trick? Is it not more likely that it will just succeed in giving more money to the men who would have signed on in any case?

Mr. Profumo

There are always those who will get the benefit of a bounty of this sort. I do not conceal that my prognostications showed me that certain men would have signed on anyway, and they are lucky. I do not think that the bounty alone will do the trick, but it is one of the things which will help. There is no question of failure. This is a progress report and any progress report is a check point at which one checks to see how one is doing. We then haroosh on, and that is what we are doing.

Sir J. Maitland

My right hon. Friend went out of his way to say that the new leave arrangements would apply to the other Services. Is the same true of the bounty?

Mr. Profumo

The bounty will not apply to the other Services, because there are particular recruiting problems for the Army. I am happy to take this opportunity of thanking my right hon. Friend and my noble Friend for their co-operation in this matter. The bounty does not apply to the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force, and that is one of the reasons, as the House may have noticed, why I have kept this offer open only for a certain time.

Mr. Wigg

Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that if the Government do not get 165,000 men by 31st December, 1962, the undertaking of the 1957 White Paper still stands, namely, that they will reintroduce some form of National Service? Secondly, in his earlier scheme, which was announced this year and which is obviously a failure, the bounty was given for men re-engaging in a particular arm of the Service. Under the new scheme, can a man now re-engage or extend his service irrespective of the arm of the Service which he chooses? Has he the right to re-engage in any arm, or must he go into the unit which the Government choose? I have a vested interest in my third question. All the way through his statement the right hon. Gentleman spoke of leave from Germany and the bounty being applied to men only. I have a daughter serving in the British Army of the Rhine. Will it apply to her?

Mr. Profumo

I have great respect for the hon. Member's male and female members of the family serving in the Armed Forces. For "male" read "male and female". I apologise for that. The answer to his second question is that a man can now join or continue in any arm of the Service he likes. That is because over the whole Service men can now decide to go on in any section of the Army they choose and still get the bounty.

Mr. Wigg

Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my first question, about the undertaking in the 1957 White Paper?

Mr. Profumo

I omitted to answer the hon. Gentleman's first question, because he knows the answer very well. I have nothing to add to the statement previously made by my right hon. Friend.

Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker

Order. We cannot debate this matter without a Question before the House.