PERMANENT STAFF OF THE RESERVE FORCES (Hansard, 20 May 1996)

§ Mr. Paul Murphy (Torfaen)

I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 3, line 12, at end insert— '(3) Parliament shall authorise a maximum number of members of the permanent staff of the reserve forces.'. The debate on new clause 1 was interesting and well informed. The thread running through the debates in the House and in Committee was a determination by all hon. Members to ensure that their speeches were well informed.

Parliament has already given powers to authorise the level of the reserve forces, and the amendment refers specifically to the number of permanent people in those forces. They are the non-regular permanent staff or NRPS and the permanent staff administrative officers or PSAOs. As the House knows, those are uniformed administrators. Some months ago the Select Committee on Defence criticised the high number of administrators.

Since 1991, there has been a 17 per cent. increase in non-regular permanent staff, compared with a 33 per cent. decline in the size of the Territorial Army. To pay for those permanent TA members, the nation has to spend nearly £39 million in the current year. No one is suggesting for a second that those officers are in any sense bad at their jobs. We suggest, however, and the Select Committee recommends, much closer monitoring and scrutiny of the number of non-regular permanent staff. The Select Committee report states: We look to MoD to monitor closely the tasks carried out by Regular and NRPS staff, to civilianise those with no genuine military content, to make full use of the commercial contracts available to the Regular Army and to seek to reduce the current levels of administrative support wherever possible. Together, the NRPS and the PSAOs account for the most substantial portion of unit pay and expenditure. It is an additional tier of administration with its own career structure, allowances, housing, subsistence, travel, leave and pensions, and it has relatively unlimited tenure. We have a greater proportion of non-regular permanent staff in our Territorial Army than any other Commonwealth country or the United States reserve forces.

Our probing amendment asks the Minister to reassure the House—as he reassured the Committee, but we need further reassurance—that there will be much closer scrutiny and monitoring of these matters with separate accounting to the Regular Army and to the Territorial Army. The non-regular permanent staff should be on fixed-term postings and should be rotated between units and answerable to the commanding officers of TA units. The issue is of grave concern to us all because of the amount of money spent and the number of people involved. I look forward to the Minister's reply.

§ Mr. Soames

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising a matter that we discussed in Committee. He is right to air it again in the House. After considering what was said in Committee and hearing the arguments, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman and I disagree on any material point. However, I hope that he will agree that his probing amendment would not be helpful; nor would it 39 have the effect that he desires. I shall assist by going into a little more detail about the origins, background and present role of the permanent staff.

The origins of the Territorial Army's non-regular permanent staff go back to the setting up of the TA in 1907 when provision was made for there to be permanent staff. Normally, they were to be members of the regular forces, but in special circumstances they could be members of the TA. When setting up the Territorial Army Lord Haldane recognised that it was essential for it to be competently trained and administered, and those requirements hold good today.

I am sure that the hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) would agree that the size of the permanent staff should not be at the expense of the operational strength of the TA. He made that point strongly in Committee and we all share it. He will also agree that it is important that the volunteer reserve should be appropriately administered and trained. As my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin) made plain in Committee, volunteers want to join the TA to do real soldiering, not to carry out purely administrative tasks. The permanent staff frees volunteer reserve officers and senior non-commissioned officers from routine administration, permitting them to concentrate on arranging interesting and challenging training for their units, which surveys have shown to be crucial to improving retention in the TA.

Despite our broad agreement, I do not think that the amendment will do what the hon. Gentleman wants it to do. Regular numbers are already subject to strict control and it would be novel for Parliament to seek to control how they are posted or employed. Moreover, the dividing line between permanent staff and ordinary training and staff functions can sometimes be difficult to define. Some Regular service men who are not classed as permanent staff may spend a significant amount of time in direct or indirect support of the TA. The amendment would therefore be unworkable, but I accept that the hon. Gentleman is merely seeking clarification.

I am happy to repeat the reassurance that he seeks, and which I gave in Committee, that we fully accept the need to watch the numbers in the permanent staff, whether Regular or non-Regular. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we shall continue to assess the level and nature of full-time support in the TA to suit its circumstances. In the light of what I have said, I hope that he will feel able to seek leave to withdraw his admirable but probing amendment.