§ LORD PENTLANDMy Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government whether they can now make any statement of their intentions in regard to the reorganisation of the Cavalry, including the proposed disbandment of four Cavalry regiments which was discussed last year. I would add only one detailed question, if I may, to indicate the nature of the information that is desired on this subject. Since my Question was put down your Lordships will be aware that a statement has been published in the Press which covers part of the ground. What I should like definitely to know, in connection with the proposal to link Cavalry regiments or to perpetuate the linking, is whether the two linked regiments will remain actually separate units or will be so only in name. As a test of those two conditions, I might ask, for instance, will the recruiting be for each separate unit; that is to say, if the 3rd and 4th regiments are linked, will recruiting for the 3rd regiment go on separately from recruiting for the 4th regiment? Again, will officers be posted and promoted in each separate unit, or will they not? At this hour, and in the present condition of the House, I will not delay your Lordships further.
LORD GORELLMy Lords, this information, as the noble Lord said, has already been very largely made public. The scheme which has been finally decided upon, after several other schemes had been very 210 carefully examined, is a scheme which really, so far as anything can be said to give satisfaction in a business which must at all events be unhappy, might be said to give satisfaction to the noble Lord, because it follows out a suggestion which he himself made in your Lordships' House a year ago in the first of the four debates on the subject of the 5th Lancers and the 18th Hussars. That is to say, the principle has been adopted rather of the reduction of establishments than the destruction of regiments, and the burden has been spread over all three corps of Cavalry so as to obviate the necessity for dealing unevenly with the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons. Had the other principle been adopted, all the Lancers and all but the 3rd. and 4th Hussars would have suffered. The information which has been made public will show the principle which has been acted upon of amalgamating the sixteen junior regiments, and it was considered only fair, although under the previous reductions four regiments had been disbanded, to bring them back in order to take part in this amalgamation.
The noble Lord has added to the Question on the Paper a question of some particularity which. I am not absolutely pre pared to answer without further Notice. but I rather understand that recruiting will be for the combined regiments rather than for the two individual component parts, and I think I can assure him, though I should have preferred Notice of the Question, that, so far as promotion is concerned, the two parts of the amalgamated regiments will have to be treated as one. I think that covers not only the Question which the noble Lord placed upon the Paper but the two supplementary points which he has raised.
§ LORD PENTLANDI am much obliged to the noble Lord.