§ Mr. Michael Brownasked the Secretary of State for Defence whether it will be necessary to make any Service personnel redundant in order to achieve the reductions in the strength of the Armed Forces set out in "The United Kingdom Defence Programme: The Way Forward", Cmnd. 8288.
§ Mr. BlakerMost of the planned reductions of 8,000–10,000 in the Royal Navy and about 7,000 in the Army will be effected by natural wastage. But some redundancies are likely to be necessary, some of them in 1983. Redundancy terms have been agreed, and applications for redundancy will be invited. No redundancies are expected to be necessary in the Royal Air Force.