HC Deb 30 October 2000 vol 355 cc276-7W
Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on Army overstretch over the past three years. [134415]

Mr. Spellar

Two key measures of overstretch in the Army are the percentage of the Army committed and deployed on operations and the time interval between deployments.

Commitment levels, which include preparation for and recovery from deployments, have fluctuated over the past three years, peaking in June 1999 during the height of the Kosovo campaign at 44 per cent. Since then they have declined steadily to the current level of 22 per cent. 15 per cent. of the Army is deployed.

Average unit tour intervals in the Army have also improved over recent years. While in some specialist areas these remain at around 12 months, our latest assessment of the average time between unit tours across the Army for this year is around 30 months, the best figure for at least five years.