§ Lord BachMy honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ivor Caplin) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am announcing today that we will shortly begin mobilising approximately 900 reservists to replace the existing reservists serving in support of operations in 91WS Iraq. These reservists will be beginning their deployments from April 2005 onwards.
We currently have some 750 army reservists carrying out a range of activities including medical support, force protection duties and providing individual reinforcements to units. We anticipate that most of these tasks will continue, but the forthcoming replacement of the Regular Field Hospital with one staffed by reservists, along with the number of individual reinforcements required by regular units will slightly increase the total reserves requirement. These changes mean that the number of Army reservists in theatre will be about 1,000 in May 2005, before reducing over the following months.
We aim to issue the call-out notices in phases following this announcement and plan on giving reserve personnel 28 days' notice of call-up (a minimum of 21 days). Mobilisation will be followed by a period of individual, pre-deployment and collective training, integration into receiving units, and then a short period of pre-deployment leave. The majority of those called-out can expect a deployed tour of six months and a total period of mobilisation, including post-tour leave, of about nine months, although for a few it may be slightly longer.
Between now and March we aim to identify those reservists who are believed to be fit and available for deployment. As is customary, to ensure that we successfully mobilise the required number, we will need to issue a greater number of call-out notices than the actual requirement.
This further call-up is fully consistent with the Government's stated policy of employing the reserves as an integral component of the Armed Forces.