Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, has a battle on his hands. 20 or so Tory MPs have signed John Baron’s amendment to the Defence Reform Bill. The bill aims to increase the strength of the Army Reserve (what you and I know affectionately as the Territorial Army) from 19,000 to 30,000 by 2018 in order to make up for personnel cuts to the regular army, the strength of which is to fall to 82,000.
The Tory rebels worry that missed recruitment targets and rising costs prove that the plan is in trouble. As one of them puts it to Coffee House, ‘Recruiting is in chaos. CAPITA has failed in the out-sourcing and no one is joining the Reserves. [Government] needs to answer what will happen if the 30,000 reserves don’t materialise?’ The rebels have called for a legislative pause so that parliament can scrutinise the policy and its processes.
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