Oral evidence: Armed Forces Bill, HC 1712

Oral evidence, 3 March 2026.

Witnesses

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach, Major General (Retd) Stephen Potter, Major General (Retd) James Gordon and Professor Vincent Connelly.

Chair

Thank you for coming to give evidence this morning. Could you introduce yourselves?

Major General Gordon

I am Major General James Gordon. I am the chief executive of the Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

I am Stuart Peach, Cross-Bench peer in the House of Lords, former Chief of the Defence Staff and former military head of NATO. I am also president of the Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations.

Major General Potter

I am Steve Potter, and I have two careers. By profession I am a chartered surveyor—a chief surveyor and ex-board director of two lending institutions, and subsequently a consultant in financial services and defence. Simultaneously, for the last 35 years, I have been in uniform as an Army officer. That culminated in being appointed as a two-star director of Reserves at Army headquarters, which I left in 2020.

Mr Foster

Lord Peach, as chair of the UK Reserve forces External Scrutiny Team, would you please briefly set out how the Bill, as presented, meets the recommendations and concerns expressed by your team?

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

It goes some way to meeting the recommendations we have already made. We are now in the process of beginning scrutiny for this year, with the single services headquarters at the Ministry of Defence. It is part of a journey that embraces the Strategic Defence Review. I do not think I need to spell out to the Committee why we need Reserves more than ever in the threat landscape we face. I think some of the commentary in the media has been slightly misleading, so one of the things we would say in direct answer to your question is that we need to be clear on what type of Reserves we are talking about and for what purposes, and how they may be recalled or made available—both important words. Personally, I have a lot of experience as a commander, and at every rank, in using and employing Reserves. I think it is time to tidy up the landscape and not complicate it any further. Throughout this session I will try to keep my answers simple, because the landscape is quite complicated, and the terms that are used both within the Ministry of Defence and more broadly need clarification. You have one of the experts on this subject on the screen. If I may, before the professor speaks, if you have not seen his article in the RUSI Journal on Reserves and why the Bill is important, it does that very thing of clarifying.

Chair

Since you have been namechecked, Vincent, I will bring you in next and allow you to introduce yourself, which I overlooked right at the start, for which I apologise.

Professor Connelly

No problem. I am Professor Vince Connelly, and I am the academic member of the EST. I am also a professor of psychology at Oxford Brookes University. I do research on Reserve forces, veterans and military families. I am also a serving reservist of 40 years’ experience.

Chair

Do you have any comments on Paul’s question?

Professor Connelly

Yes. To reinforce what Lord Peach said, we often do not help ourselves in defence with our plethora of terminology. The Bill itself is very welcome. It takes forward some out-of-date legislation, RFA ’96, and allows us to update the provisions for those in the recall Reserve, in particular. It more or less brings us back into line with some of our NATO partners on things like raising the retirement age, harmonising service across the single services for the recall Reserve, and in particular allowing us to expand and grow the recall Reserve by extending liability to our volunteer reservists.

Chair

James, do you have anything to add?

Major General Gordon

The EST has traditionally commented on and made recommendations about the active Reserve, what was the TA, and the part-time Reserve. However, if we have a greater pool of reservists in the Strategic Reserve, that will allow or help the services to produce mass, which is what everyone talks about, and have the Strategic Reserve meet its traditional task of backfilling our Regular forces to create that mass. That will allow our part-time, or active, Reserve to do its role to provide mass as well.

Al Carns

I have been out speaking to the armed forces, and a lot of the reservists, particularly in the RAF, were quite concerned that they had to leave at 55. A lot of this was driven internally by individuals, air traffic controllers, who are maybe not at their peak physical fitness but who could still offer hugely valuable service in cyber-space and technical skills, and who really wanted to extend their service. That is one of the reasons for pushing the retirement age to 65. Have you reflected on any of that in your review, or reflected on it from your experience?

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

Speaking from my experience, I would absolutely echo that and say it has been a long time coming. When I was an honorary colonel in the Army, and proud to be so, and in the Intelligence Corps for over 10 years, I fought to extend people in my unit, which was a highly sought-after intelligence unit, against all three services’ wishes. We were mixed in our success because they had such rare skills. I stand by that experience, and it demonstrated to me that we were not with the times, as you say. My unit was more than capable of fulfilling its military tasks in terms of basic fitness. I remember extending somebody whom the RAF had said could not be extended because he was so old, and he had run three marathons that month. He just happened to be old in numbers, but he had particularly rare language skills that the nation needed. This is overdue. More than tidying up, it will give us access to a pool of specialist reservists. If you talk to General Hockenhull, the outgoing commander of CSOC—my old command, known as Joint Forces Command—he will tell you that they cannot operate without reservists, and within the Reserves they cannot operate without specialist reservists. For specialist reasons, the change is welcome. It is also welcome for staff appointments. As you and Mr Francois are well aware from service, we need staff officers, and they also do not need to be in their 20s. We need staff officers particularly in the areas of logistics and support functions. I served in big headquarters in Germany during the cold war. I think we have got out of the habit, in our expeditionary mindset, of remembering just how much support you need in large-scale operations. I do not want to bang on, but it is a very welcome shift.

Jayne Kirkham

To follow up on that, the age limit is going to be set at 65. Do you think that is about right, or should it follow the state retirement age?

Major General Potter

That is constantly going up.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

Well, we are all the age we are.

Jayne Kirkham

You’ll be working until you are 80, won’t you?

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

I am still here, and I turned 70 just last week. I don’t mind admitting that, but I will not speak for the rest of the team. It is an important question. If we go back to my point about deep specialism, there may well be occasions when somebody who has rare skills is useful beyond 65. We do not necessarily seek a blanket shift or to amend the Bill, but it is a fair question for the times we are in.

Major General Gordon

Every case should be judged on its merits, because you are employing a niche skill. Vince will correct me if I am wrong, but I think France has gone to 72. In niche skills, age should not be a factor. It is the brain you are employing, and if that is working, employ it.

Jayne Kirkham

My main question is to Steve. How should we use the increase in the Reserves that we are hoping to get? Is it better to backfill Regular roles, or should there be separate formed units?

Major General Potter

Life is full of circles. We are looking at a situation now that was prevalent in the late ’90s and early noughties, where Reserve units were fully equipped and fully manned, with significant injections of support by permanent staff. I had a regiment of 470. On top of that were Regulars supporting us to make sure the whole thing functioned. In the intervening period, we have gone through constant cuts and equipment leaching away. To be fair to the Reserves, they have done a fantastic job of maintaining numbers against an increasing backdrop of dilution. We are now coming to a point, particularly with the Strategic Reserve initiative, that we are able to say it is about time we started planning—I know that is what is going on anyway—for the Reserves to be much more sub-unit oriented, rather than independent or individual reinforcements. As Lord Peach rightly said, there is a phalanx of specialist people—cyber, intelligence; the list is endless—who will have to go in as individual reinforcements or to backfill specific jobs, and they will have to support Regular headquarters if and when they are deployed in order to enable them. But our preference, and certainly the preference of the Reserves—don’t forget we are talking about tri-service, so what we do in the RAF and what happens in the Navy is quite different because they tend to be much more technical roles—is that mass is better orchestrated in a sub-unit and unit format.

Professor Connelly

I definitely agree with Steve. Since 1991, when the Regular Reserve and the recall Reserve were effectively put into abeyance, the Volunteer Reserve now has to fulfil two roles: to provide a collective capability for units and sub-units in a crisis, and it has been used to backfill and reinforce our Regular units, quite rightly, on smaller operations—for example, in Iraq and Afghanistan—over the past 30 years. As everyone knows, having to fulfil two roles at once really makes you master of none. By reinvigorating the Strategic Reserve, the Bill gives back to Defence the option of allowing the Volunteer Reserve to concentrate a lot more on its collective capability roles, and providing those sub-units and units that Steve talked about, while the individual reinforcement role can be fulfilled a lot more by the Strategic Reserve. That is the system we had all the way through the 20th century, which worked very well in both world wars.

Mr Francois

As well as being a former MOD Minister, I declare two interests: first, I was an infantry officer in 5 Royal Anglian during the original cold war, when the Berlin wall was still up. Secondly, Brigadier Simon Goldstein, who is a member of the External Review Team, is a long-standing and very good friend of mine.

Major General Potter

And very useful he is, too.

Mr Francois

Thank you for putting that on the record. I understand that he is watching, so he will be grateful for that. Professor Connelly, do the changes cause any specific concerns for individual services? There is a lot to be said for regularising terms of service across the three, but are there any particular examples in which this gives any one of the services some angst?

Professor Connelly

I am not sure about angst. At the moment, in the Royal Navy, for example, their Recall Reserves serve for six years rather than 18, unlike the Army and RAF. I suppose that the communication burden on the Navy to justify that change will be larger, and the communication needed to convince its people to opt into that change will be a bit more of a burden in that respect. I think, however, that it offers all the services greater flexibility by reinvigorating the Recall Reserve in a way that we have not really had since the 1980s. I do not think there should be angst in that. One piece of nervousness that I have heard is around whether volunteer reservists might be put off slightly by the fact that there will now be a recall liability imposed on them when they leave service. Again, the evidence appears to be against that more negative hypothesis. The research shows that volunteer reservists tend to join for the same reasons that our Regular colleagues do, in terms of serving the nation, commitment and looking to get something from their military service. We know that the recall liability does not impact on Regular recruitment, so it is unlikely to impact on Volunteer Reserve recruitment, I would argue.

Mr Francois

The Navy will have to encourage its reservists to engage with the MOD more closely. With your academic background—perhaps some of your colleagues will also want to chip in—if you could go one step further in any direction to improve the Bill, where would you go?

Professor Connelly

If we were to bring something else in, perhaps in another Bill, rather than this one, it would be related to the fact that at the moment our volunteer reservists have to ask permission from their employers for time off to serve. It would be useful, perhaps, to emulate other nations in NATO, including the US, where there is a legal liability for employers to allow their staff to go off for volunteer training. I think that would be a useful amendment to any Bill—perhaps not this one but a future one.

Major General Potter

One of the other things is that we are talking about increasing the age limit. There are rules about the ages at which people can join, which are quite flexible, but we tend to advertise and think about young people joining and then staying a long time. Given the search for individual specialisms and skills, such as cyber, drone pilots, the Intelligence Corps—the list is endless—it would be quite useful for people to be able to come in at a later age, particularly if they bring specialist skills. We need some flexibility there, which at the moment we do not have.

Major General Gordon

I do not have all the information to hand, but under the Bill, those joining will be subject to the new legislation. Those who are already in can opt out, and those who are out can opt in. Why? Why not have everyone on opt-out if you want to increase numbers? There might be some very good reasons that I am not privy to, but I am talking as an ex-soldier. I joined to serve Queen and country—now King and country—so I say to members of the Reserve forces, “Why wouldn’t you wish to serve King and country at a time of need in future?” There might be other things that I am not privy to; that is just my personal view.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

It is probably my turn to declare my interest: I am a member of the 2026 House of Lords special inquiry Committee on national resilience, and we have begun our work. Already, that work is demonstrating that national resilience may require us to have a broader discussion, not necessarily about resurrecting terms such as “civil defence” and the structures we had in the cold war, but—once we go beyond the legal framework that this discussion is about—about the lived experience of the Reserves in support and defence of the nation, in particular the homeland and home defence. I think we will end up having a bigger, broader conversation about what that looks like and how the interfaces work. When we mobilise to deliver the Reserves under the new Bill to meet its criteria, that will expose the need for a wider discussion. That is way outside our scope today but, if you look at our Scandinavian friends in particular—as I have done, in great detail—they have all moved to a concept of total defence, which is much broader than the scope of what we are discussing.

Pam Cox

Vince, what is your assessment of the opt-in and opt-out options under the new arrangement? We have heard some discussion of it, but could you perhaps give us an academic overview from your research?

Professor Connelly

The research shows that opt-out tends to leave you with a higher number of people who are then subject to whatever change you are making. The reason for that is that people are busy. We know from lots of research that when you are a busy person faced with filling in a bit of paperwork to opt into something, that often goes to the bottom of your priority pile, even though you may have no objection to the changes that are proposed. So opt-out tends to produce a higher number of people. I believe that part of the reason and justification for opt-out for those serving is that they have access to the information, if they so desire, to make an informed choice whether to opt out of the legislation. There is an opt-in for those no longer serving but with a Reserve liability. Part of the reason—and, on reflection, it is quite fair in some ways—is that they may not have access to all the information that those serving have about the proposed changes, for example. I believe that was part of the reason that opt-in was selected for those no longer in service. Of course, the danger is that that opt-in will lead to much lower returns than an opt-out option, as Jamie pointed out. For fair reasons, they have gone for opt-in, but I believe it will have quite a negative impact on people signing up.

Pam Cox

My second question, which is for the whole panel, is about identifying and tracking reservists. What progress has been made on that to date, noting the SDR’s ambition to bring in a digitalised management system? Does the success of the Bill depend on that?

Major General Potter

We have been talking to people about that in only the last couple of weeks. Although I believe that the bid is in for that system, which under the SDR was due to be delivered in early 2027, the delay with the DIP[2] and all the rest of it has left it a little obscure whether the funding to deliver it will be available. As I understand it, it is planned as a programme but is not yet delivered. It may not be delivered for January 2027, but it is important. A coherent and proper way of recording the Strategic Reserve in future will be vital, because without that it simply will not work. The information that defence has on people who have left is quite patchy at the moment. Jamie, you may know more about that.

Major General Gordon

Each service has a list of names, with ages, addresses and, if they have left recently, perhaps the military qualifications they had when they left. That needs to be refined significantly so that we can find out their status, their medical fitness and what job they are in now. You absolutely need a digitalised system to do that rapid recall. You need to work out who is in protected industries. For example, you would not wish to recruit an RAF engineer who is involved in third-line deep servicing to draw his rifle and sword and man a guard post—that would be a waste of someone’s talent. You need a digitalised system that records all that, so you can rapidly get a message to whoever you want to call out in whatever timeframe.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

I reassure the Committee that, as we go around the single services in the next few weeks, we will be making precisely those points, and I will be better able to judge how the services have progressed since we raised those points with them a year ago. The Bill will enable us to push slightly harder on the approach of “It’s not too hard; you just need to work harder.” It is not just about those who have recently departed. People sometimes say, “We don’t know where everybody lives, and we have no means of enforcing it.” Well, HMRC knows where everybody lives, and there are other ways of finding people. The Committee may be able to help us encourage a bit of creativity and say, “Actually, this is part of our Act—pun intended—going forward, so we need to know where the reservists are.”

Major General Gordon

Once you have your refined list and your digitalised system, you then need to resource a process to exercise it and practise everyone in it being called up. We did that during the cold war: you turned up for a day, were checked over, got your bonus and went back home again. That takes resources. If you do not do that, all you have is a clever list of people.

Professor Connelly

I echo what Jamie says. We used to have a very well-resourced system in the 1980s to check people every year. We rewarded them appropriately for that, and it was very efficient: we had a 92% success rate of people turning up for annual reporting. That was in the days before digital technology allowed us to record everything much more easily and efficiently. With the digital system, we have the potential to have a very effective Reserve where we can look back and dial into people’s particular talents and skills and use them much more appropriately than we did in the cold war. But it takes investment.

Mr Foster

Can I explore opt-in/opt-out again, as I did with the previous panel? I am surprised that serving personnel have the option to opt out. I would like your views on that, because they are Regular service personnel and we are in an urgent national situation. Will we incentivise those who are now serving not to opt out? I am generally interested in your thoughts on whether that should be in the Bill for regulars. Also, have we got the opt-in right? I will give you an example: I am a veteran. I am 55 and have not got much to offer, but I am now outside my Reserve liability. I do not think I would necessarily have the option to opt in under the legislation. I would appreciate your views on that, because it is a very important issue. Please do not say that I can opt in necessarily, because I am not a volunteer reservist!

Major General Potter

After this, you might be able to.

Major General Gordon

Again, I do not have all the information at my fingertips, but I presume that the opt-in/opt-out process is because you are changing people’s terms and conditions of service from when they joined. You give them a choice: opt-out for those serving or opt-in for those who have left, for the reasons Vince said. Each of us will have our own personal view. I am not saying that it is right or wrong, but I have expressed my personal view; others will have a different view.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

Certainly, when we go around the commands and the single services, we will raise that. We will seek to understand how the commands can help to shape the outcome to avoid the things that Vince talked about, rather than repeating them.

David Reed

Picking up on what Vince said about rewards, incentives and good ideas from the cold war, is there anything that we can draw today from those historical lessons?

Professor Connelly

The main thing, really, is to have a well-organised communication plan. One thing that the Army did back in 1979 was that it decided to reinvigorate the Strategic Reserve, much as this Bill does. It came up with what looks now like a wonderfully quaint cinematic film to show all the soldiers when they joined about their Reserve liability when they left and why it was important. That was shown to them again just before they left, and then they were written to, to follow it up, and asked to come in every year. They were also given an appropriate reward—£150 at the time, which is worth about £400 or £500 now—to parade every year with their kit and show their willingness to commit. We could certainly come up with a similar well-organised communication plan to encourage people to opt in, or not to opt out. When we have it in place, we could also encourage them to report every year and make a much more reliable Strategic Reserve that we can rely on, knowing where people are and using their talents appropriately.

Jayne Kirkham

As a layperson who is not on the Defence Committee, I am astonished by what you say about how the MOD does not keep in touch with people and may not even know where they are once they have left, whereas in the 1980s it sounds as if you had a system of contacting people and updating. Who is responsible for that now? How do you find someone when you really need to? Do you refer to other Departments? Is that even possible, given GDPR and all that kind of thing?

Major General Gordon

I will let Vince go first, because he is our academic.

Professor Connelly

I suppose that is a question for the MOD, really. Speaking as an academic,[3] I am privileged to know a bit about it. I know that the MOD has a memorandum of understanding with HMRC, whereby it can trace people’s addresses if the annual reporting letter that is sent out comes back saying, “Not known at this location.” I believe it is using that to track people’s changes of address. Part of it is that people may drop out of touch after a couple of years and fail to fill in their change-of-address details. Many of us have done that; I know I have done so on a couple of occasions for all sorts of things, although not necessarily Reserve service. Again, it comes down to communications and to giving the regular reservist a reason to keep in touch and stay committed. That is part of the communications plan and of making people feel valued and wanted as part of being a regular reservist or liable to recall.

Al Carns

When we look into how to gather the data and understand who we need to recall, we have some limited records in HMRC and Defence. Would you agree that a data-led ability to map and track our reservists or individuals with recall liability and to understand what professions and capabilities they have once they have left would be deeply useful to Defence?

Major General Potter

There are a number of systems in place anyway. Active reservists in the Army have RAPS, which is an app on their phones that can record their activity, so we know what they are doing, where they are and all that sort of stuff. The Navy has something similar. The trouble is that you have different systems talking to each other. Of course, what you actually need is a single holistic system. We know that the HR system for MOD has been a bit delayed. That will replace the JPA, which has some legacy data on it, but that is not that easy to interpret or interrogate. Yes, we definitely need a single system—a single version of the truth—to be able to track our reservists and use them properly. Actually, that is as much for their benefit as for ours. As Vince says, engaging them and providing that sense of community, belonging and being part of the greater good is really important in all of this, particularly with reservists.

Al Carns

Lord Peach, do you agree that our inability to communicate effectively to our people—both when they join and when they leave—about the recall Reserve and the issuing of veteran ID cards creates quite a complicated and confusing picture for them when they leave the military?

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

We have made it complicated, and we now need to simplify it, as I think I said in my introduction. Frankly, it is a team sport: the MOD and Veterans UK have roles to play, and there are a lot of organisations that really need to get with the programme. Actually, we need a different attitude towards Reserve service, and we need a different culture to encourage Reserve service. Without getting into a minefield around child soldiers, I would also embrace cadets in that thinking. It is time for change, and the Bill will be vital in setting the legal framework for that change. We then need to go further, which will require co-operation within Government across quite a wide landscape, as well as co-operation with the individuals.

Mr Foster

Is there not a solution to this? I have my veteran digital ID card now. Without being too controversial, why is it not compulsory that when Regular personnel leave the service, they take the veteran digital ID card? You could then use that as the platform to maintain contact.

Major General Potter

I do not think that is particularly an issue for the EST, but why not? But that is not where it is at the minute. You can argue the same about MOD 90s as well. Giving up my MOD 90 has been an absolute nightmare, and there is frankly no reason why I should not still have it.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

There is a broader point behind your question with which I strongly agree, which is about simplification. I fought, and often lost, many battles in a variety of command appointments—certainly as the Chief of Joint Operations—to encourage people to have a smooth transition from Regular to Reserve service, which is really what is at the heart of your question. That is still clunky, so we need to take the speed bumps and restrictions out of the system. The Committee has my word that we in the EST will help the single services, when we go around this year, and encourage them to do precisely that. It is not just about being hard-nosed; it is about employing those who have skills that the nation needs to the maximum effect possible. Everybody should support that.

Major General Potter

As we know from the NHS during covid, there is no shortage of people willing to volunteer: it was at three times its target within a couple of days. When there is an imperative, the volunteer spirit is still alive and well; we just need to tap into it and make sure that we can capture these people and treat them with the respect, dignity and professionalism that they would expect.

Mr Francois

In terms of preparing this country to actually fight a war, the Bill is not fit for purpose. How do your Scandinavian friends do it? How do the Finns or Swedes do this, compared with what we are proposing?

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

They have been on this journey for decades. In particular, the Finns, whose model I would recommend to the Committee, have really mobilised society. They have a narrative in society about the threats that Finland faces, which is accepted across society. They have many ways of making that threat picture clear within society, and it is not ridiculed by the media—the media are supportive of it. They have many ways of connecting to those reservists, and their number of reservists—you could call on the Finnish ambassador to explain it—is enormous for a country the size of Finland. They also have the arms and ammunition ready for them. They have the 1980s-type system that Vincent talked about, which is now a 2026 system that works extremely well in the modern digital age. They have got themselves organised. The Finns share a 765 km border with Russia, which helps, but they then have a whole series of engagements. I know that this is outside the scope of the Bill, but one of the most interesting thoughts for the Committee and for politicians in the Houses of Parliament is that the Finns really engage with industry in a way we simply do not. They have residential courses for industrial leaders and anybody in civic society, including civil servants, who go in for a three-week course about their role, and their company, organisation or civilian sector’s role, in the event of national defence. That gets at preparedness, which is one word to leave you with. It is way outside the scope of today, but that is what we need to do.

Chair

I will ask Vincent to comment on this question, and then I will move on to the next question.

Professor Connelly

Comparisons are difficult to make between NATO nations. They all have their own particular reasons why they do things the way they do. We do things the way we do because we have tended to defend ourselves abroad rather than at home, so we have a small, quite elite Regular force that we send abroad to carry out those missions. Thankfully, we have not tended to be involved in large European conflicts very often. But now, when it seems that something like that may unfortunately be more likely, we probably need to rebalance our forces somewhat, as the others have said. Although it is probably not within the budgetary constraints to increase our Regular forces, which are quite expensive for very good reasons, it would be a good investment to increase our Reserve forces appropriately. The Bill allows us to start doing that, but, as Steve pointed out earlier, it would be good to have some additional investment in the Volunteer Reserve forces, so that we can build up mass and collective unit capability, to allow us to expand our armed forces in conflict, as well as to reinforce individual gaps in those armed forces.

Ian Roome

Thanks to the panel for giving evidence today. Lord Peach, we served together in the ’80s in RAF Germany on the introduction of the GR1s, so it is very nice to see you.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

I remember. It is good to see you again.

Ian Roome

The intention is to align the Reserve Forces Act 1996 with the whole-force approach set down in the SDR. Having said that, what does success look like for the Bill’s proposals, and how should it be measured? What should the role of the External Scrutiny Team be in monitoring that?

Major General Gordon

EST has traditionally reported on the active Reserve or Volunteer Reserve, so of course we can report on the Strategic Reserve and what this Bill is trying to do. We can report to Parliament on how successful the MOD single services have been in finding out where their Reserves are, producing the digitised system that will record and track them, and putting in a funded process that calls them out, practises them in their process and gives them their annual bounty or reward, as we did in the ’80s. If all that is put in place, EST is well placed to report on that, because, in our reporting, we visit the commands of the single services. We then look at formations down below, go down to units and find out what it is like on the ground, and compare and contrast what we have heard from top to bottom. We also go on exercises. I was with 19 Brigade in Germany in the autumn, seeing them on their exercise there. I was with 101 Log Brigade last autumn on their exercise up in Yorkshire. We can see those exercises, report on them and then inform Parliament of our views.

Major General Potter

It is not in the specific remit laid down by the Defence Reform Act, but it would be inconsistent for the EST not to have some involvement with the forthcoming Strategic Reserve, because that was not then a thing. Now that it is a thing, it would help for the EST to provide a much more holistic view of what is going on in the wider Reserve community. The answer is: why wouldn’t we?

Professor Connelly

I would agree entirely. Following up on what Jamie was saying about what success looks like, before we get to that level of success, I think success will be measured in lots of people in the current service not opting out, and lots of people currently in the recall Reserve opting in. That would be a true measure of success, and that of course depends on clear communication and a sell to those individuals. Time is ticking; we need to get on with that sell and communication as fast as we can.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

I made the point about narrative, and I do not want to repeat myself. The narrative that we need more mass still needs to land.

Ian Roome

The External Scrutiny Team’s main responsibility is monitoring the Volunteer Reserve. Should there be a similar body for other reservists, or should your team take on this role? If so, should the Bill be amended to reflect that?

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

We feel pretty comfortable that we have enough authority to do what we need to. As Steve has said, we will take that with us as we go round the commands and then report to the Secretary of State, as we did last year and as we do every year. It is more important than ever that we cover the landscape, so that we do not end up with a fractured or fragmented landscape that would probably not take us forward.

Major General Potter

Our visits are quite in-depth and long sometimes. We see a lot of people. I am conscious too that we have some headquarters that make a significant effort to ensure that we cover all the bases. That usually runs over a weekend or a full day somewhere. If you had a different group coming to see them, you are just layering more effort and administration on them. It would make sense for those two areas to be covered on the same visit, frankly.

Major General Gordon

I was going to say exactly that. I am the clerk to the team. Why have two groups? You should look at the Reserve holistically—so have one team doing it. It would not be a great burden on the team; when we visit various headquarters, we get information on both at the same time.

Major General Potter

It is all pro bono, so it won’t cost any more.

Ian Roome

Having said that, given the scope is going to expand, do you think you will need more resource?

Major General Potter

The capacity for the team is laid down in the Defence Reform Act, and we are not at capacity at the moment. We have a nucleus of five or six regular team members, plus Lord Peach and Jamie. We could expand it, if necessary, within the confines of what we have. It is something we will take away and have a look at, because we need to opine on it when we have had time to think about it. As you can hear from all of us, we are pretty comfortable with it.

Major General Gordon

As the clerk, I also look after the purse strings, and we are very cheap. All members of the team give up their services for free apart from costs. Adding more team members is not going to increase the cost.

Gerald Jones

The Bill has provisions to amalgamate the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations into a single non-departmental body. Could you give us your thoughts on whether that is a positive and what the practicalities would be from your point of view?

Major General Gordon

Currently we are an unclassified arm’s length body, and we have a head office and a board that co-ordinates and directs the activities of the 13 RFCAs out in the country. We have been working closely with the MOD, and it is important that each of the RFCAs has a membership of like-minded people, from the Lord Lieutenant to movers and shakers in the regions, who all bring their skills and networks in support of the RFCAs to deliver the task. More important is that the RFCAs help connect defence to wider society—as Lord Peach said—to allow for that narrative. It is very important that we retain that membership, so the membership feels that what it provides has value and that its voice from the regions is heard. You will have seen the Sullivan Review and the recommendations that fell from it. One of the recommendations was that the membership should be some sort of advisory body, but work needed to be done on that, which is what we have done. I do not think an advisory body would work. What we have established with the MOD is that we will be a classified arm’s length body, an executive non-departmental public body; we will have a head office and a board that co-ordinates and directs, as it does today; and we will have 13 organisations that deliver what is mandated in the SLAs, and that membership will be retained. The key change is that currently, in RFA 96, the 13 organisations are autonomous, but we all work together because the budget flows through the chief executive as the accounting officer, and that will continue in the future. They will be subordinate to the main board—that is the slight nuance—but it is a nuance because all of us work together as a team to deliver what defence asks us to do and the five SLAs we have with the Army, Navy, Air Force, MOD and DIO. It is retaining that membership and having a construct where they feel valued and can voice their opinions, and where their voice is heard from the regions. As politicians, you will know better than me that Britain is very regional, and regions are suspicious of a London that directs. That is why I think it is important we have it there and that it continues.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

I think the key point that Jamie made is the last one, which is that anything that would further centralise and remove the link to the regions would be almost the opposite of the whole intention of the Strategic Defence Review and the Bill to generate the Reserve. We have an annual conference with all the Lords Lieutenant and the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations. Minister Carns spoke at it last year and he would agree, I hope, that the rejuvenation of the Lords Lieutenant, the lieutenancies, and their role in mobilisation to reflect the threats we face as a society and to our values is something not to be underestimated. It is not an old-fashioned construct; it is the way in which we can reach out and connect to the regions. That is why the RFCAs are important.

Mr Francois

Do you think the reorganisation will make them more efficient? As a constituency MP, I have heard some examples of there being a bit of “computer says no” in some of those organisations. I am all for them being more efficient and effective. Do you think it will help that?

Major General Gordon

The simple answer is no, and it distresses me to think about “computer says no”. If I said yes, it would mean that I was not doing my job very well, working with the 13, but I think we are efficient. Yes, it is a wide organisation but we work very clearly on mission command, which you will understand. They have a set of tasks to do, we work out the budget, then they work out how to deliver it best. What I think the organisation brings best—this is a USP that I have made up—is that we bring the best of centralisation in terms of being co-ordinated and directed, and the best of decentralisation where delivery is done for local effect by local people who understand their local environs. So you keep that localism and get that efficiency that way.

Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach

As the president, I have dived into some of these regional groupings, where you get together with the Lords Lieutenant, the RFCAs and the reservists, the commanders and the sergeant-majors in the regions. They do feed off each other and deliver best practice through that. I would have thought we should all welcome that. As Jamie says, they do often create local solutions that are more efficient than what would have come from a centralised body.

Mr Francois

Overall, they do very good work—I am a fan; don’t get me wrong. Offline, I could give you one or two examples of where perhaps common-sense decisions have been overridden by local bureaucracy, but let us not detain the Committee with that now.

Major General Gordon

Gratefully received, please, because I am always open to new ideas. If we can improve, all the better.

Chair

That concludes our questioning. Thank you very much for your time this morning. It was an excellent question and answer session and very informative. Examination of witness

Witness

General (Retd) Sir Richard Barrons.

Chair

Welcome to the third witness panel of this evidence session. General Barrons, do you have any opening remarks? Would you like to introduce yourself, or shall we get straight on to questions?

General Sir Richard Barrons

We can crack straight on.

Chair

We have been using first names during the session. Is “Richard” okay?

General Sir Richard Barrons

That is perfect.

Al Carns

Thank you very much for your service, Richard, and thank you for attending the Committee today. To what extent will the Bill’s provisions meet the aspirations in the Strategic Defence Review to increase the number of active reservists by 20% and to increase the readiness of the UK Armed Forces?

General Sir Richard Barrons

Thank you, Minister. There are two issues here: whether these measures will be implemented, and how quickly. The narrative of the SDR was underpinned by a clear recognition that we live in a world of much greater risk, in which having a healthy and ready Reserve is absolutely essential, not just to respond to crises but for deterrence. The challenge is that, really, that Reserve is needed now. Resourcing it and making it happen will be in conjunction with the whole lot of other things that defence is trying to do over a 10-year programme, which suggests that meeting the SDR’s recommendation will take longer than I am comfortable with.

Al Carns

Are there any measures that ought to be included in the Bill to enhance the capacity and capability of the Reserves?

General Sir Richard Barrons

The ambition of the SDR was reasonably modest: it recognised the imperative of rekindling the Strategic Reserve and reattaching former Regulars so that they can be called back. That is not a new system, but it had fallen into disarray. The second aspect was to attach to a healthy Volunteer Reserve. The SDR reviewers’ take was that the Reserve was not in great shape, and so was not really ready. Collectively, we took the view that the first step was to find and get these people. There then needed to be two conversations. One was about how to get that Reserve ready so that it can contribute to deterrence and be meaningful in the timescale we were looking at. Secondly, we said 20%, but by historical and European standards that is quite a small Reserve for a country of 67 million people. We elected not to push for a bigger number, not least because this was always a consideration and discussion with Government. Other than calling for a CNI protection force as a different sort of Reserve, we did not set out a projection for where those numbers might go in the future, but my sense is that this is a de minimis recommendation, and that in future the UK will need to rekindle a bigger, readier and stronger Reserve.

David Reed

General, thank you for being with us today. The Prime Minister has set out that he wants to have a national conversation on defence, and that was highlighted very clearly in the SDR. What role do you think reservists should play in having that conversation? Do the measures in the Bill help to support that outcome?

General Sir Richard Barrons

The objective of calling for a national conversation on defence and resilience flows from a recognition that the review identified that, in the world we live in, we had come out of an era where the business of defence is essentially outsourced to the uniformed professional military, with a little bit of Reserve underpinning, and that we had now returned to a world where the whole country—every citizen, every enterprise, every institution, and Government and the armed forces—is part of resilience and therefore part of deterrence and how you fight. That is not a place that the UK has inhabited for more than 30 years, and it does not have the cultural traditions of, say, Sweden, where total defence is a normal thing. The point of the whole-of-society discussion, which has patently not happened, was to build a recognition that that was the case and that we needed to do something about it. In that context, the Reserves are profoundly important because they connect civil society to the Regular military, but they are also a recognition that if the country has to go to war, or even to deter a war at a higher level than we do currently, the only way we can make the armed forces bigger and better—with more skills—and endure is by attaching a healthy Reserve. The Reserves are the military embodiment of a whole-of-society discussion, but they are only a part of a whole-of-society discussion.

David Reed

A small follow-up: as the international system descends into more volatility, do you feel that the national conversation is being had at the moment? Where do you think we are on that progression?

General Sir Richard Barrons

I think we have a very long way to go. Well-intentioned allies, including the Nordic and Baltic countries, have made attempts to say, “Look, we’re all in this world now, and our geographies are very similar. You need to be more like us.” That has largely fallen on stony ground. We do not have the same history or culture, nor indeed quite the same geography. What I sensed as we closed out on the review, and I continue to sense it now, is that a very large number of British citizens are worried about many things, of which defence is but one. In the context of defence spending, they would support greater defence spending, but not at the expense of the other things they worry about every day. They therefore do not want to confront a choice, which I would say that you have to confront. From the perspective of a politician—I am not a politician—I read the polls very accurately, and they do not see any particular mileage in stirring that pot, because it will cause people to confront the choice that no one wants to make, which is about moving resources in a £1.3 trillion public sector to augment defence sooner than our fiscal situation will make comfortable. What I am seeing, however, across parts of society—nothing to them—is movement. Lady Olga Maitland, entirely under her own auspices at the Defence and Security Forum, is generating a resilience movement with a lot of interest. That is absolutely separate from Government. In the City, I am co-chair of TheCityUK trade association defence and resilience group. That is all aspects of the City—banking, insurance, law, investors, vendors—recognising that they need to improve their resilience beyond cyber-security. I think that is interesting, but I do not yet feel that it is being co-ordinated, captured or led by Government.

Luke Akehurst

As a non-politician, do you think there is enough public trust in politicians for us to lead that conversation about national defence, or do we need that to come from other parts of society—maybe have the military, the royal family or someone like that to initiate the conversation—because of the degree of cynicism that there is about politicians’ motives?

General Sir Richard Barrons

I do not think it is about cynicism. I think, as a society, given more than 30 years of the post-cold-war era, there are no politicians, few officials—indeed, not that many military officers—no industrialists, and not many in civil society who think about war as an existential experience in the way that our predecessors thought was normal. We have had more than 30 years off from worrying about existential threat. I think there is a general lack of adult experience, education and training. I mourn the fact that politicians, officials and armed forces folk do not share a common lexicon about how we think about war, because that makes the conversation harder. As a citizen looking at today’s politicians, they have come from a particular place; their focus has often been on things that are not defence. They have inhabited a world where politics was mostly about marginal decisions rather than big, difficult, visionary changes. So I think this is really hard, but I also think it is their actual job.

Christian Wakeford

Thank you for joining us, General. We have gone through the opt-in and opt-out element with the previous panels, but in your opinion, would these changes help or hinder the aim to increase the mass-mobilisation ability of the armed forces, if fully implemented?

General Sir Richard Barrons

Just so I am clear—I may not be on top of the detail here—this is the ability of an individual to opt in or opt out of this obligation?

Christian Wakeford

That is correct, yes.

General Sir Richard Barrons

My view is that it should be very difficult, if you have served as a member of the Regular armed forces, to opt out, and that that opt-out should be for some reason that is judged by others—it might be medical or family reasons. We have to recognise, as a nation, that we have very small armed forces, and that those people who have volunteered to serve, and have served for a while, represent an investment in training and experience. That means that, for a relatively useful period of time after they have left—in my view, essentially out to about six years, declining—they are the people that you need to get back first. They will fit in naturally. They will bring back all of that experience and training. They will know what will be expected of them, and they will have agreed to that when they signed on in the first place—it must have been explained to them. So it should be very difficult to opt out. I think we should rekindle a model of former times where, when you sign up for Regular service, you are actually signing up for Regular and Reserve service, and you know that. To put it another way, they might not find it very convenient, but the country really needs them to come back to the colours.

Christian Wakeford

Lord Lancaster referred earlier to the skills you acquire while serving, and then the different skills you acquire in later life and careers—so not necessarily needing to be a soldier first when returning as a reservist. Then Lord Peach said that we cannot operate without specialist Reserves. What is your view, or what concerns might you have, about increasing the age limit to 65, regarding fitness levels and time to fit in? It just seems like a sensible way put forward under clause 33.

General Sir Richard Barrons

I think we should be clear that you need some reservists who can put on a uniform and do the thing they do not do at work. You do actually need infantry; you need combat engineers; you need people working on aircraft—all of those things. So some people should come into the Reserve to do the military thing they did before. Then, we should recognise that, in the world we live in, there is a whole host of skills that the armed forces do not need every day—certainly not in volume—but when they need more of those, they have to get them quickly, through the Reserve. That means that some people must do in uniform what they do at work. The country’s finest data experts, AI experts and drone engineers are not in the military; they are making their way in the commercial sector. Bringing them back in is clearly in the national interest. We should also recognise that, in the world we live in, quite a lot of war is fought sitting down, not in a trench in a dark wood, so we need some people who are highly skilled at things such as information operations, cyber, data management or logistics. We need to tap into their skill and experience, connect them to the armed forces at speed in a crisis and put them to work seamlessly. I think that we live in a society where—I would say this, wouldn’t I?—at 65 you still have plenty of gas in the tank.

Christian Wakeford

In the previous session, General Potter said that part of the concern is not necessarily about the time limit for leaving the service but about when people are able to join the service, especially as a reservist. What are your views on that?

General Sir Richard Barrons

I think the armed forces have made this much too difficult. First, it was ridiculous—and I know the Bill deals with this—that, when you leave Regular service, becoming a reservist was a bureaucratic nightmare. It should be absolutely seamless because it should be expected by law. Secondly, there are a whole host of very skilled people who want to serve in the Reserves but who do not think that they are going to do the best job if that involves running up a hill in Wales in the dark with a bayonet between their teeth when what they do is cyber, for example. There has been a period where the filter to get into the Reserves was a common military thing that was a deterrent to the very skills that you needed. I am a very strong believer in the armed forces promoting easy access to the Reserves, and not just for individuals. I am detecting from some courses in the City that there are whole departments that want to serve the country as Reserves, as a department. I think we should facilitate that. I think that is akin to a Sponsored Reserve argument. We must recognise the imperative—for war in the 21st century—of enabling lateral movement, so that people can switch between commercial or civilian life and military life easily because they bring the right skills. To put that in perspective, if you could choose to promote a military officer to one-star and put him in a job for which he had no relevant skills, qualification or experience—but he would get promoted—or you could choose to take in from the commercial world a top-level expert in that skill, it would be better to take the commercial expert. That would make the armed forces more efficient. We need a systemic refresh of how citizens become military folks and vice versa.

Mr Foster

The Committee has discussed at quite some length how the MOD perhaps does not have the best practices, at the moment, for tracking its reservists and understanding where they are. Is there enough in the new Bill to improve that? Do you think that use of the digital veterans ID card might help to track and find our reservists?

General Sir Richard Barrons

For me, the most important things in the Bill are that the obligation laid on individuals who serve in the Regular armed forces to become reservists is made clear, and that the requirement is laid on the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence to do the very basic things to stay in touch. We all live in a digital world now, so it cannot be that hard, but that requirement had almost completely collapsed because no one could really point to the imperative. Anything that makes that easier would be better. The harder part of the argument is about not just knowing where people are but deciding—and I think this will come in future—what the expectations are on you in terms of readiness, fitness and administrative readiness to go back to serve, if you have a Reserve obligation because you served in the Regular armed forces. If there are not some very minimal criteria there, although people may have a legal obligation the self-inflicted mountain that they have to climb to fulfil it would be enormous. We have to say to ourselves, as citizens, “This is really important, and it’s a requirement—it’s not really negotiable.” The MOD must do a much better job at making it happen and be held to account for that, but so too should individuals for the part they have agreed to play.

Chair

You said that an increase in the Reserve is a moderate ambition. Just following up on that question, is there anything that you think should be in the Bill that would actually achieve what you just said?

General Sir Richard Barrons

There are two things, and I am not sure they are really for the Bill. The first thing—it comes back to the conversation about a national discussion—is that citizens of the United Kingdom should acknowledge that, to have healthy and effective armed forces, they must have a healthy and effective Reserve. There is plenty that points to that in our own history, and that of other countries. If you look, for example, at the citizen army that is fighting in Ukraine right now, we are reminded that big wars are always won by civilians. That is what we are seeing now. There is a historical resonance here that we should draw on. We need to be in a place where Reserves are literally cherished and honoured by the civil society from which they come, and where it is not seen as some dark thing. It is absurd that there are some reservists with many years’ service in the Volunteer Reserve whose employers do not know, because those individuals think it might inhibit their commercial career. That is a dark place to be. In terms of numbers, we talk about a 20% uplift from the very low baseline in the SDR. Our historical experience in the first and second world wars in this country, with a much smaller population, is that when you ask for volunteers about 600,000 people will turn up. We ought to do better than that. We ought to have mechanisms that allow us, in times of crisis, not just to take the Reserve that we have but to very rapidly expand the scale of volunteers that can be drawn in. The issue there is capacity. It is about the capacity of the armed forces to absorb them, as well as of training, equipment and accommodation. If we believe that, in a time of crisis, we need bigger, better armed forces that can endure for years—Ukraine is a very good example—the Bill could do more to lay that foundation.

Jayne Kirkham

Thinking about the difficulty that we now know we have of getting in touch with people who were in the forces, do you think that something like a national database would help, with people’s names, addresses and skills? Do we need something that large, or is it more down to people having a duty to get in touch, and for us to get in touch with them? Does there need to be something formal in place?

General Sir Richard Barrons

I think there should be an obligation in law for people who have served in the Regular armed forces, who have accepted the Reserve commitment, to make sure that their details are contained in the right Government database, and there should be an obligation on the Ministry of Defence to police that. It should be a matter of law, or people will find it convenient to slip away, thinking there are no sanctions behind it. It is well beyond defence; there was experience of this during the covid pandemic. There is a case for maintaining a database of skills that Government or other organisations can draw on in times of crisis when you need them—things you rarely need, like languages, particular technical skills or engineering skills. In a world where people’s working lives are extended, I particularly think that there is a market here—I am going to call it the grey market—for people who have substantial experience, skills and energy to be on a database where they could be drawn in on some reasonable terms. Not knowing where they are means that we are at risk of doing badly or inflicting self-harm on ourselves in a crisis.

Jayne Kirkham

My question now is about housing. Considering you were involved in the Kerslake Commission on armed forces housing, do you support the Bill’s establishment of a Defence Housing Service, and do you think it could and should lead to improvements in armed forces housing, which has not always been of the best standard?

General Sir Richard Barrons

I think the housing question—my daughter moves into her first Army quarters tomorrow, so I am taking this quite seriously—is a subset of the whole problem of defence infrastructure. In the review, it became clear that if you look at the technical accommodation—from Faslane, through Brize Norton, through air bases, ports and barracks—and through to housing for families, to housing for single personnel, to the whole Reserves estate, what we saw is a systemic crisis. It is important to prioritise where people live. It is part of not just retention but operational effectiveness. From the perspective of the Kerslake Commission, it became clear that the problem required more money, better contractors, a redefinition of standards. Service personnel expect subsidised accommodation; they don’t expect it to be their dream home forever, but they do expect it to be watertight and warm and not full of rats, so the standards should be better. Where attention should fall is on how you address a legacy. I would say that this legacy is of the order of £70 billion—something like that. I do not think that just creating new organisations will solve this problem unless it is fuelled up. I do not believe that there is a public sector pocket deep enough to do this. I think we are back to a whole-of-society solution, where the creation of a new housing, technical accommodation and Reserves estate must be accompanied by different rules for drawing in private capital, because this is the sort of thing private capital can do. I am engaged in that in some work in the City. There is no shortage of money. We have to get past the odour of PFI, because there are new vehicles. The private sector should now carry all the delivery risk—people are prepared to do that. But it will need the Treasury to relax some rules that are more stringent than in any other country in Europe. I believe this can be done, and I think it has to be done with urgency. Although housing is a personal crisis, the condition of some of the major port facilities and airports has, in my view, fallen below a level of professional competence, and there is no public money ready yet to fix that, but it can be fixed.

Pam Cox

Could you talk us through the post-PFI models and what you are looking at with your colleagues in the City?

General Sir Richard Barrons

You really need to ask that question of someone in the City who understands the finance model way better than I do. But, in layman’s terms, it is entirely possible to take different forms of capital, whether that is from pension funds, banks, family offices or VCs—it doesn’t matter—and create a different stack of that money, put it in a special purpose vehicle, which is essentially a fund, and for that fund to contract with the Government. You could do this as much for the NHS as for Defence. What Government is buying are outcomes from that fund, and the Government pays for the outcomes. That means that the private sector does the delivery—they have to put their mouth where their money is, definitely—and carries the risk for non-delivery, not the taxpayer. What that requires is investors who take risks. One of the extraordinary things about the PFI model is that all the risk was carried by the taxpayer, and that is ridiculous. I am delighted to say that the Ministry of Defence is leaning into this now. A healthy conversation between the City and the Ministry of Defence can create those vehicles. When they have created those vehicles, it will need the Government and the Treasury to relax the rules that make this difficult because of the on/off-balance sheet issues that arise, but it can be done. I am going to make this point again: the UK has the most acute problem in Europe and the strictest rules getting in the way of using private capital. There is a relatively easy fix and it could be done now.

Pam Cox

I agree; it is one of the challenges of our age.

General Sir Richard Barrons

Yes.

Mr Francois

General, it is good to see you again, and thank you for your service, sir. On the housing thing, as a long-term critic of what is wrong with military accommodation, I have a lot of sympathy with what you say. You once wrote a memo when you ran Joint Forces Command saying “enough is enough”, and everything you have said today is in the same spirit, over a decade on. On the wider point, the Bill is arguably a step in the right direction, but if you believe that the role of the armed forces is to save lives by deterring war, and then to fight should deterrence fail, many of our NATO counterparts have much larger reserves than we do, and that is a part of their deterrent effect. Do you think that the measures in this Bill go far enough in terms of deterring someone like Vladimir Putin, or are we really talking eventually about something an order of magnitude beyond what this Bill does?

General Sir Richard Barrons

My view, based on the experience of the SDR, is that we constructed an outcome—a narrative—that answered the questions that NATO set the UK. What is it that the UK must do to be an efficient part of NATO? There are three big jobs. For the Navy, it is the Atlantic bastion—that is its actual job; anything else it does is subordinate to that. I think that is well cemented, and it is part of protecting the deterrent. I should say that the deterrent is 20% of the budget, and it is probably the thing that President Putin notices more than anything else, so we might want some more credit for that. For the Air Force, the contribution they make as the leading European air force in span of capability to the NATO air and space command is a daily contribution to deterrence that few European air forces can emulate—but it is very small, as is the Navy. For the Army, the thing that SACEUR wanted more than anything else was the Strategic Reserve corps of a corps headquarters with its enablers and two divisions. From a country of 67 million, the NATO view was that that was quite a small ask, recognising that that Strategic Reserve corps is not going to fight in the UK; it is very, very unlikely. It is a contribution to European deterrence. The second aspect that became important is that so many people think deterrence is a contingency, and it is not; it is an operation every day now, where the armed forces are playing their part. The first challenge for the SDR, having articulated what needed to be done, was then to settle the second question put to us, which was, “What do you get for a given financial profile over time?” The net effect—this is not a surprise to anybody—is that we established what needed to be done on, I think, a de minimis level, answering the financial question, but the time taken to get from where we are to where we need to be at a de minimis level is at least 10 years. Yet our own analysis and our allies are saying, “You’ve got three to five years.” When we concluded the review, we said, “We’ve answered your questions, but we think the world will cause you to go faster sooner, and you’ll need more money sooner.” That is, I think, more evident now for all sorts of reasons. The question the SDR did not really tackle, which is the heart of the question that you just asked me, is whether in the world we live in the SDR is the answer or a start. In my view, it is a start. In framing that, the way forward for all three services is centred on the evolution of what the review calls the digital targeting web, which is misunderstood as just targeting architecture; actually, it is about command and control. It is the way the armed forces will operate. The sensors and effectors end of the digital targeting web is evolving quickly from our history of people manning platforms, of which the cold war left us with an irreducible minimum—and it really is irreducible. If you remove any more, there is nothing left to attach the uncrewed and autonomous in any environment. For me, the way forward in the way the world is going is that the SDR will have created a platform and the direction of travel. The next evolution will be seizing on this transformation. With that will come a requirement for the expansion of some Regular numbers, but a very clear recognition that to play your part in NATO you will need a bigger Reserve, recognising that quite a lot of digital age technologies—drones, missiles—are not difficult to operate and you do not want millions ready every day. There may come a time when you really do want a lot ready every day. That is what a Reserve does. I think that argument will come. It was not an argument that we were asked to make in the review, or that there was scope to make, but it is an argument that the world is going to cause us to address.

Al Carns

General, outside the SDR are there any specific points in the Bill that you think need to be expanded or elaborated on?

General Sir Richard Barrons

That is quite a difficult question to answer because it has such a big scope. What this Bill is tilting at is the wider, whole-of-society question of how the UK survives and thrives in a very different and more difficult world. It is going to strengthen support for the armed forces and strengthen the Reserves aspect in particular. I hope that it is well recognised that what the SDR inserts into it is the start of refreshing the Strategic Reserve, the Volunteer Reserve and the CNI protection force. It is just a start. If we really believed that it was necessary for citizens to defend their daily life by being able to protect, not just in a physical sense but in a digital sense and from air attack, the things that sustain us—food, energy, water—the CNI protection force is going to have to grow in due course.

Al Carns

Are you content that the Bill is heading in the right direction?

General Sir Richard Barrons

I am absolutely content that the Bill is heading in the right direction. What I fear is that it will be seen as resolving the argument, and I think it is opening the argument for the world we live in.

Mr Francois

Very quickly, when you talk about a CNI protection force, are you talking about something that is conceptually similar to the old Home Service Force in the mid-’80s?

General Sir Richard Barrons

Only in the sense that it is citizens in uniform who are armed. I think we need to recognise that CNI comes in many forms, and we need to draw on all the skills that are necessary. If you take a reservoir, it is inconceivable that a CNI protection force would not have drones and would not have its eye on the cyber-protection of how the water is moved around, as well as the physical protection of it. It is a 21st-century version of how you protect our daily life.

Chair

That concludes our questions. Thank you very much for taking the time to come and give us evidence this morning—it was excellent. [1] Defence Investment Plan [2] Defence Investment Plan [3] Note by witness: the Academic member of the UK Reserves External Scrutiny Team.