𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

“The situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career, and the price of peace is rising”, warned the Chief of the Defence Staff just a few weeks ago. Yet despite all the rhetoric from the Government on investing in defence to meet this challenge, they are missing one of the best value options open to them.

Even with the very latest technology, credible deterrence requires trained personnel to undertake and sustain operations. Our adversaries need to know that we have the ability to quickly scale our force size if needed, and the most effective way of doing this, both in terms of cost and access to specialist skills, is to boost reserve capacity. This is particularly true when it comes to areas like cyber, engineering or drone operators where a full time military role will struggle to be competitive with the private sector when it comes to pay, but people still want to play their part in bolstering our national security.

Evidence from Ukraine has shown the importance of a properly trained and equipped reserve, and many of our allies are either already far more heavily invested in their reserve capacity or taking rapid action to bolster it. Across Scandinavia and the Baltic reserves outnumber regulars, and France has set out plans to more than double its reserve capacity within the next decade as part of its ‘Reserve 2030’ plan, and NATO updated its policy to better integrate reserves in 2023.

The Labour Government seems to agree in principle, yet their actions are falling short.

The Strategic Defence Review made a commitment to increase the UK’s Active Reserve by 20 per cent. Yet, even with such a modest goal, they gave no deadline for this. Instead there is just an aspiration that it will happen in the next decade or so. Indeed, an influential parliamentary committee concluded that the MOD didn’t have a credible plan on how it would deliver this commitment.

Indeed, whilst plans to increase the age that retired troops can be called up from 55 to 65 hit the headlines, the number of volunteers is the bigger problem. Numbers in the Active Reserve actually fell last year, with a decrease in the number of service days, training nights and annual camps. These falls may have been modest, but even holding steady would show how far off track the government is from its stated ambition, let alone where we need to be.

As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I know one of the best ways to understand a government’s priorities is to look at the accounts. MOD departmental spending was over £60 billion last year, and commentators have pointed to the challenges posed by rising defence inflation and major projects like the nuclear programme – which I strongly support – which have led to the delays in the promised Defence Investment Plan.

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However, less than one quarter of one one percent went on paying reserves, with reserve pay amounting to £135.3 million, with a further £32.9 million allocated for bounty payments. Of course there are additional costs, but this simply shows that if ministers wanted to find the funding to dramatically increase reserve numbers, they could.

The MOD needs to come up with a plan to deliver their existing commitments on reserves. But we shouldn’t limit our ambition here. It is too easy for reserves to be at the margins of defence planning, but they need to be prioritised. Now is a time to be bold, committing to double the size of our volunteer Active Reserve within this parliament. Given the increasing level of threat, the increasing complexity of conflict, and increasing domestic fiscal constraints there is no better value way to meaningfully boost our security.

Steve Barclay is Member of Parliament for North East Cambridgeshire. He is a former cabinet minister who served in many roles including Health Secretary, Brexit Secretary, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury.