Mr Mark Francois

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1. “Fair enough. Anyway, it has not been signed for months and has, metaphorically, been sitting on the Chancellor’s desk. It is probably fair to say that the Chancellor has no background with the military. She has never shown much empathy for the military; it is not her long suit.”

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2. “What deterrent effect are we providing against our potential aggressors by not being able to tell them, let alone our own Parliament, when we will publish a document that is now nearly nine months overdue? How do we prevent war by doing that?”

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3. “As the Minister knows, we cannot deliver the SDR until we say at what point we will get to 3%, because that is the price of doing so. When we pick a year, we can put a pin on a graph and draw a line back from it, and everything underneath that line will be money that we have to spend. Until we decide what that year is, we cannot draw the line; we do not know how much money we have and we cannot pass a 10-year equipment plan. Because the Treasury will not agree on what year we will get to 3%, there is a complete institutional impasse in the Government. Do hon. Members honestly think that, at the Russian, Chinese or North Korean embassies, they have not spotted this? Do they not think we are a laughing stock in those embassies?”

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4. “Well, Mr Efford, if the Chancellor signed it, there would not be any criticism. For whatever ends, she has not chosen to do so. When we had exchanges with the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry yesterday about defence spending, to which the drip—the DIP, rather—is fundamental, he gave the game away. He talked about percentages of GDP on defence, and said: “We will hit 2.6% in 2027” and “3% in the next Parliament”. —[ Official Report , 15 April 2026; Vol. 783, c. 834.] Assuming that this Parliament goes the full term, the last possible legal date for the election is August 2029, which means that we would not get to 3% for another three years. It is our policy that we should get to 3% before the end of this Parliament.”

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5. “We have an impasse in which the Government, not the armed forces, are regarded as a laughing stock, not just in Washington but in the capitals of our adversaries. That being the case, I ask the Minister in all sincerity to tell us this afternoon when the defence investment plan will be published.”

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6. “For the absolute avoidance of doubt, I never said that, and the hon. Gentleman is putting words in my mouth. I never said, or even implied, that our armed forces are a laughing stock—absolutely not. They are still, man for man and woman for woman, among the best in the world, if not the best. It is the Government they serve who are now the laughing stock, not the military personnel. It is a Government who cannot take a fundamental decision about defence spending, whose own MOD Ministers are privately at each other, and who have an MOD and a Treasury that cannot agree. The only way that that is resolved in the British system is when the first among equals intervenes and knocks heads together, and the Prime Minister will not do that because he is terrified of what happens to him if he does.”

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7. “At the very least, will he promise the Committee, and through us, the House, that it will be, at the very latest, by the time the House rises for the summer recess, which is currently programmed for 16 July?”

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8. “Its political editor Steven Swinford and its excellent defence editor Larisa Brown today produced an article entitled “Keir Starmer delays defence investment plan over cabinet split”, the opening sentence of which is: “Sir Keir Starmer’s ten-year plan for investment in defence will not be published until the summer as the government is split over how much should be committed to the armed forces.” We cannot go on with the Chancellor holding the armed forces to ransom. Bearing in mind what the hon. Member for North Durham said about purdah—I got that point—will the Minister, when he sums up this debate, at least give us a date by which the DIP will be published?”

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9. “If that purdah block is in place, and it probably is, the earliest that we can realistically expect the DIP is another month further on, but we have been waiting nine months as it is. In fairness to the hon. Gentleman—and we may have fallen out on the previous new clause—he has a point, but I will admit that he has a point only if he will admit that we raised this publicly months ago. Even The Times has reported that there is an impasse.”

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10. “In fairness to the hon. Gentleman, I will meet him halfway. I could get him references from Hansard for where the Opposition made exactly that point in the Chamber some weeks ago. We argued that, obviously, there would be expenditure at Faslane, at Lossiemouth and suchlike, so if the Government did not come up with the DIP by the third week in March then purdah could kick in—as I think is the convention—and mean that they could not then publish it until the middle of May. A minute ago, I asked the Minister to give us a date when the DIP will be published. That might be after the purdah period; I was listening. But—and I hope that the hon. Member will be equitable about this—we warned about the risk of the purdah window months ago. I think we now know that we are going to get a King’s Speech on 13 May.”

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11. “Ministers keep talking about this “largest sustained increase” in defence spending since the cold war. Why, then, were there £2.6 billion of efficiency cuts last year, and why is there a target for £3.5 billion efficiency cuts this year?”

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12. “As a right hon. Member, I am afraid that we have just heard the same ministerial bluster that we have had for months, so I will press the new clause to a vote. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.”

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13. “We have had our argument about when the defence investment plan should be published. We are asking for a defence readiness plan through new clause 17, but the Government have promised a defence readiness Bill. As we are pretty close to the King’s Speech, can the Minister tell us whether that Bill will be in it? If it will be, when is it intended that the defence readiness Bill—which, given its name, surely will be designed to improve our readiness for war—be on the statute book? We have Lord Robertson telling us that we are underprepared, underinsured and under attack—do not take it from me; take it from him—so where is the plan and, more to the point, where is the defence readiness Bill?”

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14. “When he was challenged about why he said that, he said that Ministers “need to put more money” into the armed forces, and that expenditure has “got to come from somewhere.” In terms of improving our military readiness—here is where I suspect we part company—we announced a few weeks ago that we would return to the two-child benefit cap. That would generate about £3.2 billion in a full year, and we would use at least half that money to increase the size of the Regular Army, subject to the problems of recruitment and retention, to 80,000 and the active Army Reserve to 40,000, making for a mobilisable Army of 120,000. There is a very clear difference between us and the Government on this. For the sake of brevity, I end with one plea to the Minister for information.”

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15. “For him to be warning us about these risks is a really serious wake-up call, and for him to accuse the Prime Minister of “corrosive complacency” in being ready to defend this nation is an extremely powerful intervention. In pub English, the authors of the review have plainly had enough. They have gone public and are being very critical of the Government. What was the point of them spending a year doing that very detailed report if the Government they reported it to have not followed up on what they advised them to do? I note in passing that the Health Secretary is today quoted as saying that we should cut welfare to fund defence.”

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16. “He is very widely respected, he oversaw the 1998 strategic defence review, and he is also a former Secretary-General of NATO. When added to Sir Richard “not-an-armchair-general” Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill, in fairness to the Government, they had a credible front-of-house team to conduct the review. They were all adamant that the price of delivering readiness was defence spending at 3% of GDP. What did Lord Robertson say about our preparedness and readiness to go to war, if necessary, at a speech in Salisbury on Tuesday night? He said this: “We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe…Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.” Lord Robertson is deeply respected. There is no way he could be characterised as some kind of Tory stooge; he has never been a stooge for anybody.”

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17. “When he published his strategic defence review, Lord Robertson emphasised readiness, but the official policy of the Government, as announced in that review—from memory, on page 43—was that we in Britain should be prepared to fight a peer enemy with allies by 2035. That is nine years from now. The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Roly Walker, said about a year ago that we might have to be prepared to fight the Russians in 2027, just one year away, and the First Sea Lord is on the record in another forum saying that we might have to fight them by 2029. There is a clear dichotomy in terms of readiness between the policy of the Government and the Ministry of Defence and the policy of at least two of the service chiefs. When the Government asked Lord Robertson to front the SDR, they knew what they were doing.”

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18. “I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. This is the last new clause we will debate today, so I will try to keep to the point. New clause 17 would require the Government to publish a defence readiness plan, which must include information about the numbers and readiness of reserve forces. In a sense, the new clause gets to the heart of what people conceptually believe our armed forces are for. I have always believed that they exist to save lives, by persuading any potential aggressor that they could not win a war with ourselves and our allies. The Minister will forgive me, because he has heard this from me before, but it is summed up in the Roman military theorist Vegetius’s famous phrase, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—“He who desires peace should prepare for war”.”

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19. “We do indeed have a disagreement on principle. I suspect that the Minister might privately have some sympathy with the new clause but, for reasons we are all aware of, he cannot say so today. I will give him a chance to vote with us by pressing the new clause to a Division.”

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20. “Along with all my colleagues, I thank all who have been involved in this process. We look forward to producing our report and to debating these matters on Report.”

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21. “Further to that point of order, Mr Efford. I very much echo the Minister’s sentiments. We have agreed with the general thrust of the Bill from day one. We said that we would attempt to be a critical friend and to improve it, or to make suggestions, and the Minister—to be fair to him—has said on a number of occasions that he will take things back to the Department or take a closer look. I know him, and if he says that, I know that he will. I am afraid the officials will have some extra work to do. Thank you, Mr Efford, for chairing our proceedings with a light touch and, if I may say so, a sense of humour. I thank the excellent Clerks for assisting us with amendments and providing good advice, and for organising the excellent visit to Portsmouth. I hope that we have done the House some service.”

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22. “For instance, if we assume that quite a number of those veterans are in receipt of a military pension of one type or another, presumably they would be known to Veterans UK and at least their basic details would be recorded on the MOD’s joint personnel administration system. Could we not use that as a means of tracking down those people?”

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23. “If he cannot answer that question off the top of his head, perhaps he could write to me, to you, Mr Efford, and to other members of the Committee prior to Report about where, at least theoretically, a line could be drawn—perhaps defined by age or some other criterion—to create a Strategic Reserve of about a quarter of a million troops, rather than just under 100,000. Moreover, if we were to consider something as ambitious as that in order to provide a greater deterrent effect, how would we track and communicate with those people, above and beyond access to the His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs database that Ministers have prayed in aid before?”

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24. “If we believe that 95,000 is too small a Strategic Reserve to act as a credible deterrent, particularly given the darkening international situation that we face at present, could we, as it were, draw a line or establish a set of criteria that would achieve a Strategic Reserve of somewhere between 95,000 and, for the sake of debate, a quarter of a million? That would be a much more credible figure in deterrent terms. I ask the question deliberately to provoke debate about how we could, if we chose, expand the Strategic Reserve from the Minister’s 95,000 figure.”

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25. “Of course, in practice they would not be if they were in their 80s or 90s. For the avoidance of doubt, I do not think we are proposing to put Chelsea pensioners in the Strategic Reserve. We can discern from that calculation that the absolute maximum is theoretically about 2 million—assuming for a moment that we also include veterans who have also served in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, because they will have ticked the same box. If we cut it differently and include only those of employable age, the Strategic Reserve would come out at about 1 million.”

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26. “Since then, sadly, a number of those veterans will have passed away, but given that the question was not included in the census forms dispatched to Northern Ireland, which has historically proved a very healthy recruiting ground for our armed forces, it seems not unreasonable to assume that the current number is still probably somewhere around 2 million living veterans, or relatively close to it. Moreover, the Minister also revealed to the Committee, assisted by witnesses from the Ministry of Defence, that about 1 million of those people are still of what he called employment age. I take it that he means males aged up to about 67. I cite those figures to try to estimate the maximum theoretical strength of the Strategic Reserve—or, in military parlance, the absolute right of arc—if all those living veterans were included.”

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27. “Indeed, the Bill extends the provision for recalling the Strategic Reserve to up to 18 years, I believe, from leaving the colours of the regular armed forces. For the record, we very much support that measure. When asked in evidence for his estimate of the size of the Strategic Reserve, the Minister gave a definitive figure of approximately 95,000. However, to put it in context, the 2021 census—after much campaigning over quite a few years by the Royal British Legion and some MPs who backed the proposal—specifically asked respondents whether they had ever served in His Majesty’s armed forces, and just over 2 million people positively answered the question.”

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28. “If we put those numbers in context and compare them with the United States, which has both an army reserve and large numbers of national guard—they are organised on a state-by-state basis and report to governors in peacetime, but they can be federalised in wartime—or the reserve elements of the Chinese and Russian armies, they pale by comparison, even though, as the Minister often likes to remind us, we had very large citizen armies in both the first and second world wars. The Army Reserve can be augmented by what is now generally referred to as the Strategic Reserve. For the avoidance of confusion, that is former regular soldiers and officers who would be liable for recall to service with the colours in a national emergency up to and including full-scale war.”

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29. “Those are my comments on the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells, which he introduced very well. I now turn to clause 31. Reserves are a fundamental part of our armed forces, as both the Minister and I can attest, having served in the reserve forces at different times in our careers—although I handed back my kit shortly after the Berlin wall came down in 1989, whereas the Minister is still undertaking reserve service. Indeed, we understand he has been on manoeuvres only recently. However, it is a fact that compared with many other nations, we still have very small numbers of reserves, with some 26,000 in the active Army Reserve and many fewer in the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and related reserves.”

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30. “I pressed the Minister specifically on whether the new tri-service armed forces recruitment programme—the AFRP—contract was written in such a way as to allow the contractor to facilitate the process in an effective and efficient manner. Again, the Minister sought to offer the explanation that it could all be done via administrative procedures. I want to press the Minister on how exactly these administrative procedures are intended to apply in practice. Under the new contract, what, in practical terms, will be different from the rather cumbersome arrangements that we still have in place? In short, how will the creases in this system, which everyone agrees exist, be ironed out to make the transition sufficiently smooth that those leaving the regulars are not put off by mind-numbing bureaucracy if they wish to convert to reserve service?”

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31. “The Minister sought to reassure the Committee in evidence by saying that this will be dealt with as a relatively straightforward administrative matter. That flies in the face of much of the anecdotal evidence to the contrary. If someone tries to initiate the transfer while they are still serving, it seems that the process works better, but if they leave it until after they have left the regulars, or if they perhaps have a change of heart after having left the regulars and decide that they want to re-enlist as a reservist after a few years, it is really difficult. In fact, I have been told that in some cases it is worse than if they just tried to join the reserves straight off, ab initio, as a civilian.”

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32. “That point is often a good time to catch them, as many people who have enjoyed their regular service but wish to earn their living in a different way are still often tempted to transfer to the reserves to keep their hand in and to continue to serve the nation and maintain the bonds of comradeship and friendship they have developed as regulars. However, in recent years, that transfer has often proved to be administratively difficult. I have heard anecdotal horror stories of former regular personnel who have attempted to re-enlist in the reserves when their regular service has come to an end but have had to overcome an assault course of bureaucracy to do so. In fact, I spoke relatively recently to a reserve officer who had had to fight his way through what he described as “the Capita circus”.”

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33. “Good morning to you, Mr Efford, and to all members of the Committee. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again today. I will lead for my party in this section on reserve forces. I will begin by offering some comments on Liberal Democrat amendment 7, which relates to retention and transfers between regular and reserve forces, and will follow with a few remarks on clause 31. In one of our evidence sessions, I raised the potential complexity when people wish to leave the regular armed forces and transfer into the reserves.”

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34. “The hon. Member for South Ribble has raised a good point. When people leave the regulars now—I am probably rusty on this—is there a standard operating procedure where they are invited to consider joining the reserves and given a pathway for doing that before they leave? All the anecdotal evidence says that if they try to transfer at that point, it is still bureaucratic, but it is a lot less bureaucratic than doing it after they have left. Do we ask that question as a matter of course and offer people a pathway if they say yes when they are still in the regulars?”

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35. “I take the Minister’s point that via this method we could have a Strategic Reserve of 150,000 within a decade, but what if we do not have a decade? I suspect we will return to the point this afternoon, but for now, to use the Minister’s analogy of trying to cut through the spaghetti soup—I think we are all with him on that—how do we increase the size of the soup bowl? How do we have a bigger pool of manpower and womanpower that we can draw on, if necessary, in a full-scale war? These people will have had at least some military training and will be able to train others who have had none. That is why we are suggesting that we at least look at the practicalities of 250,000. Could the Minister say something about that?”

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36. “Does the Department have at least a working estimate of how many people it thinks will opt in to that liability, bearing in mind that they cannot be recalled otherwise? What is the planning assumption within the MOD?”

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37. “This is by no means a new idea. There is an old saying in politics that there is nothing new under the sun, and this is not new either. For instance, during the second world war, many people who were eligible for military service by virtue of their age were nevertheless exempted from call-up because they were working in so-called reserved occupations—in other words, a field of civilian endeavour that was considered vital to the war effort.”

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38. “The Ukrainians are fighting for western values of freedom and democracy, and they deserve our enduring support. Moreover, the Speaker of the Rada, who is a larger-than-life man in a whole range of respects, gave us a stark warning while we were there: “If we fall, you and your friends will be next.” Given all that, and bearing in mind the duration of the first and second world wars and of other conflicts such as those in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, it might make sense to allow a recall order to last longer than a year should circumstances demand it at the time. We have tabled amendment 22 accordingly. The essence of Opposition amendment 23 is to allow persons undertaking civilian work that the Secretary of State deems vital for defence purposes to be exempt from a recall order under proposed new section 69A of the Reserve Forces Act.”

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39. “A point made very powerfully to our delegation during our visit to Odesa, Chornobyl and Kyiv was that many in the west believe or perceive that Ukraine’s war with Russia has been going on for four years, from the date of the so-called full-scale invasion in February 2022, but in fact the Ukrainians are keen to point out that the war really began in 2014, or arguably even earlier, with the Russian occupation of Crimea in the south of the country and the occupation of significant portions of the Donbas in the east. In other words, Ukraine has been at war with Russia not for four years, but for 12. To put that into context, it is longer than the first and second world wars combined. It is immensely to the Ukrainians’ credit that they have continued to actively resist their larger and stronger neighbour to the east.”

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40. “In making this argument, I pray in aid the practical experience from Ukraine, where service personnel have been fighting on the frontline for years, some with relatively limited leave over the whole period. I visited Ukraine with UK Friends of Ukraine only a few weeks ago, and the Minister told the Committee on Tuesday that he had only recently returned from a trip to that country—again, time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted. It hardly needs saying, but I am sure that all Members and parties represented on the Committee will want to join me in expressing our determination to support the Ukrainians, for as long as it takes, in facing down Russia’s illegal and barbaric invasion of their country.”

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41. “I hope the Minister can see why the Opposition have tabled these straightforward amendments to provoke a debate on the proposed age limit and the rationale for it. I look forward to hearing what he has to say on them. The essence of Opposition amendment 22 is to expand from 12 to 18 months the maximum allowable period for a recall order under the Bill. The rationale is that history shows that in a national emergency, including a peer-on-peer conflict, the war is not always over by Christmas. It is therefore not inconceivable that people who are mobilised for reserve service for up to a year might find themselves required to fight on the frontline for longer.”

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42. “In his evidence, the Minister provided some practical examples of highly skilled personnel, such as highly experienced medics or air traffic controllers, who do not necessarily need to be as physically fit as, say, a 21-year-old infantryman to make an important contribution to defence. The point of the amendments is to ask a simple question: if that argument holds good at 65, does it not still hold good at 67, the age at which most people can draw a state pension in civilian life if they are male? If someone is a skilled surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps at age 65, would they not be equally skilled just two years later? Would those two additional years in their mid-60s represent significant skill fade in their ability to give medical aid?”

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43. “I will speak to amendments 20 to 24. As they have been grouped together in the largest individual group to be debated today, I will take them in turn, with a few brief remarks on each amendment. I begin by addressing amendment 20 and consequential amendment 21. The essence of the amendments is to further increase the maximum age of service in the reserve forces from 55 to 65, as currently proposed in the Bill, to a higher level of 67. That would mean having a maximum age limit in line with the normal male retirement age in civilian life. The Opposition appreciate the sense of increasing the maximum age for service in the armed forces from 55 to 65—for the record, that would include me, and I will opt in now.”

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44. “The Minister just said that some categories of personnel could in certain circumstances continue to serve beyond 65 to 67, which is in line with the spirit of what the Opposition are proposing. Can he explain to the Committee who those people are?”

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45. “Clause 33 Recall for service Amendment proposed : 24, in clause 33, page 54, line 43, at end insert— “69C Notice periods for recall (1) Those reservists in Army Reserve Group A, or its equivalents, shall, following the coming into force of the Armed Forces Act 2026, have their standard notice reduced from readiness category R9 (180 days) to R8 (90 days) (2) For the purposes of this section, ‘Army Reserve Group A’ has the meaning defined in the Reserve Land Forces Regulations 2026.”— (Mr Francois.) This amendment would increase the readiness requirement for reservists in Army Reserve Group A from 180 days to 90 days. Question put, That the amendment be made.”

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46. “On a point of order, Mr Efford. We will not press amendments 20 to 23. I am grateful that the Minister agreed to take amendment 24 away—we note that—but because the suggestion came from within the ranks, as it were, we will press it to a vote.”

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47. “I beg to move amendment 25, in clause 37, page 56, line 35, at end insert— “(4) The Secretary of State must create a plan for ensuring and monitoring the efficiency of the RFCA in carrying out its duties and its relationship with local Reserve and Cadet units. (5) The plan in subsection (4) must be laid before each House of Parliament within six months of the passage of this Act.” This amendment requires the Secretary of State to create a plan ensuring and monitoring the efficiency of the RFCA in carrying out its duties and its relationship with local Reserve and Cadet units.”

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48. “The company was going to do that, and it also offered to build what was basically, in pub English, a large shed at the back of the unit, as the squadron has a particularly strong interest in engineering studies and needed a shed in which to store its equipment and conduct lessons. That was all to the good.”

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49. “A military type might well say, “Well, they must be doing something right then.” Suffice it to say, having declared my interest as the squadron president, I am slightly dismayed that attempts to refurbish and expand the facilities of 1476’s admittedly ageing base in Rayleigh have often fallen foul of what one might call bureaucracy at the RFCA level, even though a national house builder was offering to build a brand-new extension to the squadron base at Connaught Road as a gesture of good will and at absolutely no cost to the taxpayer. I am sure that we have all seen these things in our constituencies: a company offers to get together a group of volunteers at a weekend and do something up.”

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50. “The Minister might recall that I alluded to an issue about the potential expansion of the squadron during one of the earlier evidence sessions. I was then invited to write to the head of the RFCA about that. I am grateful for that hint, and I still intend to do so following this debate. For the record, 1476 (Rayleigh) Squadron has won the Lees trophy as the champion squadron in the Essex wing two years running.”

    House of Commons16 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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