Mark Francois MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Apr 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  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”. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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?

• 16 Apr 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. On the point about CCFs, part of the Department’s thinking at the time was that a lot of young people, particularly in the independent sector, benefited from the cadet experience by joining combined cadet force units in independent schools, which, as the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, exist in some state schools too. We were trying to give more people in the state sector the opportunity to benefit from a similar experience, so we set the ambitious target of 500 units in state schools, which I am pleased to say we hit. Returning briefly to 1476, in the end, I think it has all been a misunderstanding, and it could be easily resolved with a measure of good will on both sides. I hope the Minister understands the spirit in which I, as the president of the squadron, have raised the issue. If he can personally do anything to help, it would be greatly appreciated. With that, I rest my case.

• 16 Apr 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  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. 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”. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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?

• 16 Apr 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In my experience, retired officers, particularly retired senior officers, are keenly aware of their pension entitlements. If we are paying them a pension through the armed forces pension scheme, we presumably know who they are and where they live. Via that database, it would not be particularly onerous to come up with a list of retired senior officers who could at least be invited. We are not suggesting that this should be mandatory, but we are suggesting that they may want the opportunity to serve. Via their pensions, we know where they are.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  To reinforce what the Minister is saying, Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory, who for many years was the controller of SSAFA, always used to make the point that while clearly some people suffer as a result of their military career, as the Minister admits, the vast bulk emerge in good shape, remain in good shape and benefit immensely from their time in service. I put on record what Lieutenant General Gregory, the head of SSAFA until recently, said, if only to back up absolutely everything the Minister is saying.