My hon. and gallant Friend is, unsurprisingly, right. Having served around the world, he knows well that to command and to lead is to choose. As we set out what is global Britain, we must choose our priorities and make sure that our armed forces are fit to serve the needs of our country in the coming decades. It is absolutely essential to ensure that we have the right people—men and women, regular and reserve—to provide that service. I declare an interest: I am still a serving reservist. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you. Flexibility is required to move from one form of employment to another, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) mentioned, and people who do so bring other skills with them. That will be essential to securing the skills that we need at the level of preparedness that we require. Let us be honest: that level of preparation cannot truly be maintained if we focus simply on ensuring that everybody can speak enough Arabic—or French, or German, or whatever language it happens to be—that should anything come up, we can go off to a country in which that language is spoken; or on ensuring that everybody has enough skills in cyber or humanitarian reconstruction. Those skills are very hard to maintain at readiness, because doing so is expensive. If we maintain them at a slightly lower level and call on reservists who have them, we will have a force that is not only up to date but—let us not forget why we are here—cost-effective for the people who have sent us here to judge how best to deploy this country’s resources.
I welcome the Bill very much, and I welcome the fact that my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) is sitting on the ministerial Bench this evening. He knows more than anybody the role that the armed forces can play not only in humanitarian reconstruction, war and information operations but in a whole range of other tasks from diplomacy and education to reassurance and—perhaps the most important task that we ask our armed forces to carry out—deterring our enemies so that we can live in peace.
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