I think we are up to speed on that— the 2030s.
The case for investment in the Army is obvious, and the good news is that it is easier, quicker and cheaper to refit and upscale the Army than it is the Navy, because kit is smaller and cheaper. However, we do not just need the same Army but a bigger one. We need a medium-sized Army that is bespoke for the job that will be done—the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made the right point about the sort of Army we need. The Army needs, in a resonant phrase, to defend these islands, but it also needs to act in partnership with other services and with our allies in the west. We do not need another great new major continental army such as the one the Poles are building. We need a rapid reaction joint expeditionary force that is agile, mobile, and able to do the job that is required, in partnership with our allies.
On the sphere of operations, ultimately our commitments need to reflect the threats we face. In a sense, those are classified, and I recognise the challenge that the Committees have had in identifying what our capabilities are, and the tasks that Ministers set for them, because we cannot always know exactly what those threats are, with defence planning assumptions now classified. Nevertheless, I echo a point made by the right hon. Member for North Durham: I am delighted about AUKUS, which is a tremendous step forward in our international role and a great thing for British security. I am not averse to those
global arrangements—they are absolutely right. I loved the deployment of the Queen Elizabeth and the carrier strike group to Japan.
Fundamentally, however, we are, and should be, committed to the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area, and for that purpose we must restore the mass of our own armed forces and Army. That means growing our capabilities here at home. We need more regulars, and to get back towards having 80,000 or 90,000 regular forces. We must significantly grow the reserve force because 30,000 is not enough, even if that figure of 30,000 is real, which I do not believe it is. The campaign to grow our reserves is necessary not just for its own sake, but as a great exercise in communication to the public about the imperative for us all to step up and play our role in the defence of our country.
There is a great deal of concern, which I think is misplaced, about the attitude of the British people to fighting. We had that in the 1930s, with lots of people saying that the British would not fight, but of course they would, of course they did, and of course they will if they have to answer their country’s call. That is young people in particular. They will do it with irony, and certainly with memes, but they will do it and sign up if they need to. This is not an abstraction. We have already seen in the past year or two what war in our region means. It means inflation—imagine that tenfold if a war breaks out in which our country is directly involved—and cyber-attacks on a terrible scale.
We are now at a turning point, as so many Members have said, and it is time for all of us as a country to step up. There is an opportunity and an imperative for us to strengthen our nation. It is about industrial resilience and our own food supply; it is about our supply chains, and our steel and manufacturing capacity. There is a huge opportunity, as the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) said, in the importance of the industrial supply chain. This is a time for us all to do what is needed.