Baroness Crawley: My Lords, we will ensure that our troops are not left
naked. In fact, the UK Armed Forces are among the best equipped in the
world, as their repeated successes in operations demonstrate.

Remember that when you can't get that bit of kit you require...

[quote="stoatman"][quote]Baroness Crawley: My Lords, we will ensure that our troops are not left naked. /quote] Has she told the booties this?

On Thursday, the Lords had a question on the number of resignations from the Reserves, which may be of interest. The exchange is in Hansard

There will now be a debate on the topic on 19 January.

Thanks for the Hansard link.

The Earl Attlee made a particularly good point, in my view, and I will be interested to see the answer to the question he raised.

On the other hand:

Originally Posted by Lord Drayson

We in the modern Armed Forces

I wasn't aware that he was serving (or had served). Or did his donation to New Labour get him a commission as well as a peerage?

The Lords debate on Reserve Forces is now available in Hansard.

I find Lord Drayson's reply (below) particularly misleading.

"We recognise reservists' concerns that they are vulnerable to dismissal or discrimination, something that has been highlighted by a number of noble Lords. However, there is little evidence that such discrimination occurs. We are aware of only 28 registered cases appearing before a reinstatement committee out of over 13,000 mobilisations in the past 10 years"

To my knowledge the system has never attempted to assess the scale of problems suffered by reservists. I am unaware of any surveys or reporting mechanisms whereby assessments are made of number of soldiers who never returned to their pre-mobilisation jobs as a result of problems encountered (ie me) or who have been told by work that membership of the TA is incompatible with further promotion (my colleagues) - to take but two examples out of many.

Another bit of misdirection from Lord Drayson:

I reassure the House and the noble Lord, Lord Astor, that mobilised reserves receive access to medical care on the same terms as their regular counterparts.

Note his use of 'mobilised reserves'. The problems of not being able to access care, and the lack of follow-up, affects wounded reservists when they have been demobilised, which is what Lord Astor referred to. Reservists are demobilised at the earliest possible time (so they don't have to be paid, preseumably), and this is when the problems start.

The Constitution Committee is looking into the question of the Government's war making powers. The terms of reference and list of witnesses are here.

They took evidence from two five star, one four star and two three star officers (Bramall, Vincent, Boyce, Smith, Garden) on Wednesday 18 January. To watch the session, go to the tv archive search page. Enter the date of 18 January in both boxes, select "Committees" in the meetings box, and the word "constitution" in the search box. Then click "watch".

Originally Posted by tgarden

The Lords debate on Reserve Forces is now available in Hansard.

From Hansard:

However, in REME TA, my regiment, the success rate was one in 1.17 and it was similar in the rest of the TA.

Good grief! That is truly astonishing.

Any link yet to the Lords debate yesterday (23/01/2006) on Afghanistan, what I heard on R4 over the crying of Jailor Jnr (teething) suggests the Labour Defence Peer took a polite beating over HMG indecisiveness.