Mid Bedfordshire MP Blake Stephenson has said the Government ‘must do more’ after a committee he sits on released a report criticising the detail and funding in current plans for the expansion of army reserves.
Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, which Blake sits on as a Member, found that the Ministry of Defence targets for expansion of reserves and cadets face significant barriers and suffer from a lack of clarity.
The reserves are a key part of the UK’s defence capability, making up a little under a fifth of its total armed forces strength at the start of 2025. Ambitious plans were laid out for expanding the role of the reserves in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), including increasing active reserve forces by at least 20% “when funding allows”. According to the SDR this would “most likely” be by the 2030s – however, the MoD recognised to the PAC’s inquiry that investment would need to come in support of the reserves during this Parliament, so within the next 4 years. The MoD is also seeking as a priority to improve reserves’ management via a digital solution by early 2027 – a tight timescale to meet.
The report also covers the cadet forces, which the SDR also wants to increase by 30% by 2030, from 140,000 to 250,000. Cadet forces can enhance social mobility and give confidence and structure to the most disadvantaged young people, and the PAC’s inquiry heard that there was no lack of interest from young people wanting to join the cadets. However, the MoD is still working out how to address the shortage of adult volunteers who run the cadets, and the PAC believes it will require considerable effort to persuade young people to volunteer as cadets in such significantly increased numbers.
The PAC’s report is calling for the full enhancement and expansion plans for the reserves and cadets to be set out by 2026.
The enhanced roles of the reserves and cadets will also need to be supported by a modernised and fit-for-purpose volunteer estate of training sites and cadet huts. However, the PAC’s report finds that the estate has been in a state of managed decline, with too many sites (around 2,500), some of which are not in the right places. The MoD has begun a programme to dispose of some sites and consolidate others into super reserve centres, but has not yet secured future funding for this work while facing teething problems with an estate maintenance contract. The PAC’s report calls for MoD to give due consideration to the volunteer estate in forthcoming investment decisions.
Overall, the PAC finds inadequate arrangements for monitoring the financial performance of the RFCAs, which received £146m of public money in 2023-24. October 2024 saw a batch of three annual accounts published together, meaning that some information about the RFCAs' financial performance was not publicly available until more than four years after it had occurred. An overall financial framework that complies with Treasury requirements is still not in place, and the PAC is calling for one to be implemented as a matter of urgency.
Blake Stephenson, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, said: “Our reserves and army cadets are in desperate need of support and attention, and unfortunately the report we have published shows there is still a significant amount of work to be done.
“The current plans to boost our reserves by 20% and cadet forces by a third are of course welcome, but the Government must do more to ensure these aims can realistically be achieved because so far our work has found they are likely to fall short.
“It is a privilege to sit on the Public Accounts Committee to be able to scrutinise the Government on such key issues like the future of our military and I hope this report will be heard loud and clear in the corridors of power.”
