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Small businesses could get incentives for soldier employees

Small businesses could be offered cash incentives to encourage them to allow their workers to become part of the Territorial Army.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics Show, defence Secretary Philip Hammond said firms could get “financial incentivisation” for allowing their workers to join up.

Mr Hammond wants to grow the size of the Territorial Army following reduction of the number of regular troops by 20,000.

The defence secretary said: “It means giving employers more certainty about the timing for liability of callout of their reservist employees.

“We are looking at the equation around financial incentives, and I would like to look at financial incentivisation for those employers for whom it matters.

“That means cash if their employees get called out. That matters for small employers. If I speak to the large employers, who already employ significant numbers of reservists, they’re not interested in financial incentives, they do it because it’s good for their business and it’s part of their corporate social responsibility.”

When quizzed about the size of cash incentives, Mr Hammond declined to go into detail, but promised a concrete offer offer later in the spring.

The Government’s plans to grow the number of army reservists by 30,000 has been rubbished by former military personnel, but Mr Hammond reiterated that reservist numbers have been higher in the past.

He added: “The reserves had been much higher than 30,000 in the past. They’ve been allowed to atrophy over the last couple of decades since the end of the Cold War.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .