THIRD REPORT-HONG KONG AND CYPRUS
Observations presented by the Secretary of State for Defence
HONG KONG
1. The Government notes the view expressed in the Committee's report that no further cut in the Hong Kong garrison should be contemplated.
2. The Committee warned that there was already a substantial risk that the Gurkha Brigade would fall to such a size that its viability would be questioned and that doubts might arise about the value of the retention of the force. The Committee recommended that the restriction on the areas in the world in which units of the Brigade may be deployed should be re-examined (paragraph 8).
3. As Parliament was told in the Defence Secretary's statement on 3 December 1974, it was decided in the Defence Review that the Brigade of Gurkhas would be retained, mainly serving in Hong Kong, but would be cut by 1,000 as part of the reductions in the Army as a whole. Parliament was further informed on 25 May 1976 that this reduction would be effected by amalgamating two battalions in 1978 thus reducing the Brigade from five to four battalions. The Government recognises that, following the withdrawal of the artillery regiment and the armoured reconnaissance squadron from Hong Kong, only the Gurkha battalion stationed in the United Kingdom will have opportunities for all-arms training, and that this is an undesirable limitation on the training of the Brigade as a whole. Given, however, the considerable cost of providing all-arms training for the Gurkha units in Hong Kong, and the priority that must be accorded to training for units with a NATO role, the Government believes that these limitations are largely inescapable although the Ministry of Defence will do what it can to ameliorate them by continuing to send officers of the Brigade on all-arms training courses in the United Kingdom and by instructional visits to the Hong Kong garrison from the United Kingdom.
4.
Current restrictions on the deployment of the Brigade reflect the long standing conclusion that in the case of BAOR, the cost of equipping Gurkha battalions to the scales of BAOR mechanised battalions, and the complica- tions that would arise from the inclusion in BAOR of a battalion with different accommodation and other administrative requirements, outweigh the advantages that would accrue to the Brigade's professional experience; and in the case of Northern Ireland that British units are best suited to the special circumstances of the military role there. The desirability of main- taining all-arms training opportunities for the Brigade of Gurkhas would not alone justify a relaxation in these restrictions. The Gurkha battalion stationed in the United Kingdom has helped to relieve overstretch in the Army as a whole; and in 1974 served successfully on an emergency tour in Cyprus.
5. The Government does not consider that the limitations in the future opportunities for all-arms training in the Brigade, or the reduction in strength decided on in the Defence Review, affect the viability of what is rightly
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