Lack of dental check-ups partly behind undeployable troops numbers – ex-minister

A lack of dental check-ups are responsible for a number of the more than 10,000 members of the armed forces who are unable to be deployed due to being deemed medically unfit, according to a former defence minister.

James Heappey, who served as armed forces minister under three Conservative prime ministers, said the personnel are automatically categorised as unfit if they have not had the appointment in the last six months.

The number of people in the armed forces declared “not medically deployable” was revealed in an answer to a written parliamentary question on Monday.

Speaking to Times Radio on Tuesday morning, Mr Heappey said: “I’ll bet you that a big chunk of the non-deployable, medically downgraded people are downgraded for dental reasons.

“And what that tends to mean is that they’ve not had a dental check-up in the last six months, and so they are automatically declared dentally unfit, and therefore not fully deployable.”

I’ll bet you that a big chunk of the non-deployable, medically downgraded people are downgraded for dental reasons.

He added: “There is a reality about the nature of some of these injuries that mean that they couldn’t deploy to go on a discretionary operation today in peacetime, but if war was to come, then they would be absolutely able to go and fight because the needs of the nation would rather trump that rather discretionary take on their medical capacity.”

Mr Heappey, who served in the army in Afghanistan and Basra and like Mr Carns is still a reservist, said some armed forces personnel were needed to do back office jobs, including in the National Cyber Force.

“The headline is very arresting and, of course, the real concern,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence said that about 90% of its armed force personnel were deployable “at any point”.

Mr Heappey said he thought the three main branches of the armed forces needed to grow in response to increased conflicts across the world, including the Russia-Ukraine war.

Defence Secretary John Healey has said the army will have fewer than 70,000 soldiers in it next year.

Mr Heappey said: “I think the reality is that the number that are in the army, navy, air force at the moment is below what is required for the threats that face our nation.

Former security minister Tom Tugendhat told Times Radio that he also thought the army needed to increase in size. “The reality is that we have too few men and women in our armed forces, I’ve been calling for a massive increase for a long time.”

The Conservative MP for Tonbridge added: “The reality is we have a major change in the world… It’s the end of the era that we’ve had for the last 30-40 years since the end of the Cold War, where we’ve seen automatic peaceful relationships between countries as the expected norm. That’s over. We need now to prepare.”

Mr Heappey agreed with Mr Carns that the British Army could be destroyed within six months of war breaking out with Russia.

According to the BBC, Mr Carns had told the Royal United Services Institute defence think tank: “In a war of scale – not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine – our army for example on the current casualty rates would be expended, as part of a broader multinational coalition, in six months to a year.”

Mr Heappey said: “This is the fact of war. In 1914 the British Expeditionary Force was defeated inside the first year and it was a sort of volunteer, conscript army that went on to win the war subsequently.

“In 1939, the standing professional army was defeated within a year and onto the beaches of Dunkirk, and then it was a volunteer conscript army, second and third echelon army, that went on to win the war.

“So Al is not yet really a fully credentialled politician, he is a senior military officer and he says it exactly as it is. And nobody should find that particularly salacious, those are the realities.”