My Lords, with regard to the noble Lord's last point, it is true that in Scotland a significant proportion of certain regiments contain people from other nations. We should recognise the tremendous impact that these people have made. They are high quality people who have added to the capability of these regiments.

As to the noble Lord's first point, I am grateful to him for pointing out that there is recognition of the need for this change. There is a recognition in many parts of the House that the decision has been taken to eliminate the arms plot in order to bring greater efficiency to our Army and to ensure that the battalions that we have are available for service and that the disruption to the lives of our soldiers inherent in the arms plot can be removed.

Once one accepts that the arms plot is no longer to be, the need for multi-battalion regiments follows. The question therefore has been how the army can be organised to ensure that we have the resources to address the pinch points we have experienced in the expeditionary nature of the operations we have had to undertake. We are making the investment in those areas—logisticians, intelligence people and so on—and we are rebalancing the Armed Forces to do this. Our Army is in fact bigger than it was in 1997.