I have a short response, just to clarify my remarks.
I don't have a problem with government saying that we need to balance a budget and that all government departments need to tighten their belts.
I wasn't in defence at the time we made the choices of what to cut. I am just commenting on the fact that, at the time, they—probably with the best of intentions—felt they could cut this area and still manage to recruit. What the evidence has shown is that we've cut the capacity to process people. Processing times got longer, and our ability to build the force took longer. In hindsight, that probably wasn't one of our better choices of which area to cut.
I have no problems with government telling us that we all need to cut back to manage a budget, and so on.