AS the search continues for efficiencies in the way the UK conducts its business, I write to ask why the Territorial Army has an establishment of 38,500, albeit currently recruiting to 28,000?

Only some 1,200 have deployed, alongside regulars, each year for the past decade, according to TAQ, the TA’s own magazine.

Many thousands of the TA have not been deployed at all and 10 per cent have declared themselves unavailable for mobilisation for personal reasons.

Similarly, the Regular Army claims it needs over 100,000 so that it can deploy its contribution to the 9,500 British service personnel in Afghanistan; this is plainly nonsense.

The TA’s role beyond 2015 must be questioned. What will these 28,000 TA soldiers do, other than train and train again? Further-more, the TA has a huge estate in all the home nations, with over 350 establishments.

Indeed, in the same magazine foreword, the Director (Reserves) admits that the TA could be “distributed and positioned more intelligently”.

Ministers will surely wish to know why that has not been done in the past ten years and why successive Chiefs of the General Staff have allowed this expensive and inefficient state of affairs to continue.

A smaller TA, reorganised with a significantly reduced estate, must match future defence requirements.

The artificially large TA is no longer affordable.

Lester May, Camden Town, London.