FORMER servicemen who have been made redundant will receive a £5000 signing-on "bounty" to become part-time soldiers under plans that will also result in seven of Scotland's reserve bases being closed.
The UK Government wants to double the number of reservists to 30,000 as it shrinks the regular Army by 20,000 to 82,000.
However, the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond appeared to concede it could be difficult to persuade soldiers who had recently lost their jobs to become reservists.
Plans were also unveiled to improve reservists' pay and pensions and to allow computer experts to bypass the military's tough fitness tests.
In total 35 Army reserve bases will close across the UK, including Dunfermline, Dunoon, Keith, Kirkcaldy, Wick and ones at McDonald Road in Edinburgh and Carmunnock Road in Glasgow.
Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond said many bases had few reservists attached. Only one person is understood to regularly turn up for training at Wick, and six are based at Keith.
A total of 14 bases UK-wide will open over the three forces, including at Kilmarnock, Redford Cavalry Barracks and a naval base in Edinburgh. The Army has been set a target to raise the number of Scottish reservists from 2200 to 3700 by 2018.
However, Westminster SNP leader and defence spokesman Angus Robertson MP said: "A higher proportion of closures in Scotland than in the rest of the UK is something we are sadly used to from the Ministry of Defence and adds to the 520 redundancies already revealed this week at locations across Scotland."
But the head of the Army in Scotland, Major General Nick Eeles, said the reserve force in Scotland was doing very well. In a number of cases reservists would have to travel only small distances to their new base, the Army said.
Officials said there was a reserve base in Dunfermline opposite the one that will close. But they admitted there was no base near Wick.
Scottish Veterans Minister Keith Brown wrote to Mr Hammond urging him to engage with the Scottish Government.
Jim Murphy, Labour's shadow defence secretary, said: "This will be difficult news for communities up and down the country and will be greeted with sadness."
As part of their plans to bolster the reserves, ministers also announced plans to rebrand the Territorial Army as the Army Reserve. Reservists will now train and be deployed alongside the regular Army.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article