Reggie,
Yes, the implication might be a larger and more long term one, ie; what this is going to add to the long term pension and compensation budget. The Defence Committee yesterday scrutineered the MoD’s Main Estimates and although it signed it off, it did have some quite sharp comments about trying to predict in uncertainty and staying within the 5% estimates of overspend.
I don't imagine there will be an immediate EDP 'add' to the bottom line to worry about, but if you take all of those 35 days pa and then multiply them by however many reservists will take advantage of them, and then factor in the state's comments about AFPS changing again if it became expensive and unsupportable, you have to wonder. I don't imagine that the MoD yesterday, took any future additional spend into account although it has done so with the reductions post redundancy.
This will have been signed off long ago and in essence, there will be a budget problem but hey, it won't kick in until 2016 at the earliest and hey, thats an election away, right? What next, to pay for it - no incremental pay, a tiny change in the accrual rate?
We recognise that Annually Managed Expenditure is, by its nature, difficult to predict accurately. But we would expect that, as experience of implementing the Armed Forces Compensation Schemes increases and the pattern of voluntary outflow stabilises, the MoD would become better at estimating costs, income and liabilities. We, therefore, echo the recommendation made in our recent Report on the MoD Supplementary Estimates for 2012-13[<A href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmdfence/517/51706.htm#note33">33] that the MoD should set itself a target to keep additional requests at the time of the Supplementary Estimates to five per cent of that requested at the time of the Main Estimate.
House of Commons - MoD Main Estimates 2013-14 - Defence Committee (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmdfence/517/51706.htm)