Armed Forces Recruitment

Question

15:07:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made on plans to expedite and streamline armed forces recruitment processes.

My Lords, I must start by declaring my interest as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy. I welcome noble Lords to the “Ruth show”, given that I will answer three Oral Questions today. The Armed Forces recruitment service contract with Serco will fully unify recruitment by October 2027. The ministry has also set an ambition to make a conditional offer of employment within 10 days and to give a provisional start date within 30 days if the candidate desires it, in addition to scrapping more than 100 outdated medical policies.

My Lords, there has been some improvement in retention rates recently, but since 1999 there have been only six years when the number of personnel joining the Armed Forces was higher than the number leaving. Last month, the Chief of the Defence Staff reported that the forces are getting smaller each month to the tune of 200 to 300 people. There is low morale, as well as various forms of job dissatisfaction. Can my noble friend explain what is being done to improve retention among service personnel?

I thank my noble friend for her question. I want to make it very clear that I am in awe of anybody who puts on a uniform and runs towards danger; that is why we have to look after them. This Government inherited a recruitment and retention crisis from the previous Government.

Oh!

We did; noble Lords have discussed this in your Lordships’ House many times. However, since July, we have taken decisive measures on both recruitment and retention. On the recent statistics, Armed Forces inflow has increased by 20% compared with the previous 12 months. The Army currently has a seven-year high in application volumes, the Royal Navy yearly recruitment target has been exceeded, and RAF applications are up by 34%. However, we still have a huge amount of work to do. That is why, specifically on retention, it is such an important step forward that we have introduced new retention teams, which hold exit interviews to work with service personnel to see whether we can help them overcome their reasons for leaving. We spend a huge amount of money on training our Armed Forces personnel; it is important that we make sure they stay.

My Lords, would the Minister consider a trial run of reopening high street recruiting centres, the closing of which was, in my view, a disaster? They enable people who know the area in which they are recruiting and the people whom they want to recruit much better than some remote service. Would the Minister consider giving that a trial just to see whether it still works?

The noble Lord makes an important point; I will pass his views on to the Minister and report back.

My Lords, 2027 is a long way off. The problem is urgent now. I understand that, between now and the full implementation of the contract with Serco, there will be a period that has been referred to as a “mobilisation period”. Can the Minister tell the House what that will entail, as well as what will be done to improve the situation this year and next year, rather than waiting for 2027?

I thank the noble and gallant Lord for his service and for holding the Government to account on this. The new contract is an important and significant change in the recruitment process: a single recruitment service operating on behalf of the services and the reserves that will make sure we are recruiting where we need to. We need to make sure we get it right so that it does not lead to shortages. We are implementing some of the parts of the contract as quickly as we can. On turnaround times, noble Lords will be aware that one of the biggest challenges that the Army had with the Capita contract was access to medical records; it was taking weeks to get them. We are now utilising AI and that has sped up from weeks to hours, which is speeding up the process.

My Lords, the Government inherited an MoD employing 63,000 civilians. Of course, many do vital and necessary work, but surely this is an absurd number, given that the Army itself is only 72,000 strong. Have the Government made any international comparisons in this area, and what plans do they have to tackle the bloated bureaucracy, particularly in procurement? The realised savings could then be diverted to improve pay and conditions at the sharp end, in our forces themselves. Perhaps the civilian excess could be drafted into the mooted Home Guard: I am sure there will be many aspiring Captain Mainwarings in their ranks.

My Lords, one of the themes of the strategic defence review is to explore the approach to recruiting, educating, training and retaining the people needed for “one defence”. This includes the regular reserve, the Civil Service and industry. It simply is not always appropriate for people in uniform to do some of these jobs, and we need to utilise those in uniform where they can best serve. The SDR will be published in the spring—and by the spring I mean “Civil Service spring”, so it will be imminent. While we are here, I thank my noble friend Lord Robertson for his work on the SDR.

My Lords, 43 years ago today, at this time, I was under heavy air attack and was later sunk. Recruiting at that stage was very buoyant—thank goodness, after one sinks. Post the war, it became even more buoyant. We have never had any shortage in this country, thank goodness, of young men and women who are patriotic and willing to risk their all for our nation. It seemed as though our recruiting system was trying to actively stop recruiting those people. I am very glad we have now got around that. I will ask my noble friend the Minister two questions. Are we doing something special to get the engineers we are so very short of, particularly in the Air Force and the Navy, and the technicians who are crucial for our weapons systems? Is the UK Military Flying Training System now fit for purpose, because it has not been for a few years?

I thank my noble friend not just for the question but for his incredible service. He highlights exactly what he did to keep our country safe and why people want to join our Armed Forces. I am proud to be his noble friend. I have to say I was disappointed because I had an update on ships, which is what I thought he was going to ask me about.

Give it anyway!

Just for my noble friend: HMS “Glasgow”, a new Type 26 will officially enter the Royal Navy tomorrow. On the specifics of his question, I will have to revert on some details but let me be very clear on how we are recruiting and ensuring that people can come through, especially engineers. We are looking at each pinch point individually, and for tri-service air engineers we have offered a £30,000 incentive.

My Lords, there is an urgent need not only to increase the number of people recruited into our Armed Forces but to ensure they are better allocated to roles appropriate to their skills. Serco will, I understand, lead a consortium of six delivery partners—TEAM Serco. How do the Government and Serco propose to monitor progress by the individual team members to ensure the aggregate objective of increased numbers of personnel and better alignment of skills is achieved?

I thank the noble Baroness. At the heart of the contract is making sure there is one clear oversight to ensure of where we have missing skills. So, if a recruit says, “I want to be a chef in the Navy”, but we actually have too many vacancies for chefs in the RAF, we will actively encourage them to consider the RAF. Although this is candidate centred, we will for the first time be able to have an assessment of where our gaps are across the whole of the Armed Forces. If Serco fails, there are financial penalties.

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. As the Minister has touched on reserves a couple of times in this brief session, does she agree that, following the SDR, we need to look at a surge in reserves—not just volunteers but really paying attention to our regular reserves? Given the threats and risks we face as a nation, we need to become very serious about mobilisation and think about the narrative for our society on defence, national security and especially national resilience.

The noble and gallant Lord makes an excellent point regarding the strength and capacity of our reserves. They are a core part of our Armed Forces and it is vital that they are treated as such, which is why they are also included in the single recruitment contract. We are currently reviewing, through the prism of the strategic defence review, how we recruit reserves and what additional support we need to put in place, up to and including potential legislation.