Recruitment

Thursday 11th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

There has been a long tradition of Commonwealth citizens serving in the British armed forces and most recently on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We continue to value their service which provides an important contribution in defending the UK at home and abroad.

In order to deliver the future structure of the armed forces under the requirements of the strategic defence and security review, we are already reducing their size by adjusting our recruit intake and making some redundancies. The long-standing five-year UK residency requirement for Commonwealth citizens to join the armed forces was waived in 1998. We have reviewed the Commonwealth recruitment rules and, with effect from 11 July, we will reintroduce the five-years’ residency requirement in the UK for future new recruits from Commonwealth countries. In addition, non-British recruits to the reserves will be required to have indefinite leave to remain in the UK in order to fulfil their reservist commitment. This will also create consistency in the recruitment practices of all three services.

This will not affect personnel already serving, or on recruitment, from the Republic of Ireland or for the Brigade of Gurkhas. We are confident that we will still be able to meet our recruitment targets. We will honour our commitments to those Commonwealth recruits in the pipeline who have already been offered a job or a training place and we will also continue to process the applications for those who have already been offered a place at an assessment centre by the Army or a psychometric test by the Navy or the RAF.