Armed Forces Day

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

May I make a suggestion? As and when somebody from a given school in Scotland goes into the armed forces and makes a success of it, would it not be a good idea if they were encouraged in every way possible to go back to their old school and tell the fourth, fifth or sixth-year pupils how they did it—“I was in this very same classroom. You can do the same. It’s a great career”?

[Carol Monaghan]

Of course, and people in many professions go back to their old schools and tell the students about their careers. We have seen the mess that has been made of recruitment—the amount of money that has been spent and the poor results—so maybe we should go back to using members of the armed forces as primary recruiters.

At all stages of the recruitment process, recruits should have confidence in its inclusivity of all identities of gender, sexual orientation, race and religion. When considering recruitment, it is important that we are also looking at the labour markets. Who are the military trying to recruit, where are their challenges, and who are they up against when trying to get the very best? If we need to consider the increased use of reservists to ensure that people have skills developed outside the military that can be used inside the military, then that should be done.

Armed forces pay scales reflect an outdated approach. Recruits will start with significantly lower salaries and more distorted pay scales than those in the police or fire services. In July 2018, the MOD announced that personnel will receive a 2% salary increase with an additional one-off payment of 0.9%. However, as the current inflation rate is about 2.2%, the armed forces’ annual rise of just 2% is still below that.