Armed Forces: Future Force 2020

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Boyce (CB)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, I think that the House is signalling that it wants to hear from the Cross-Benchers.

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, a skill set for which there is an ever growing need is, of course, engineering, especially nuclear engineering. Will the Minister say what progress has been made with industry to ensure a flow of that talent between industry and the services, particularly for those who have left the services and joined industry and then been brought back into the services to help out?

[Earl Howe]

The noble and gallant Lord is absolutely right. On nuclear engineers, we have adopted what we call an enterprise approach, which essentially means working with the wider defence industry to better share experience and best practice and to develop career management, manning and access to the key skills that we need to create a more attractive career path for nuclear engineers. There are other elements as well. We need to have proper staged financial incentives, and we have retention incentives for those already working for the Royal Navy. There is no single answer, but I think that this is the way ahead—in particular, working closely with university and technical colleges to support the development of those skilled individuals.