Armed Forces Recruitment

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

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.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

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.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

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.