Armed Forces Recruitment

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

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?

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

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.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

Give it anyway!

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

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.