Tobias Ellwood
Main Page: Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)Department Debates - View all Tobias Ellwood's debates with the Ministry of Defence
IT Systems (Army Recruitment)
Tobias Ellwood Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
Given the IT challenges we face, will the Secretary of State confirm that we are still on track to meet our recruitment targets? With the rebalancing of the Army’s regular reserve forces, will he say what more is being done to encourage those who have served as regular officers and soldiers and completed that service, and who might now consider service in the Territorial reserves and take advantage of that experience?
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and recruiting ex-regulars is an important part of our strategy for building the reserves, not least because ex-regulars drop straight to the trained strength if their regular Army service is recent enough. As he will know, we are currently offering an enlistment bounty for ex-regulars to join the reserves, which reflects some part of the cost saving that we make through not having to take ex-regular recruits through the full reserve training process.