Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, for what reason his Department has not proposed a reserve experience event for a location in Northern Ireland in 2015.

The Reserves Experience events are aimed specifically at “home” civil servants representing the direct employees of HM Government, rather than the general public. The events are staged in support of the Civil Service 1% Challenge which was launched in 2014 with the aim of recruiting 1% of civil servants to the Reserve Forces by the end of financial year 2018-19. To this end, a small number of Reserves Experience events have been designed to build awareness and understanding of the Reserves, and ultimately to drive recruitment opportunities, amongst civil servants at all levels.

Although a specific Reserves Experience event was not planned for Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland based “home” civil servants will already be aware of the Reserve opportunity through an extant programme of engagement, as well as more general recruiting activity conducted throughout Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is already better recruited in terms of reservists per thousand population than the rest of the UK.