Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether he has made an assessment of the potential implications for his policies recommendation of the Haythornthwaite Review that the Armed Forces trial new total reward approaches for (a) engineers and (b) other key skills cohorts.

The Government is prioritising its response to the Armed Forces recruitment and retention challenge, and has taken action already to modernise recruitment processes and award our Armed Forces the largest pay increase in over two decades. The Haythornthwaite Review work-streams are being taken forward in our longer-term plans, and will be informed by the findings of the Strategic Defence Review. These include trials aimed at a wide engineering cohort, along with other measures to meet the needs of today’s Service people and their families.