Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether there any ongoing investigations regarding maltreatment of recruits at any of the army training centres that host under-18s.

The recruitment of under 18 year olds by the Army meets all legal obligations. Both recruits and instructors are empowered to raise concerns where the maltreatment of an individual is suspected. There are a number of routes of investigations that can be undertaken, these usually interlink and can be captured multiple times when incidents involve more than one individual.

The table below provides the total number of ongoing investigations at Army Training Centres that host under 18’s, but does not show the number of investigations involving under 18’s rather the whole establishment irrespective of the age of those involved.

Notes/Caveats

1. This data has been provided from a single service source rather than official statistics produced by Defence Statistics as they do not collate this information.
2. There can be multiple service requests relating to one incident (i.e. one incident may involve two or more perpetrators).
3. Investigation data includes reports of maltreatment by both other recruits and instructors, and other disciplinary matters.
4. Figures show incidents at any Army Training Centre that host under-18s. They include incidents involving recruits over and under 18 years of age.
5. Royal Military Police (RMP) investigations can run alongside Disciplinary Service Requests. Thus incidents in row one may also appear in the figure in row three. The table includes RMP investigations for offences such as Battery, Fighting, Disgraceful Act, Conduct Prejudicial to Good Order, Harassment, actual bodily harm (ABH).
6. Discipline/Service requests will remain open/ongoing until the conclusion of any Court Martial, Summary hearing or Admin Action. This could be several months following the conclusion of an RMP investigation.
7. Discipline/Admin Action Service Requests shown in this table reflect all open/ongoing JPA Discipline Service Law and Warning and Sanction Service Requests, looking at allegations of violence, bullying or other maltreatment/mistreatment towards Junior Soldiers, recruits or trainees.
8. Service Complaints can be made by all Serving or former members of the UK armed forces if they feel they have been wronged on a matter that arises when they are subject to service law.
9. “-” denotes zero or rounded to zero.
10. Figures have been rounded to 10 for presentational purposes. numbers ending in "5" have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias.