Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, for what reason his Department has removed the Chief of the Defence Staff from the Department’s Finance and Economics pre-release access lists, other than the Departmental resources and Statistical Bulletin-MOD Regional Expenditure with UK Industry and Supported Employment releases.

Pre-release access for Official Statistics are restricted to eligible personnel and regularly reviewed. This is in line with our responsibility under the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order (2008) and the Code of Practice for Statistics. In line with the order, these lists must be:

1. Limited to those required to draft, make statements, or take action shortly after the time of publication.
2. Restricted to a minimum number of recipients to maintain public trust.

The MOD Regional Expenditure with UK Industry and Supported Employment (last released 3rd August 2023) has now been rearranged into two statistical releases:

1. the MOD Regional Expenditure statistic,
2. the UK Industry and Supported Employment statistic.

In the routine review of access for these statistics the Chief of Defence Staff was omitted from the new pre-release access lists and has been re-added.

The Chief of the Defence Staff has full access to comprehensive data on MOD programmes and finances, including that which is not published as part of statistical releases.