Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what estimate his Department has made of the revenue savings from freezing defence civilian staff recruitment until March 2025.

The Ministry of Defence has recently commenced a temporary recruitment pause. Following this pause, over the next 18 months we will control the recruitment of civilian staff, with certain positions not being filled. We anticipate that the Defence civilian workforce will decrease through natural attrition by around 2,000 to 3,000 posts over this period. We are currently modelling how the reduction in civil servant headcount will contribute to the financial challenges the Department is facing.

Our civilian workforce is crucial to protecting our nation and supporting our Armed Forces, and we are committed to having an agile workforce with the right skills, whilst maximising value for the taxpayer.

The wellbeing of our Defence civil servants is extremely important to us, and we are pleased that Defence civil servants have high levels of job satisfaction, as seen in the recent Civil Service Wellbeing Over Time report.