Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to Business Challenge section of the campaign brief for Capita published on 13 February, what recent improvements the Army Recruiting Group has made.

The Army is working closely with Capita, with multiple interventions now in place and delivering improvements to Army recruiting. These include the new Your Army marketing campaign, measures to reduce the time between applicants applying and starting training, greater access to military role models for applicants during the process and a new IT system which is providing enhanced management data.

Regular soldier applications are at a five-year high, and while it is premature to assess the success of the current 'Your Army' campaign, early indications are of a strong start in attracting candidates to join the Army, with over 10,000 applicants to join the Regular Army in January. It will take longer to see increases in trained strength due to the length of the recruitment and training pipelines.