Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much his Department has spent on recruitment consultants in each year since 2016; and how many personnel have been recruited to the (a) RAF, (b) Army, (c) Navy and (d) Marines in each year since 2016.

Since entering Government, we have taken immediate action to stop all non-essential Ministry of Defence consultancy spending. The information requested specifically on external recruitment consultants is not centrally held and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

The intake to the Armed Forces is published in the Quarterly Service Personnel Statistics and can be found online.