Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Professor Alice Sullivan's review entitled Independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender, published on 19 March 2025, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to establish a new non-departmental public body to (a) standardise and (b) improve the effectiveness of the work of the (i) Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations and (b) the Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations.

The 2019 Review of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations (RFCAs) was published on 24 March 2020 and placed in the Library of the House. The Review recommended that the Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations (CRFCA) and the 13 RFCAs should be merged into a single Executive Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), with a National Office and a set of regional organisations. The review can be found at the following address: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-the-reserve-forces-cadets-associations-2019.

The NDPB implementation work was paused in March 2023 due to it failing to obtain a legislative slot in the last Parliament, but this work has now re-commenced, and we are currently progressing work on the required legislation.