Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether the contract for the Armed Forces Recruitment Service will include specific recruitment targets for the (a) Army, (b) Royal Air Force and (c) Royal Navy.

We inherited a retention and recruitment crisis from the last administration and it is the policy of this Government to recover numbers in our Armed Forces and to grow the size of the Army. To deliver this we will be working with the new provider of the tri-service recruitment to deliver improvements in recruitment numbers.

From Full-Service Implementation in 2027, the Armed Forces Recruiting Service (AFRS) will deliver against annual recruitment targets and demand, which will be set by the three Services; the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force, via the Command Recruiting Support Plan (CRSP). The CRSP is generated and approved in conjunction with the single Services with the AFRS contract containing a mechanism to adjust demand during each Recruiting Year.