Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent progress his Department has made on implementing relevant recommendations of the report entitled Living in our shoes: understanding the needs of UK Armed Forces families, published on 30 June 2020.

The Government responded to the 110 recommendations of the comprehensive Living in Our Shoes report in March 2021 and committed to taking this forward through the Armed Forces Families Strategy. Since the publication of the Strategy in January 2022, a great deal of work has taken place to formulate the priorities under the Action Plan, to understand what changes can be delivered in the short, medium and longer term. As the Living in Our Shoes report acknowledged, many of the recommendations are ambitious and will be delivered towards the middle or latter part of the 10-year programme. However, there is much we can do now and indeed many of the recommendations from Living in Our Shoes have in effect already been delivered. An update on progress with the implementation of the Strategy can be found in the 2022 Armed Forces Covenant Annual Report, published on 19 December 2022: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/armed-forces-covenant-and-veterans-annual-report-2022