Armed Forces Recruitment: North-east England

Alan Strickland Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alan Strickland (Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered armed forces recruitment in the North East.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. It is an honour to lead this debate in Armed Forces Week, as we take time to mark the huge contribution that our service personnel make to the security of the UK and our allies. As we celebrate their public service, in this debate we will discuss how to recruit the next generation of warfighters that our country needs.

There has never been a more important time for this discussion. The recent strategic defence review called for

“a landmark shift in our deterrence and defence…moving to warfighting readiness to deter threats and strengthen security”.

A step change in how we recruit must be a fundamental part of that. As a region with a proud history of supporting our armed forces, the north-east can make a significant contribution in the future.

I will make three points today. First, I will talk about transforming armed forces recruitment to meet the rapidly evolving threats that we face. Secondly, I will explain how we can attract the high-tech warfighting skills that we need for the future. Finally, I will discuss how we can modernise recruitment to harness our armed forces as an engine of social mobility.

Let me start with transforming armed forces recruitment to meet the rapidly emerging threats. From the many visits that I have made to RAF bases at home and abroad as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, and having met service personnel in my constituency, it is clear that our armed forces’ greatest asset is their people. They demonstrate extraordinary commitment, resilience and professionalism day in, day out, and I am sure we can all agree that our men and women in uniform represent the very best of British public service. But as the Defence Secretary said:

“The world has changed. The threats we now face are more serious and less predictable than at any time since the Cold War”.

That means we need to look again at how we make sure we have the right people in the right numbers, and with the right skills, across our armed forces.

How do we do that? First, we need a step change in the number of people joining the regular forces and the reserves to give us the mass that we need to meet evolving threats. In doing so, we need to tackle the recruitment crisis that Ministers inherited from the last Government. It is incredibly disappointing that in the last four years, the number of people joining the regular forces fell by 40% in the north-east region. Across the country, it fell by just under a third. Over the last year, we have seen a welcome 19% increase in recruits, but as Ministers have made clear, there is much more to do.

To improve the scale of recruitment, we must transform its speed. It is vital that military recruitment, like all other aspects of UK defence, quickly starts operating at a wartime pace. For too long, new entrants have faced bureaucratic barriers, delays to medical screening and outdated restrictions on pre-existing conditions. This has meant that the length of time between filling in an application form and donning a uniform has often been too long.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on this crucial issue. Does he agree that the system used to apply to join the armed forces is outdated and often cumbersome? I am very happy to say that a constituent of mine has successfully been able to submit an application, but this was after finding that she did not get a notification to say that she had missed some bits of her original application, so she had been waiting indefinitely. She is a keen young person from Darlington who really wants to serve the country, and we absolutely need to take advantage of having people like that.

[Alan Strickland]

I thank my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention, and I entirely agree. I, too, have had casework in my constituency involving people who are keen to join the forces, but whose applications have been lost or delayed. In other cases, medical checks have never been booked. I hope that the Minister will set out some of the practical steps that will be taken to speed up the process.

The problems that we are discussing have hampered recruitment efforts and led to the loss of highly skilled applicants, and we must tackle that. The top priority must be to deliver faster, more flexible and more dynamic recruitment that delivers at pace the new generations of talented servicemen and women that we need.

I turn to attracting the high-tech warfighting skills that we require. As we know, the nature of warfare has changed dramatically in the last few years, and in the appalling conflict in Ukraine, we see it evolving rapidly every single day. In response to that, the strategic defence review makes it clear that our warfighters need a broader range of skills across a wider range of professional and technical specialisms. That is because we need to defend and deter across the five domains of modern warfare— air, land, sea, cyber and space—all of which are developing at pace. I see that clearly in my constituency and across the north-east, where, alongside the manufacture of conventional defence supplies, we have a growing cluster of world-leading space and satellite businesses, many of which are involved in defence.

This rapid innovation means that our military personnel not only need to be skilled in deploying the latest technologies, but must be able to use the full range of defence capabilities in a seamless and integrated way to project maximum force. How do we make sure that people with this evolving and sophisticated range of skills can be successfully recruited into the armed forces?

First, we need to find ways of making roles in the regular forces attractive to those who might not have traditionally seen defence as a career option for them. That means convincing cyber experts, satellite engineers, drone operators and those from a range of high-tech industries and jobs in science, technology, engineering and maths that a career in uniform could be a valuable use of their talents.

[Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on his fantastic speech. To take a slightly different angle, does he agree that our many cadet units across the region, which are often based in very deprived areas, provide wonderful opportunities for young people to gain many life skills and get high-skilled qualifications, leading to good jobs, and that they promote opportunities for young people to consider a career in the forces? Does he look forward to hearing about the Government’s plans to boost cadet forces by 30% over the next five years?

[Alan Strickland]

My hon. Friend is right to set out the vital role that our cadet forces play, not only in encouraging young people to think seriously about the armed forces, but in developing their skills, teamwork, leadership and a range of really valuable things that we want young people in the north-east to be able to access.

In addition to the cadets, we need to be innovative in rethinking how we recruit to our reserve forces. There will be many in the north-east and across our communities who have specialist skills that are of huge value to the armed forces, but who may not be able to serve full time. By establishing the digital warfighter group recommended in the SDR and promoting a range of other opportunities, we could provide flexible and fulfilling part-time roles for those with the skills that we really need. Also, let us look at the opportunities to retrain and reskill our existing personnel, so that our modern warfighters evolve as quickly as modern warfare.

Finally, I will talk about how we can better harness our armed forces as an engine of social mobility.

[Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, for securing this debate in Armed Forces Week and for the fantastic speech that he is making. Proportionally, the north-east sends more of our young people into the armed forces than any other region in the country. I am proud of that contribution, yet relative to other regions, we have fewer armed forces personnel stationed in the region, and the Ministry of Defence spends less with businesses and industry in the region—in fact, I think it spends the least there. Does he think that the Ministry and the armed forces could be more visible and do more to champion the contribution of the armed forces to our region?

[Alan Strickland]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, for that intervention. She is right that as well as making sure that we recruit from the north-east and that there are opportunities there, through the work that is happening on the defence industrial strategy, there must be an opening up of procurement opportunities not just across our region, but particularly for high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises. We know that, for too long, they have been excluded from defence contracts in our country.

Just as our renewed defence industries can be an engine for growth across our country, our efforts to transform recruitment can be a powerful engine for social mobility, spreading opportunity more widely across our nation. When meeting RAF personnel as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I have been struck by the extent to which careers in our military can genuinely transform lives. On one of my first visits to a base, I met a young recruit from Tyneside, who said that being in the RAF had given him opportunities he could never have dreamed of. He was a working-class lad and he said that many from his family had struggled to find and secure jobs. He proudly told me that the RAF had trained him, trusted him and invested in him. The Air Force gave him the chance to train as a world-class engineer, broadened his horizons and allowed him to work all over the globe—all by his early 20s. I have had inspiring conversations like that at base after base. It has been brilliant to hear at first hand just what a difference military careers can make.

In the north-east—a region where, for too long, opportunities have not been spread as widely as talent—the routes our military provides into world-class skills development are all the more powerful and all the more needed. I would be grateful if the Minister can set out how we can show more young people in the north-east that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend (Mary Glindon) mentioned, supporting our armed forces—whether that is through the cadets, reserves or regulars—could not only make a huge difference to our collective defence, but have a transformational impact on their lives.

[Lola McEvoy]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous with his time. He is making an excellent speech in Armed Forces Week. Does he agree that the important incentives for joining the forces include not just pride in the country but a secure career afterwards? Does he also agree that the work the Government are doing to ensure people have decent careers in sectors that really need those with resilience, excellent teamwork, good discipline and grit is a great way to ensure that people think about joining the armed forces, as well as about what they do afterwards?

[Alan Strickland]

My hon. Friend is right that the range of skills that our servicemen and women develop, particularly as we move into a rapidly evolving technical warfighting age, set people in good stead for their future careers. On my RAF visits, station commanders often complain that because they have trained people so well, their personnel are snapped up by the private sector.

One of the things the review mentions is that this does not have to be a binary choice. As my hon. Friend said, there could better opportunities and more sophisticated ways of encouraging people to get trained in the military and contribute. If they move into the private sector for a while and come back into the military full time or go to the reserves, or take part in defence manufacturing, they stay within the defence family, but move around. We actively support that because it means keeping those skills in the wider sector.

I would be grateful if the Minister can set out what more we can do to ensure that schools, colleges and universities do not shy away from talking about military careers, but actively encourage and embrace them. What message will he send to people in the north-east, of all backgrounds and ages, about why they should seriously consider lending their time to UK defence?

As I draw my remarks to a conclusion, let us in this Chamber send a very clear message. If you are a young person looking for an exciting and challenging career, get involved in your local cadets. If you have the specialist skills that Britain needs for defence in a highly technological age, why not share them through the reserves? Be one of our new cyber warfighters. If you are an employer with staff who want to lend their talents to our armed forces, back them, support them and encourage them. And if you are considering how you might have a fulfilling career that develops the skills that my hon. Friend mentioned, why not consider becoming a regular and joining the forces?

Of course, the fundamental reason that this is so incredibly important—the reason why we must think so hard about these opportunities and challenges—is that our final message from this Chamber should be this: if you are a hostile nation, if you are an adversary of the UK and our NATO allies, we will in the next few years be taking major steps to recruit a new generation of world-leading warfighters who will provide world-class defence and deterrence.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Strickland]

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part today, and you, Dr Allin-Khan, for your excellent chairing, which has kept us in good order. I also thank the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin). He said in his comments that he was slightly terrified of all the angry Geordies and Mackems coming at him in battle; I hope we were not too scary today. I am sorry to hear that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) did not make it as a commando, but his 14-and-a-half-year service to our country does us proud, as does the service of the shadow Ministers.

In Armed Forces Week, I thank everyone who serves in uniform to defend our nation, all veterans who have served, the armed forces charities that do brilliant work, and the armed forces families who sacrifice so much so that our nation can be so well defended.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered armed forces recruitment in the North East.