Gavin Shuker
Main Page: Gavin Shuker (Independent - Luton South)Department Debates - View all Gavin Shuker's debates with the Ministry of Defence
IT Systems (Army Recruitment)
Gavin Shuker Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Hammond
There are a number of elements to that. I said that potential recruits seeking to access the system will notice an improvement in the quality of the IT platform, principally because the front end—the web-based portal through which they will access the system—will be replaced at the end of January by a system that is now running but still being trialled before it goes live. The system will work, but that is by applying additional manual resource, which, as I have already told the House, is costing us £1 million a month. The purpose of the partnering contract is to take about 1,000 personnel who were involved in the administration of recruiting out of that role, and save about £300 million a year. In the long term we still need to harvest that saving, and it will be necessary to have a proper ICT solution to do that.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
How many recruits have fallen through the cracks?
Mr Hammond
That is difficult to say because, by definition, when we talk about recruits falling through the cracks, we are essentially talking about people who have become frustrated with the delay in the process and simply dropped out and gone away. We are seeking to track those people and to go back and re-engage them, as it were, but I know from anecdotal evidence—e-mails I get in my personal e-mail account—that a number of people have just got fed up with the system and given up. The Army is acutely conscious that we cannot afford to waste any potential recruits.