Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the shortfall was for the recruitment of reserve and regular soldiers and officers in (a) Infantry, (b) Royal Artillery, (c) Royal Corps of Signals, (d) Army Medical Services, (e) Adjutant General's Corps, (f) Royal Armoured Corps, (g) Army Air Corps, (h) Royal Engineers, (i) Royal Logistics Corps, (j) Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and (k) Intelligence Corps in the last 12 months.

The following table shows the number of regular soldiers recruited into the Army by Regiment or Corp for the 12 months from 1 October 2016 to 1 October 2017 against the target for that period.

Targets are internal and subject to constant change and review. The Army has enough people to fulfil its current commitments.

Notes:

Targets are internally set by the Army Recruitment and Training Division (ARTD) and are subject to constant change and review.

Figures are for Regular Army only and therefore exclude Gurkhas, Full Time Reserve Service and Mobilised Reserves.

Figures have been rounded to 10 for presentational purposes.

* Intake to untrained strength is those who directly commence Phase 1 & Phase 2 training.

The targets and actuals have been calculated by taking 6/12 of the Financial Year 2017-18 target and 6/12 of the Financial Year 2016-17 target and are therefore indicative only.

Actual Intake Figures have been provided by Defence Statistics (Army).

Officer recruits are recruited into Royal Military Academy Sandhurst without being allocated a Regiment or Corps. For the period 1 October 2016 to 1 October 2017, 620 Officer recruits were recruited into Untrained Strength against a target of 634.

Reserve

For the recruitment of Army Reserves there is only an annual overall requirement for new entrant enlistment. The table below shows enlistment figures for the 12 months from 1 October 2016 to 1 October 2017 against the target for that period. Since April 2016 Direct Entrant Officer to the Army Reserve are required to enlist as Other Ranks first.

Notes:

Figures are for the FR20 population, which consists of Group A Army Reserves, some Sponsored Reserves and those personnel serving on FTRS contracts who were previously Army Reservists.

* These figures do not include trained direct entrants to the Army Reserve.

Figures have been rounded to 10 for presentational purposes.

Requirements for this period is pro rata of the annual FY 2016-17 and FY 2017-18 requirements and are indicative only.