Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what plans he has to recruit officials to his Department before Spring 2021; and if he will make a statement.

As part of a suite of decisions designed to address the Department's In-Year financial position and begin the process of defence reform, we are pausing some Civil Service recruitment to the Department. All in-year decisions have been carefully worked on to ensure there is no detrimental impact to our Service personnel, frontline commands at home and overseas and our main responsibility of defending the United Kingdom and overseas territories.