Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many and what proportion of applications to enlist in the Royal Navy were rejected in each of the last five years, broken down by the reason for rejection.

The following table provides a breakdown of rejected applications to the Royal Navy by reason for since 2019:

Source: Royal Navy Recruitment and Attraction

The following table provides the proportion of applications to the Royal Navy that were rejected in each of the last five years:

Source: Royal Navy Recruitment and Attraction

Notes/Caveats:

1. ‘~’ denotes a value less than 5, to limit disclosure and ensure confidentiality.

2. Only Applications to join the RN/RM Regular Service are included in this data

3. The data shows rejections in the year the application was received, as opposed to the year that rejection was confirmed, which may be in a subsequent year.

4. Some 'rejections' show the date the application was migrated onto RITS from DRS, as opposed to date the application was received, which will increase the proportion of rejected applications showing in 2022.

5. Due to change of recruiting IT system and digital reporting process, years 2022 and 2023 show comparatively larger numbers of 'unrecorded' or 'incorrect' rejection reasons. This is under ongoing data validation review.