Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to increase the size of the armed forces in the context of conventional military threats to NATO allies in eastern Europe.

The Ministry of Defence is committed to delivering the Armed Forces set out in Defence Command Paper 23. This includes the transformational restructuring and modernisation originally set out in Integrated Review 21. Headline numbers of regular personnel do not define operational effectiveness. A more efficient training pipeline, fewer formed-unit deployments, organisational refinement and investment in improved capabilities mean that more units are ready more of the time.

The UK has committed almost all our Armed Forces and military capabilities to NATO under the new NATO Force Model - our strongest ever force commitment to the Alliance.