Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 9 March 2023 to Question 158939 on Armed Forces: Employment, whether his Department regularly (a) collects and (b) reviews information on (i) second jobs and (ii) other additional work taken up by armed forces personnel.

The requested information is not held in the format requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

Secondary employment and rules governing this are managed on a single Service basis and vary between Services. Generally, Service personnel are not prohibited from having second jobs when off-duty or on leave. Permission to take up a second job rests with the Service person’s Commanding Officer and is granted on a case-by-case basis. Any such permission is approved and reviewed locally, with the information held within each chain of command. Due to the size of the Armed Forces and the number of chains of command it is not practical to manage this process or collate this information centrally. The exercise required to produce an overall figure would incur disproportionate cost.

Beyond any formal additional or secondary employment there is no requirement for personnel to report “other additional work” and no record of this is held by the Ministry of Defence. If a Service Person chooses to undertake informal work in their own time, for example making and selling something, this would not count as formal employment and, therefore, would not need approval or be brought to the attention of Defence.