Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many of the 35 recommendations made by the Service Complaints Ombudsman in Annual Reports 2016 – 2019 have been implemented.

Since 2016, the Service Complaints Ombudsman has made 35 recommendations in total across four annual reports; 12 in 2016, 10 in 2017, nine in 2018, and four in 2019. Of those 35 recommendations, to date, we consider 21 to have been implemented either in whole or in part (eight from 2016, four from 2017, six from 2018 and three from 2019). Four recommendations made in the 2017 annual report were considered by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) but were not accepted, however, we assured the Ombudsman that they would remain under active consideration by us. The remaining 10 recommendations are currently being considered by the Service Complaints and Service Justice Transformation team following the Wigston Review into Inappropriate Behaviours. Regular updates are provided by MOD to the Service Complaints Ombudsman on the progress of all open recommendations.