Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many (a) officers and (b) soldiers who have been discharged following the failure of a compulsory drugs test have subsequently rejoined the (i) Infantry, (ii) Royal Artillery, (iii) Royal Corps of Signals, (iv) Army Medical Services, (v) Adjutant General's Corps, (vi) Royal Armoured Corps, (vii) Army Air Corps, (viii) Royal Engineers, (ix) Royal Logistics Corps, (x) Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and (xi) Intelligence Corps.

The number of Regular and Reserve soldiers who have been discharged following the failure of a compulsory drugs test and have subsequently re-joined the Army since January 2015 in the specified capbadges is shown in the table below. No officers have re-joined in this time. Data for earlier years is not held.

Misuse of drugs in the Armed Forces is unacceptable and anyone who fails a drugs test can expect to be discharged.

Note:

Those who have re-joined will have done so after leaving the Army a minimum of two years earlier.

Figures have been rounded to 10 to limit disclosure and ensure confidentiality.

These figures are single service estimates and are not official statistics produced by Defence Statistics.

‘-‘ denotes zero or rounded to zero.