Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make an estimate of the number of people serving in the armed forces who originate from outside the United Kingdom in the Commonwealth of Nations.

The hon. Member's question has been answered on the basis of numbers of Regular Service Personnel who have a Commonwealth nationality recorded on the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system.

Table 1. The strength of UK trade trained and untrained Regulars¹ with a Commonwealth² Nationality^3,4 as at 1 April 2023.

Notes/Caveats:

1.UK Regulars comprise Full time Service personnel, including Nursing Services, but excluding Full Time Reserve Service (FTRS) personnel, Gurkhas, mobilised Reservists, Military Provost Guard Service (MPGS), Locally Engaged Personnel (LEP), Non Regular Permanent Staff (NRPS), High Readiness Reserve (HRR) and Expeditionary Forces Institute (EFI) personnel.

2.The Commonwealth grouping includes all personnel with a nationality, as recorded on the JPA system at the time of publication, that is reported in the British Nationality Act 1981, SCHEDULE 3 (Countries Whose Citizens are Commonwealth Citizens), further information of which is available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/61/schedule/3 Figures relating to personnel with a nationality, as recorded on JPA, of Gambian or Zimbabwean are currently still included in the Commonwealth grouping.

3.As nationality is a non-mandatory field, nationality is as currently recorded and not necessarily the same as at birth or when recruited. Therefore, Commonwealth personnel who have changed nationality (for example naturalised to a British Citizen) may or may not have updated their JPA record.

4. The question has requested Commonwealth personnel only. This will differ from the Biannual Diversity Statistics, which provides a combined nationality breakdown of Commonwealth and Irish.

These figures may not capture the full cohort of Commonwealth personnel who joined the UK Regular Forces, as a number of personnel may have changed from a Commonwealth nationality to a British nationality.

Figures in this table have been rounded to the nearest 10, though numbers ending in a “5” have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent the systematic bias caused by always rounding numbers upwards.