Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many current suitably qualified and experienced personnel positions are (a) required and (b) vacant in (i) Type 23 and (ii) Type 45 ship crews.

The information requested, as at 1 May 2014, is shown in the table:

Note: All figures are rounded in accordance with the Defence Statistics rounding policy. All numbers over 100 are rounded to the nearest 10 with numbers ending in 5 rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to avoid bias. Numbers under 100 are rounded to the nearest 5.

None of the existing vacancies is in a post categorised as safety critical and no ship would go to sea without the minimum required complement of suitably qualified and experienced personnel.