Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many MOD Police officers have been recruited in each year since 2010; and what his Department's recruitment target for such officers was for each of those years.

Due to changes in data management processes, and moving the MDP headquarters to RAF Wyton, we can only provide recruitment figures from Financial Year (FY) 2018-19 onwards. MDP Officer joiners in each year, to 31 March, are as follows:

Officer recruitment is dependent on a number of factors including operational need, changes in Defence priorities. As a result, our recruitment targets fluctuate. Recruitment is kept under constant review and is driven by Defence requirements and takes account of the number of leavers and joiners at any given time.