Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 7 April to Question 43215 on Armed Forces: Recruitment, what his Department's targets are for applications for (a) the Royal Navy, (b) the Army and (c) the Royal Air Force in the 2025-26 financial year.

The current Government inherited a crisis in recruitment and retention from the last administration. We have made a series of announcements to improve recruitment since July 2024.

The Army’s target for applications for all streams (Regular soldier, Regular Officer, Army Reserve soldier and Officer) for Recruiting Year 2025-26 is 198,000 (rounded).

Whilst neither the Royal Navy nor Royal Air Force set formal targets for volume of applications, both closely monitor other recruitment metrics including attendance at the various suitability assessments and performance against intake targets. In addition, the RAF has a KPI for achieving a target for Expressions of Interest, set for their marketing contractors. This data is used to hold each Service to account and to forecast progress using known assessment pass rates and overall conversion rate.