Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of his Department's (a) recruitment and (b) retention of armed forces personnel.

The current Government inherited a crisis in recruitment and retention from the last administration, and we are committed to addressing this through a range of targets, initiatives and measures. Although Armed Forces outflow currently remains greater than intake, compared to the previous 12-month period Armed Forces inflow has increased and outflow has decreased, with the gap between getting smaller.