Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to recruit more service personnel to the Army.

We are committed to a whole Army of 112,000. This will consist of 82,000 Regular and 30,000 Reserve soldiers. We are implementing a range of measures designed to ensure the Army has the personnel required for Regulars, these measures include building on the 'With Heart With Mind' and 'A Better You' officer and soldier recruitment campaigns to improve the number of applications; a development course to assist those who fail to meet officer entry standards and a pre-conditioning course to improve soldier's preparation for training. Standard entry policies have been adjusted and we are doing much more to encourage internal transfers to help retain personnel within the Service, rather than lose them. For Reserves, the Army Reserve Development Programme is a major change programme delivering significant improvements in the Army Reserve. Some of the key measures to attract and grow the Army Reserve are; improvements in pension and paid leave entitlement and Financial Incentives for new joiners and ex-regular personnel joining the Army Reserve. We have improved the speed of progress through the enlistment process and offered more flexible initial training programmes to improve training success rates. We have also made improvements to personal clothing and equipment, Army Reserve Centre infrastructure and offer greater integration of training activity with the Regular Army through the Pairing system. In addition to these measures we will continue to look for other opportunities to ensure the Army is appropriately manned.