Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 13 November 2023 to Question 70 on Defence: Recruitment, how much was spent on advertising defence civil service roles in (a) 2019-20, (b) 2020-21, (c) 2021-22 and (d) 2022-23.

The requested information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

The Ministry of Defence has in-house service provision for delivery of recruitment for both delegated and Senior Civil Service (SCS) grades through Defence Business Services (DBS) and the Civilian HR SCS team who deliver the operational aspects of recruitment – from advertising roles, to managing competitions. The majority of our roles are advertised through Civil Service Jobs, and along with other Departments we contribute to the funding of this service. We also promote opportunities through LinkedIn and our wider offer through Civil Service Careers. We operate a delegated model for recruitment, enabling different parts of the business to make choices about whether they require advertising in addition to Civil Service Jobs. We therefore do not hold data centrally on recruitment costs – including advertising roles. We are considering how we can improve our data on the cost of recruitment, so that we can understand our cost per hire.