Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will publish benchmarking data on the pay disparity between Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory staff and those directly employed by his Department.

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), is an Executive Agency of the MOD and has delegated authority to manage its workforce arrangements to meet its objectives. Dstl’s organisational model is different to that of MOD as a result of its specialist role.

Dstl undertook a pay benchmarking exercise in 2020 that compared Dstl’s pay ranges to broad MOD equivalents. The benchmarking exercise was limited in that it used a small sample of jobs and job families. The data, from March 2020, relates to pay only and non-financial elements of the overall offer are not included. It should be noted that this pay data is now eighteen months old.

Dstl has a different pay range structure to MOD, with Dstl having more pay levels than MOD grades. This is particularly the case between Dstl levels 6-8, which equate to MOD Grade 7-6. Dstl’s pay ranges are also much wider.

The table below sets out the median and mean data from March 2020. The percentages representing the Dstl figure as a proportion of the MOD equivalent.

Dstl and MOD practice

Note: the analysis is from National pay scales so the figures exclude London Weighting.