Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent assessment he has made of the Royal Navy’s ability to recruit sufficient numbers of personnel to meet its obligations.

The Royal Navy (RN) continues to meet its operational commitments, but tackling the recruitment challenge is a top priority.

The RN has recently streamlined its recruiting and selection process with the aim of reducing the time candidates spend in the recruitment process and to enhance their lived experience.

Specific initiatives include an improved medical assessment procedure, increased capacity to surge inflow to the Service, an augmented recruitment workforce to increase outreach, and more face to face recruiting to replace the virtual model used during Covid. The RN has also rolled out a new and improved recruitment website and increased its expenditure on marketing.