Armed Forces: Conditions of Employment

(asked on 8th November 2023) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to Recommendation 24 of his Department's publication entitled Agency and agility: incentivising people in a new era, published on 19 June 2023, whether a trial of the total reward approach with an engineering cohort has begun.


Answered by
Andrew Murrison Portrait
Andrew Murrison
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
This question was answered on 15th November 2023

The acceptance of the Haythornthwaite Report into Armed Forces Incentivisation, and the subsequent Defence Command Paper refresh in summer 2023, provided a clear mandate to drive and deliver change in how the Armed Forces recruits and retains its people.

Modernising a base-fed model designed in the 1950s is a complicated task but the Defence People function has begun a substantial work programme to support it. Much progress is already being made and the Department has been capturing and aligning that work as well as beginning several distinct programmes regarded as key priorities; either enabling projects to lay the foundations of future work or realising change in the short term.

Priorities for the coming months include designing the first elements of a trial to explore a ‘Total Reward Approach’, exploring flexible terms and conditions of service through the development of a ‘Spectrum of Service’ and the optimisation of the myriad of policies and processes.

A formal and more detailed Government Response, which will include proposals for the legislative approach, will be published in the New Year.

Reticulating Splines