Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 26 September 2024 to Question 1555 on Ministry of Defence: Equality and with reference to the Freedom of Information Act response with reference FOI2025/21409, disclosed on 12 September 2025, if he will publish that response.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is content for this Freedom of Information request response to be published, and a copy is provided below.

Request:

“How many staff in the MOD have job titles that includes at least one of the words (a) equality, (b) diversity, (c) inclusion, (d) gender, (e) LGBT or (f) race?

How many staff in each of the armed forces have job titles that includes at least one of the words (a) equality, (b) diversity, (c) inclusion, (d) gender, (e) LGBT or (f) race?”

Following an internal review on 27 August 2025, this was refined to:

“In your letter of 12 August you state that if I am:

“willing to accept a response to your request that was based on the searchable data held in MOD’s two human resources databases: MyHR, for civilians and the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA), for military personnel, we would be able to provide this to you.”

I would be happy to receive the information on that basis – thank you.”

Response:

In a competitive age, our advantage derives from the talent and skills of our people. We must attract, recruit, and retain the best people drawn from the broadest diversity of thought, skills and background. Roles flagged as LGBT are predominantly working on implementing the LGBT Veterans Review and Financial Recognition Scheme.

Civil Service (data taken from MyHR):

*7 of the 18 are also included in the position title section and/or additional related position title (section 1 and 2).

Caveats/explanations as follows:

• Only the MOD Main and core employees were searched.
• Data supplied is for staff in a position as of 31 August 2025.
• Only personnel who are currently in a position have been counted so vacant posts are not included.
• MyHR position title was searched for the requested terms a-f.
• Additional searches were carried out in position title for known abbreviations relating to the requested terms (section 2).
• Additionally, the job code description field was searched and found an additional 18 positions relating to Diversity and Inclusion, 7 of which also had a position title with one of the above descriptions (section 3).
• The actual total number of people within a post relating to one of the descriptions is 55.

Armed Forces (data taken from JPA):

Caveats/explanations as follows:

• Some position names contain more than one of the above words, as shown in the table above.
• These details are all held under 'Position Name' and not 'Job Name'. Military job titles do not contain this information as it is held in the position title.
• The figures above only show personnel in a position name containing one of the words, there may be additional personnel who undertake these roles under a differently named Position.
• Data supplied is for staff in a position as of 4 September 2025.