Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the workforce numbers were for the Ministry of Defence Police in each year since 2020.

The Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) is critical to securing Defence assets and people. Recruitment is kept under constant review and is driven by Defence requirements and takes account of the number of leavers and joiners at any given time.

At the end of December 2025, Defence saw an increase in workforce that delivers the policing, guarding, and security effect across the delivery groups under a single authority (SJC). We are accelerating recruitment of Ministry of Defence Police, MOD Guard Service through targeted campaigns and implementation of targeted retention bonus for hard to recruit locations and there are now some 250 more Military Provost Guard Service than in 2020. This steady growth is supported by plans to increase this in coming months. Defence takes security seriously, which is demonstrated by the carve outs from civil service recruitment freezes and voluntary exit schemes.

The annual budget for the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) are shown below:

The workforce numbers for the Ministry of Defence Police are below. Note that the 2025 figure reflects workforce plans set under the previous government:

¹ Ministry of Defence Police officers

² Non-uniformed Civil Servants

* Original target. Target was replaced during the course of the year by site specific recruitment targets because of ongoing reviews to reduce the number of MDP posts across the UK resulting from introduction of a new operating police model (OPM), reprioritisation of security risk and the replacement of MDP with alternative policing/security providers.