Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have a policy towards the recruitment of Fijians into the British Armed Forces.

To be eligible to join the British Armed Forces an individual must be a British, Irish or Commonwealth citizen, either as a sole or dual national. As Fiji is a member of the Commonwealth, its citizens are eligible to apply to join. There is no recruitment process specifically for Fijian nationals. All British, Irish and Commonwealth nationals are required to make an online application and, if successful, will then go through the recruitment and selection assessment process in the UK for the Service they are applying to join.

Information held by the Ministry of Defence on the numbers of Regular personnel who reported a Fijian nationality on joining the British Armed Forces in each Financial Year (FY) since 1998-99 is provided in the following table.

Number of Regular personnel reporting a Fijian nationality on intake to the British Armed Forces (FYs 1998-99 to 2017-18)

Notes:

1. Nationality is not part of the Royal Navy/Royal Marines and RAF legacy datasets (data held prior to the introduction of the Joint Personnel Administration System) and as such figures for these Services are included only from 2007-08 for Royal Navy/Royal Marines and 2006-07 for RAF.

2. The declaration rate for nationality on intake for FY 2017-18 is 99.1%. Some personnel will declare their nationality after intake; figures in this table show nationality declared at intake.

3. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 10. ‘~’ indicates a number less than 5. ‘-‘ indicates zero.