Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask His Majesty's Government what action they propose to take to reduce the approximately 71 per cent of candidates who drop out of the application process for the Armed Forces, and whether the primary cause of such drop outs is the slow process of recruitment.

Recruitment and retention are absolute priorities and we have introduced a range of measures to respond to the current recruitment challenge, which is affecting many other militaries across the world. While it does take time to recruit the right people to our Armed Forces, we have sped up Army recruitment by 9% in the last year, and the majority of regular soldiers join in less than 140 days. There are a multitude of factors which impact on a candidate’s engagement with Armed Forces recruiting systems, and we are actively seeking to address these within our measures.