Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to respond rapidly to new requirements for linguistic skills across the armed forces.

The Defence Centre for Language and Culture (DCLC) has an extremely agile training delivery model, comprising a core of military and specialist civilian lecturers supported by a commercial training contract supplying contracted tutors. The DCLC covers a number of languages. This enables the Ministry of Defence to respond rapidly to new requirements, at scale, and at short notice. A dedicated Contingency Wing has been established specifically to respond to and manage this type of short notice demand, particularly in operationally focused languages. Plans are regularly reviewed to ensure that we have already considered broad options for the delivery of new requirements.