Select committee: Defence Committee
Conclusion 65
First Report - Ready for War?
Published 4 Feb 2024
Addressed to Ministry of Defence
Defence Committee Armed Forces Readiness All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
When we asked the Commander Strategic Command how he was working on alleviating shortfalls, he provided the following examples: Health • Increasing the level of medical stocks whilst working with the NHS to ensure rotation the stock from MOD shelves through the NHS in order to avoid wasting product by having it go out of date on the shelves.129 • Considering defence’s ability to deploy civilian medical staff (depending on the environment alongside the nature and level of threat) and working with NATO to understand where other nations might be able to provide capability.130 • Employing locums as surge capacity to resolve current domestic medical and dentistry capacity shortfalls.131 Digital • Exploring the potential for introducing bursaries for 16-year olds to encourage them to come into the service at 18 with an expectation that they will serve a shorter career than traditional. He told us that the “vision is that they will serve for seven years. We will give them an in-service degree. We expect many of them to leave in their mid-20s, hopefully then going out into the UK economy and 125 Q366 126 Q367 127 Ministry of Defence (CDS0001) 128 Ministry of Defence, Annual Report and Accounts 2022–23, HC 1468, July 2023, p 46 129 Q367 130 Q369 131 Q374 28 Ready for War? helping with the right skills, qualifications and approach to life to make them influential members in the digital and cyber business of the UK. We hope they will come back at lateral entry later in their career, and certainly that they will join the reserves.”132
From: Defence Committee, First Report - Ready for War? (HC 26), 4 February 2024
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 25 April 2024 (deadline 4 April 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees there is no regular mechanism to scrutinise readiness and offers an annual open session, releases some Defence Planning Assumptions headlines, and sets out its position on stockpiles, recruitment and procurement.
- On transparency, the government "recognises that the Committee should have public access to more information on planning assumptions and readiness" and releases headlines from the 2023 assumptions, committing to release "as much as possible" of the next iteration "when national and NATO planning processes have matured".
- It agrees the response time for the inquiry was slow and "will make every effort to ensure this is not repeated".
- On the £1.95bn from the Spring Budget 2023, it states the money "will be spent in full on measures to address gaps in our capabilities". It says exact stockpile holdings are "not releasable on the grounds of national security".
- On recruitment and retention, it says a formal response to each Haythornthwaite Review recommendation "will be published during 2024", with next steps for delivery and implementation for each.