House of Commons Defence Committee,
The Armed Forces are short of Servicemen and women. At April 2007, the overall shortfall was 5,850 personnel, or 3.2%, and none of the three Services were within their targets, known as 'manning balance'. Pinch point trades, including many highly specialised areas, have larger shortfalls.
The impact of continuous downsizing, pressures and overstretch is affecting the Department's ability to retain and provide a satisfactory life for Armed Forces personnel. Numbers leaving early have risen in the last two years, and are now at a ten-year peak for Army and Royal Air Force Officers and for Royal Air Force Other Ranks. The frequency of deployments is creating pressure on some personnel, with large numbers exceeding the guidelines on time spent away from home.
The Department has operated above the most demanding level of operations under Defence Planning Assumptions since 2001, but has not adjusted its manning requirements. The Department accepts the Armed Forces are significantly stretched by the current level of commitments, but does not consider that they are overstretched.
The Department's short term financial measures to improve retention have had some success, but do not address the key drivers for leaving such as Servicemen and women's inability to plan ahead and the impact on their family life. The Department also lacks basic information on the costs of its measures which would enable it to make more informed judgements on incentives to improve recruitment and retention. The Department has introduced more fundamental changes for a small number of specialists, for example separating pay from rank.
Past cuts in recruitment activity have had a damaging longer-term effect on manning in some areas. Such cutbacks are almost impossible to recover as budget and capacity constraints prevent the Department from over-recruiting to make up for shortfalls in previous years.
The Department collects and monitors information on many aspects of diversity, but does not do so for social and educational background and cannot therefore be sure whether the Armed Forces are truly representative of the society they defend.
On the basis of a Report from the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department on three main issues: the level of commitment and whether the Armed Forces are overstretched, measures to improve recruitment and retention, and social and educational diversity.
Conclusions and Recommendations
1. There are shortfalls of personnel in all three Services. In April 2007 the shortfall was 5,850 and the Armed Forces as a whole were 3.2% under-strength. The numbers leaving early are at a 10-year peak for Army and Royal Air Force Officers and for Royal Air Force Other Ranks. Overall, the numbers leaving early have increased slightly in the last two years. The Department should use a staffing model to analyse how it will achieve manning balance by 2008, calculating how the various measures it proposes to take will affect the model and reduce the shortfalls.
2. The increasing frequency of deployments on overseas operations and time away from home are factors causing people to leave the Armed Forces. More than 15% of Army personnel are away from home more often than is planned for under the Department's 'harmony' guidelines which are being consistently broken. The Department has little scope to reduce the operational tempo which is impacting on personnel but in case of enduring operations, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, it needs to provide people with greater stability of work patterns. The Department should give longer notice of deployments and let serving personnel know their work patterns over a longer time horizon.
3. There are indicators of overstretch in specific areas, such as the severe shortfalls in personnel in some specialist trades, such as nurses, linguists and leading hands, and the routine breaking of harmony guidelines. The longer this situation continues the more it will begin to affect operational capability. The Department maintains that the Armed Forces are stretched, but not overstretched, and would only be overstretched if there was a failure to meet military commitments. But the Department also needs to ascertain the 'tipping points' where the degree of stretch itself precipitates the loss of scarce skills, putting operational capability at risk.
4. Financial incentives have met with some success in retaining people in the short term, but several key factors for people leaving, such as workload, inability to plan ahead outside work and the impact on family life, have not been addressed sufficiently. In addition to financial incentives the Department should extend non-financial retention measures to provide personnel with greater certainty, for example, revising manning requirements upwards for the most stretched trades and relieving specialists from general duties such as driving vehicles. Workloads for those deployed on operations and back in the United Kingdom should be evened out as far as possible.
5. The Department lacks information on the costs of its recruitment and retention measures and has performed limited investment appraisal on its range of financial incentives. All business cases for future initiatives should be supported by a full investment appraisal including an assessment of the costs and the benefits expected. The Department should have robust cost information to support appraisals.
6. The Department does not have a long term strategy to ensure a steady supply of highly qualified specialist personnel especially where there are shortages. The Department has broken the link between pay and rank for doctors and pilots and is considering doing so for nurses, to facilitate their recruitment and retention. The Department should extend this approach by introducing more flexible pay structures for other specialist trades where there are personnel shortages, such as information technology engineers and linguists.
7. Short term cuts in recruitment have had long term impacts on manning levels which are almost impossible to recover from and appear to have cost more money to mitigate in the long run. The Royal Navy is currently affected by cutbacks to recruitment activity made in the 1990s because manning shortages which started in the lower ranks are working their way up to Petty Officer Rank. The Department should use a staffing model to assess the likely longer-term impacts of cut backs in recruitment, including the costs of addressing future shortfalls in recruits, and restoring manning levels.
8. The Department sets annual targets for recruitment but they do not take account of the need to fill in some of the gaps resulting from previous recruiting shortfalls. The Department should look at the scope to over-recruit in specific areas where there have been serious shortfalls in personnel. Although flexibility may be limited to some extent by the physical capacity of the training system, the Department should assess how such constraints can be overcome, for example by re-scheduling training and using temporary facilities. It should build in the necessary flexibility under the new arrangements implemented through the Defence Training Review programme.
9. Nine out of ten of the Army's top ten officers were educated at independent schools, whilst three-quarters of Army scholarships in 2006-07 went to students from independent schools. The Department monitors and collects information on areas of diversity such as race and gender, but not on the socio-economic or educational background of new recruits and personnel who are promoted. Without such information, the Department cannot be sure it has a workforce that “is drawn from the breadth of the society which it defends”. The Department should collect and monitor information on the socio-economic and educational background of recruits; of those who are promoted; and on relative success rates for those from different educational backgrounds who are awarded bursaries. The Department should use this information help it draw on the best available talent from across the population.
For Full Report in PDF format, please visit House of Commons website.
