Fresh warning over army recruitment
A lack of service personnel in specialised areas is threatening to undermine operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, MPs have said.
The “pinch-point trades” include submariners, medical staff, aircrew, mechanics and engineers.
According to an influential committee of MPs all the areas are significantly undermanned, while the number of pinch-points in the armed forces has risen since 2004.
The House of Commons defence committee said there were 30 pinch-point trades in the army, 31 in the RAF and 25 in the navy.
The warning is part of a report criticising the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for not responding with “flexibility and imagination” to recruitment problems at a time when the armed forces are operating at “unprecedented levels”.
Committee members point out it costs less to retain service personnel than to recruit them and call on the MoD to make addressing worsening retention their top priority.
“Our armed forces are being worked extremely hard to support current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is vital that the pressures on our service personnel and their families is minimised,” commented committee chairman James Arbuthnot.
“However, recruitment and retention targets are being consistently missed resulting in increased pressure on those who remain. The MoD must take action to address this vicious circle before it becomes irreversible.
“Retaining highly skilled and experienced service personnel must be a key priority and the MoD needs to push forward as quickly as possible with its plans to improve service accommodation – a key reason why many service personnel decide to leave.
“Taking action to retain those already in the armed forces will also make the armed forces a more attractive employer. The MoD must respond with sufficient flexibility and imagination if it is to recruit the number of new service personnel required to enable our armed forces to continue to operate effectively.”
