MoD Spending On Navy Recruitment Jumps 20 Per Cent
3 min read
Government spending on Royal Navy recruitment increased by a fifth last year as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) tried to tackle personnel shortages, PoliticsHome can reveal.
A Freedom of Information request showed that the MoD spent £72.625m on recruitment for the Royal Navy in the 2023-24 financial year — a jump of 19.8 per cent from the £60.619m spent in the 2022-23 financial year.
Spending on recruitment — which included marketing, IT systems, medicals and operational running costs such as travel and subsistence for recruitment teams — had remained at around £60m for three years before spiking in 2023-2024, according to the figures.
A recent written question to Secretary of State for Defence John Healey revealed that recruitment for the Royal Navy against the target had fallen from 84 per cent in the financial year 2019-20 to 61 per cent last year.
The data showed that there were just 2,450 recruits to the Royal Navy in 2023-24 out of the target of 4,040.
There have been wider concerns about a recruitment and retention crisis throughout the British military at a time of growing global threats.
Speaking to the Defence Committee earlier this month, Healey said the UK’s military capabilities were “just not good enough”.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that the Government will set out its plans to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income in the spring amid mounting pressure over the threat from Russia to Europe.
The UK and other Western countries have come under renewed pressure to increase their defence spending following the re-election of Donald Trump and fears that the president-elect could scale back US support for NATO.
Soon after the election, the Government announced that Armed Forces personnel would receive a 6 per cent pay rise.
Former defence secretary Grant Shapps told PoliticsHome that there had been a period during his tenure when the government was seeing a "massive increase in interest in joining our armed services", which was partly due to "people paying more attention when there are armed conflicts going on" and "more people to wanting to serve the nation".
"War in Europe, conflict in the Middle East, and things like the Houthis firing at HMS Diamond in the Red Sea, and us having to fire back... things like that created quite an uplift," the former Conservative MP told PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown.
The ex-Cabinet minister recalled that "the naval figures were incredible".
“We were putting more money in but also just seeing the activities, for example, when I ordered the Royal Navy to fire against those incoming drones, it was the first time that the Royal Navy ships had fired in anger for over three decades."
The figures released to PoliticsHome also revealed an increase in recruitment spend across the RAF and Army recruitment.
The MOD spent £49.944m on RAF recruitment in 2023-24, a rise of 5.7 per cent from the previous year.
And Army recruitment spending rose to £122.421m last year, up by 4.11 per cent from £117.588m.
Overall recruitment spending across all three branches of the armed forces rose to £244.990m last year, a rise of 8.7 per cent from the previous year when £225.456m was spent.
An MoD spokesperson said the figures cover spending under the previous Tory government.
“This Government inherited a recruitment crisis, with targets being missed every year for the past 14 years and is taking decisive action to stop the long-term decline in numbers.
"We have already given personnel the largest pay rise in decades and scrapped 100 outdated policies that block and slow down recruitment.”
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