Luke Pollard

Luke Pollard

Labour (Co-op) — Plymouth Sutton and Devonport

Speaking in the House of Commons on 10 February 2025

Debate

Armed Forces Recruitment

Contribution

The hon. Lady is right that we need to speed up the recruitment process. We inherited a situation where it takes, on average, more than 250 days from the point of application to turning up at a training establishment, often without any understanding of how long that will take. That is why the Secretary of State introduced the 10/30 policy, which means a provisional offer within 10 days of starting, and a provisional start date within 30 days of application. We are doing that to reduce the time of flight, including working cross-Government to improve speed of access to medical records. There will be further announcements in due course. We are making progress on that, but there is a lot more to do to fix the damage to the recruitment process that was run by the last Government.

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