F-35 Aircraft: Procurement — Written Question

Question

Mr Andrew Snowden

Conservative — Fylde

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to paragraph 2.6 of the report entitled The UK’s F-35 capability, HC 989, published by the National Audit Office on 11 July 2025, what steps are being taken to address personnel shortfalls within the F‑35 programme.

Answer

Luke Pollard

We inherited a retention and recruitment crisis from the last Government and are determined to fix it.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has introduced a programme of surging recruitment for the RAF so that it returns to workforce balance across every specialisation.

This activity includes a significant focus on the engineer profession where, over the last two years, the RAF has offered joining bonuses and increased the capacity of Technical Training Schools to enable more recruits to be trained.

To improve retention, the RAF has implemented a Financial Retention Incentive for engineers.

The recruitment and retention of personnel remains one of the top two priorities for the Chief of the Defence Staff.