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Armed Forces: Recruitment

Volume 473: debated on Wednesday 12 March 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many under 25 year olds were recruited to the (a) Army, (b) Navy and (c) RAF in each of the last 10 years. (193360)

The following table shows the number of under 25 year olds recruited1 of the regular2 forces by service in each of the last 10 financial years.

1 Figures show all intake from civil life to UK regular forces including re-enlistments and rejoined reservists.

2 Figures are for UK regular forces (including both trained and untrained personnel), and therefore excludes Gurkhas, full-time reserve service personnel, the Home Service battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment and mobilised reservists.

All Services

Navy

Army

RAF

1997-98

21,700

4,150

14,370

3,180

1998-99

23,950

4,320

15,870

3,750

1999-00

23,490

4,500

15,360

3,630

2000-01

21,070

4,140

13,650

3,270

2001-02

21,530

4,520

13,570

3,450

2002-03

23,500

4,630

14,840

4,040

2003-04

21,010

3,600

13,620

3,780

2004-05

15,590

3,200

10,470

1,920

2005-06

16,240

3,400

11,600

1,230

2006-07

116,450

23,240

111,640

21,570

1 Provisional 2 Revised. Notes: 1. Figures are sourced from the annual publication TSP19 "UK Regular Forces Intake and outflow by age for financial year 2006-07". 2. Due to the introduction of a new personnel administration system, Naval Service statistics from 1 October 2006, and Army and RAF statistics from 1 April 2007 and RAF statistics from 1 April 2006 are provisional and subject to review. 3. Due to rounding methods used, totals may not always equal the sum of the parts. When rounding to the nearest 10, numbers ending in five have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias. Source: DASA (Quad-Service)