Written question asked by Bob Russell (Liberal Democrat) on Wednesday, 18 March 2009, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Friday, 20 March 2009. It was answered by Bob Ainsworth (Labour) on Tuesday, 24 March 2009 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Armed Forces: Recruitment

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many former members of each of the armed forces re-enlisted in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

Answer

The table provides the number of personnel re-enlisted to the UK Regular Forces¹ by Service in each of the last five financial years.

	Naval Service²	Army³	Royal Air Force
2003-04	n/a	540	90
2004-05	n/a	400	40
2005-06	n/a	410	20
2006-074	n/a	640	n/a
2007-084	n/a	n/a	n/a
n/a = Not available
¹ UK Regular Forces include Nursing Services and exclude Full Time Reserve Service personnel, Gurkhas and mobilised reservists.
² Naval Service date cannot be provided because although some re-entrants are logged on the system it is thought this is only part of the re-entrant population.
³ Financial year 2006-07 is for an 11 month period from 1 April 2006 to 28 February 2007.
4 Post JPA implementation (RAF from 1 April 2006, Naval Service from 1 October 2006 and Army from 1 April 2007) information on the number of re-enlisted personnel is unavailable.
Note:
Figures have been rounded to 10; numbers ending in "5" have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias.

Secondary information