As outlined in the Minister for Cabinet Office’s Written Ministerial Statement on 1 December, we entered good-faith negotiations on SAFE participation, but no agreement was possible that met our national interest. UK industry retains access under third-country terms. We will continue to explore cooperation with the EU that strengthens European Security and underpins our NATO First policy.

The UK has a long history of collaborating with our European partners on major defence projects, which will continue, regardless of participation in SAFE. This year, we have struck a £10 billion deal with Norway, secured an £8 billion agreement with Türkiye, and signed an agreement with Germany to pursue joint export campaigns for jointly produced equipment like Boxer armoured vehicles.

Having been a shadow fisheries Minister when the botched Brexit deal went through, I know that much of the extra fish is paper fish that cannot be caught. The new restrictions that were put on our fishermen mean that it does not work. This Department is focusing on improving our defences and increasing defence spending—something the right hon. Gentleman never did when he was in government. [Interruption.]

The efficiency of the British Army Recruitment pipeline is constantly measured on a daily, weekly and monthly basis through various key performance indicators (KPI) throughout the recruitment process to the end of basic training.

These KPIs vary depending on stage of the process but make assessments based on numbers of registrations, Army briefings and their effectiveness, questionnaires, assessment centre attendance, individual career discussions and the success, fail, defer and conversion rates of basic training.

The assessment process has recently helped enhance areas of the recruitment system including an improved and updated website and candidate portal, digitised collection of the primary health care records (PHCR) and the implementation of AI to scrutinise each PHCR.

The British Army has a continuous early initiative to seek improvements of the process and system.

The right hon. Gentleman is a regular attender in this House, and I suggest that he be here on Wednesday for Northern Ireland questions to put that question directly to the Northern Ireland Secretary.

The term “war graves” is one which applies to the final resting places of fallen soldiers on land, and locations designated as a war grave by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

However, as a matter of customary international law, all naval warships, state vessels and associated artefacts are afforded protection through the principle of Sovereign Immunity. The UK is of the view that, unless expressly relinquished or abandoned by the Flag State, the Sovereign Immunity of the wreck of any Crown vessel remains in place, regardless of where the wreck in question is located, and those who lost their lives in service of our country should be left in situ and undisturbed.

Some warships are also afforded additional protection under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman heard me; I said earlier that the Foreign Secretary had said the other day that the detail of the costs and the agreement will be set out properly before this House when it comes to consider and debate the treaty.

The Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey (AFCAS) includes a breakdown of this factor by Service and split into Officers and Other Ranks/Rates in Section 12, Table 8 of the Annex B Reference tables: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/armed-forces-continuous-attitude-survey-2023

Responses are weighted by rank and Service. This accounts for bias caused by disproportionate stratified sampling and differing levels of response so results are representative of our Regular Armed Forces. We do not currently provide a breakdown of AFCAS results by the specific ranks in the Armed Forces. This is due, in part, to smaller response numbers being potentially less robust and disclosive.

The below table shows the Army’s Regular Trade Trained Commission Conversions from Short Service Commissions to Intermediate Regular Commissions (IRC) over the last ten financial years (FY).

Table notes:

1. The figures are for the Trade Trained Regular Army only and therefore exclude Gurkhas, Full Time Reserve Service, Mobilised Reserves, Army Reserve and all other Reserves, but includes those personnel that have transferred from GURTAM to UKTAP.

2. Figures are for those who converted from the SSC to IRC for both Direct Entry and Late Entry officers.

3. During financial year 2015/16 the New Employment Model (NEM) engagement was introduced. This resulted in a number of people moving between commission types. The Joint Personnel Administrative System (JPA) was updated to identify NEM engagements which reduced our ability to identify conversion of commissions. The step change from 2014-15 to 2015-16 was an Army workforce plan which sought to increase the commission conversion rates of officers.

4. Figures exclude promotions from Other Ranks to Officer i.e. Late Entry commissions.

5. Figures have been rounded to 10 for presentational purposes; numbers ending in "5" have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias.

6. Totals and sub-totals have been rounded separately and so may not appear to be the sum of their parts.

The Royal Navy has a range of capabilities to support the engagement of land-based targets. Specific threat planning is considered for every deployment or contingency, and measures are taken to reduce or mitigate those expected threats as dictated by operational priority.

My right hon. Friend asks an excellent question. I know that there has been a lot of interest, following the deployment in the Red sea, in what the lessons are. I can confirm that the Sea Viper capability has been at the forefront of this, being the Navy’s weapon of choice in the first shooting down of an aerial threat in more than 30 years. It is a cutting-edge weapons system, and I can confirm that Sea Viper will be upgraded, to further enhance this capability against the more complex and evolving threats that we face, including the ability to intercept missiles in their terminal phase.

The Ministry of Defence does not allocate any funding specifically for the purpose of entertaining Reservist employers. However, Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations (RFCAs) and Defence Relationship Management (DRM) do run a number of events both nationally and regionally at which hospitality is offered, including buffet lunches and hot/cold drinks as appropriate. This ranges from formal events such as the Partnering with Defence Conference in London, where catered breaks and lunch are provided, through to offering participants on ‘unit experience’ visits with a ration-pack lunch.

Regional funds allocated across the 13 RFCAs include an element for ‘Employer Support’. This budget line covers a number of costs including event hospitality, entertainment, venue hire and advertisement. It would exceed the disproportionate cost limit for a Parliamentary Question to investigate every event across the period in question to separate out the relevant elements; for this reason the figures provided below show the total sums for employer support activity where there was an element of hospitality and an estimate of the element attributable to hospitality. Information for Financial Year (FY) 2023-24 is not provided as this remains subject to discussion and may be subject to change.

The figures for budget allocation where there was an element of Reservist employer hospitality are shown below:

RFCAs

DRM

* Cost growth here directly attributable to:

- increasing success of Employer Recognition Scheme Gold awards, necessitating an increase from four events in 2021-22 to nine regional events in 2022-23.

- increasing number of Armed Forces Covenant signatories and associated signing ceremonies.

The information requested on the number of part-time Armed Forces personnel who are trained pilots is being withheld to avoid releasing details of our capabilities to adversaries. The Armed Forces have sufficient trained personnel to meet their operational requirements.

The information requested on the number of Armed Forces personnel who are trained pilots is being withheld to avoid releasing details of our capabilities to adversaries. The Armed Forces have sufficient trained personnel to meet the operational requirement.

Flying hours accumulated whilst on a University Air Squadron do not reduce the hours required in the first stage of the pilot training pipeline.

The information is not held as a civilian airline licence is not a mandatory requirement for entry to the Royal Air Force, nor are individuals mandated to declare they hold the licence.

Information to answer this question is not held centrally. I will write to the right hon. member as soon as the information is available.

Information to answer this question is not held centrally. I will write to the right hon. member as soon as the information is available.

Information to answer this question is not held centrally. I will write to the right hon. member as soon as the information is available.

The strength of military forces resisting the Taliban in the Panjshir is difficult to estimate. The strength of the National Resistance Front in late August was likely to range between 2,000 and 8,000 fighters.