Ronnie Cowan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ronnie Cowan on 2016-02-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many people under the age of 18 in (a) Scotland and (b) the UK were recruited to the armed forces in each of the last five years.

Penny Mordaunt

No information is held regarding the number of Service personnel under the age of 18 who were recruited in Scotland alone.

The figures for the annual intake of under 18’s into the UK Regular Forces as a whole are summarised below.

Ministry of Defence policy dictates that no-one under the age of 18 can join the Armed Forces without specific parental consent, both for the recruiting process to begin and again prior to joining; nor can they be deployed outside of the UK or to front-line operations.

Notes: Figures reflect intake for the 12 months ending 30 September in each year. Statistics for 12 months ending 30 September 2011 have not been published, however, statistics for 12 months ending 31 March 2011 are available in Tables 5 to 7 of the Annual Personnel Report:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/280426/1-april-2011.pdf

A detailed breakdown, by age, of the intake to UK Regular Forces can be found in Tables 8 and 8a of our Biannual Diversity Statistics publication:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-biannual-diversity-statistics-2015