Gregory Campbell – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gregory Campbell on 2016-02-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether he plans to review the harmony guidelines on periods of time away for service personnel.

Mark Lancaster

The Ministry of Defence has no plans to review the harmony guidelines, which are set to ensure that there is an acceptable balance between the competing aspects of the lives of Service personnel.

We recognise that when harmony guidelines are breached, this can have an impact on operational effectiveness. That is why we are committed to minimising the number of unnecessary breaches whilst at the same time maintaining operational capability.

The Ministry of Defence publishes Monthly Service Personnel Statistics which include (at Table 10) the numbers of trained UK Regular Personnel breaching Individual Harmony Guidelines. The latest report, published on 14 January 2016, shows that as at 1 October 2015 the breach rate equated to 0.4% for the Naval Service, 2.6% for the Army and 1.3% for the Royal Air Force.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-monthly-service-personnel-statistics-2015