Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-03-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to improve spousal employment for service personnel posted in Cyprus.

Mark Lancaster

There are a limited number of employment opportunities for family members of deployed personnel within British Forces Cyprus (BFC). Spousal employment is restricted by the 1960 Treaty of Establishment between the UK and the Republic of Cyprus (RoC), which states that service organisations shall, ‘so far as is practicable, employ only Cypriot staff’. To help mitigate this restriction, the Partner Employment Programme (PEP) under the New Employment Model (NEM) facilitates courses and training to assist with employability on return to the UK. BFC is also facilitating Business Start-up courses run by Wolverhampton University. There are no restrictions on spouses seeking employment in the RoC; by way of an example it is known that some spouses are employed locally in international schools.