Kevan Jones – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevan Jones on 2016-01-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, when he expects the target strength of army reservists to be met.

Mr Julian Brazier

We expect to reach our target strength of 30,000 Army Reserves by April 2019.

The Army Reserve is growing and during the 12 months to 1 December 2015, we enlisted 6,600 new members, a rise of 50% on the equivalent period last year. The Army Reserve’s trained strength has exceeded the target for this financial year by over 2,300 reservists.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 20 October 2015 to the hon. Member for Strangford (Mr Shannon) to Question 11812 which explained the improvements we have made to ensure we reach our target strength of 35,000 trained volunteer Reservists across all three Services.