I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend that it is essential to have transparency and clarity on the figures. If the Government do not give the full picture, they are not fully informing the public debate or allowing us to see a true picture of the Ministry of Defence’s performance. Indeed, they are potentially encouraging a debate based on inaccurate information.
The Government have been accused of trying to fiddle the numbers before. Later in my speech, I shall talk about the mystery that is the Government’s armed forces targets. New clause 1 is an opportunity for them to show that they are committed to transparency and clarity when it comes to the size of our armed forces and the ways in which personnel are serving. It would not be right to suggest that the Army, or any of the services, is at a greater strength than it actually is by failing to separate part-time from full-time personnel, so the personnel statistics must include specific details about the number of personnel who are working part time. I appreciate that the new flexible working practices in the Bill will require personnel to deploy on operations should the need arise, but the Government must admit that it may take time to recall personnel, so it will build a clearer picture of our capabilities if we know how many personnel are serving part time.
Let me turn to the biannual diversity statistics. The Government have been clear that one reason for the introduction of this Bill is to improve the number of women in our armed forces. On Second Reading, the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), said that
“we are committed to see women account for 15% of our new recruits by 2020, and evidence suggests that they see greater opportunities for flexible working in the services as particularly attractive.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2017; Vol. 630, c. 624.]
It is good that the Government are taking steps to get to grips with this because, unfortunately, at present, the situation leaves a lot to be desired.
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The latest diversity statistics were not out when we last discussed the Bill, in Committee. Now that they are out, we can see that progress remains slow. In the latest statistics published at the end of November, female representation made up 10.3% of the regular forces,
which represents an increase of just 0.1% in 12 months; and just 3.6% of officers ranking OF-6 to OF-9 are female.
It is disappointing that the Ministry of Defence is now without any female Ministers, especially in light of the fact that the Department has a very capable female Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), with a long-standing interest in defence issues whom the Prime Minister could easily have promoted during the recent reshuffle.
The picture is similarly disappointing for black, Asian and minority ethnic personnel, who now represent 7.5% of the regular forces.