My Lords, the introduction of new flexible working measures is designed to attract, recruit and retain people from a more diverse cross-section of society who have the knowledge, skills and experience that we need to deliver operational capability.
Currently, service personnel who have dedicated themselves to public service sometimes struggle to meet their full military commitment—for example, due to a short-term change in personal or family circumstances—and the only option in such circumstances has been to leave the Armed Forces. This represents a loss to the individual and to defence. New flexible working options aim to address this so that in such situations personal circumstances are no longer a barrier to continuing service. We believe that these measures will benefit a small but significant cohort; for example, women and men starting a family, those with caring commitments or those who wish to undertake long-term studies. Moreover, our evidence derived from external reports, comparison with other nations, internal surveys, focus groups and our ongoing flexible duties trial shows that providing our people with modern choices
will help us retain highly skilled personnel who might otherwise leave and join organisations which provide these choices. In short, through these new measures we are aiming to modernise the terms of service for the Armed Forces with a view to improving recruitment and retention into the future.
Many other external factors, such as the economic climate, have the strongest influence on recruitment and retention and are likely to mask the impact of these new flexible working arrangements in the short to medium term, and we have to bear that point in mind. Defence is experiencing many of the same skills and recruitment challenges that are being faced nationally. To meet those challenges are proactively as possible, we are modernising the employment offer for our Armed Forces, as I have described. These collectively are being managed under the Armed Forces people programme, which comprises projects including the new joiner offer and enterprise approach. The new joiner offer should support and improve retention by developing a new, more modern and more relevant offer for new joiners that better supports service personnel throughout their career. We also aim to improve retention by better management of critical skills across defence through the enterprise approach project. Changes to enable members of the Armed Forces to work more flexibly originate from the flexible engagement systems project, which forms a further part of the people programme.
These amendments seek to place various obligations on defence to publish reports on the effects of flexible working on the Armed Forces. I am sure the Committee is aware that intake, outflow and strength by rank, trade and specialisation are monitored and managed on a regular basis at service level and centrally by the MoD. The MoD already publishes detailed information and analysis in the UK Armed Forces Monthly Service Personnel Statistics. This publication provides statistics on the number of service personnel by strength, intake and outflow in the UK Armed Forces, and detail is provided for both the full-time Armed Forces and reserves. We carefully monitor information on trade, specialisation and sub-specialisation by rank and service, and routinely release on a regular basis, as part of official statistics publications, a wide range of information on outflow from the UK Armed Forces.
We also publish comprehensive data in the UK Armed Forces Biannual Diversity Statistics. This statistical release presents information relating to the gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion and age of personnel employed by the MoD and meets the department’s obligations under the public sector equality duty to provide information on its workforce in relation to the protected characteristics identified by the Equality Act 2010. Information on numbers of personnel undertaking and returning from maternity and shared parental leave is also provided as part of this publication.
It is important to highlight the evidence from trials and surveys commissioned by the Armed Forces, which indicates that take-up for options that enable service personnel to work more flexibly is likely to be low in the early years of implementation. Furthermore, while the MoD promotes the importance of the Armed Forces being appropriately representative of the diverse
society they exist to defend, with operational effectiveness being dependent on inclusion and fairness, we estimate that the overall numbers taking up the new opportunities will be small to begin with. Therefore, assessing any correlative impact that flexible working has on increasing diversity in the Armed Forces is likely to be difficult, particularly in the early stages. This will mean that any detailed evaluation of the impact of flexible working measures on overall recruitment and retention rates, skills retention and outflow, and diversity in the Armed Forces will be difficult to achieve in the early years of operation.
The recording requirements for any pattern of work for our Armed Forces are stipulated in policies and recorded on the joint personnel administration system—JPA. JPA is already used to process applications for existing flexible working options. There is planning in place to enable all instances of part-time working or geographical restriction by personnel to be recorded on JPA when these options are made available. It will be crucial to ensure that all cases of flexible working are properly recorded and monitored to provide personnel and commanding officers with a record of all discussions and agreements. However, since it is estimated that the number of applications is likely to be low in the early stages, collating and reporting information on a monthly basis to provide figures on the number of personnel undertaking flexible working as a proportion of the total of full-time serving members of the Regular Forces would not provide significant or beneficial data.
It is important to emphasise again that the new arrangements are aimed at improving recruitment and retention in the long term, as part of a series of projects being delivered through the Armed Forces people programme. The long-term effects of these collective initiatives should be the measure of how effective the new arrangements are, rather than short-term reporting and figures on take-up.
We judge that formal annual reporting for a small cohort would not add value or provide a real sense of the impact of introducing these new opportunities. However, my department recognises the importance of keeping the delivery and effect of these changes under continuous review, in terms of both the benefits to personnel and the impact on operational capability. We will closely monitor the rates of uptake for new flexible working options by service, rank and specialism and will carefully examine any long-term trends and links to overall retention rates and diversity.
As noble Lords will be aware, the Secretary of State is required to lay an annual report before Parliament each year outlining the Government’s progress in delivering the Armed Forces covenant. The introduction of the new flexible working opportunities falls within the scope of the covenant and we envisage that the introduction of these measures in 2019 will be monitored during the first year of implementation and will be reported on in the covenant annual report and yearly thereafter.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, asked about FAMCAS and AFCAS and drilled down with some further questions. I will write to her on the questions that she asked. I will need to consult the department to understand what further information it would be possible or practical
to provide her with, but what information we do have I will be happy to give her. She also asked how flexible working could be introduced within a fixed headcount. The simple answer is that we will manage the levels of flexible working permitted and therefore will be able to ensure that the right levels are maintained to deliver defence outputs. It is envisaged that capacity surrendered to flexible working arrangements will either be within reducible capacity or can otherwise be resourced through other means such as the employment of reserves. Like other organisations with part-time workers, the organisation will change over time to better accommodate flexible working.
I do not believe that it is necessary for the Bill to be amended in this way. I understand that these are largely probing amendments and I hope that the explanations and information I have given to the Committee will be helpful to noble Lords and that they will not press their amendments.