§ 13. Ms Christine Russell (City of Chester)What plans his Department has to improve the extent of accredited training in the armed forces. [49588]
§ The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. George Robertson)We announced as part of the strategic defence review our new learning forces initiative, which 778 will further improve education and training provisions in the armed services and help service people to gain recognised qualifications.
§ Ms RussellDoes my right hon. Friend agree that improving education and training will not only make the armed forces a more attractive career proposition but help to ease people's transition back into civilian life? In the next few weeks, thousands of young people will receive their GCSE and NVQ results and will be thinking about their options, so will he say exactly what vocational qualifications the Ministry is considering?
§ Mr. RobertsonMy hon. Friend is absolutely right. The services offer a rewarding and excellent career to many school leavers, and we want to ensure that as many as possible of those young people and their advisers have the relevant information. The fact that people can gain transferable, portable qualifications is not only an important recruiting commodity: it adds to the quality of our trained manpower and womanpower. The learning forces initiative will add a new ingredient to the package that is already on offer; people will be able to build up learning credits while they are in the forces, which will allow and encourage them to go into higher and further education when they leave. We believe that the package will be attractive not only to those who are in the services, but, perhaps more important, to the high-quality young people whom we want to come into the forces in the future.