Mark Williams

DASA(Quad-Service)

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

3-K-40 Main Building

Horse Guards Avenue

London SW1A 2HB

Telephone: 020 7218 4306 Fax: 020 7218 0969

Email: mark.williams@dasa.mod.uk

Dear Mr Wright,

Thank you for your e-mail dated 10^th October 2008, in which you asked for the following information:

I am treating this as a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Information on the number of personnel within the Armed Forces based on Race, Religion and Nationality can be found in DASA's UK Defence Statistics 2008 publication in Chapter 2. Figures against points 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 can be found in tables 2.14 “Strength of UK Regular Forces by Service and ethnic origin at 1 April each year”, table 2.15 “Strength of UK Regular Forces by Service and religion at 1 April each year”, table 2.16 “Strength of the Trained UK Regular Forces by Service and nationality, at 1 April each year” and table 2.3 “Location of Service and civilian personnel^1,2 in the United Kingdom”. DASA's UKDS is an annual publication and is available at www.dasa.mod.uk under the National Statistics Publications heading.

Since the introduction of the new Joint Personnel Administration system, the nationality of UK nationals serving in the Armed Forces is recorded as `British'. While personnel can further specify their national identity in terms of the four constituent countries of the UK (plus `Other'), this is not mandated and also includes the options `British or Mixed British' and `Other' as well as `Not Known' and null responses. As such it is not possible to provide accurate figures of the total number of Armed Forces personnel for each individual nationality (including English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish).

A more comprehensive breakdown of the number of civilian MoD employees within England, Scotland and Wales can be found in DASA's CPS06 publication as at 1^st July 2008 under tables 1, 11 and 13 respectively. This is a quarterly publication and is attached.

A more comprehensive breakdown of the number of UK Regular Forces personnel stationed within England, Scotland and Wales can also be found in DASA's TSP10 publication as at 1^st April 2008 under tables 2.1, 5.1 and 4.1 respectively. This is an annual publication and can be found at: http://www.dasa.mod.uk/applications/newWeb/www/index.php?page=48&pubType=0&thiscontent=1800&PublishTime=09:30:00&date=2008-07-25&disText=1%20Apr%202008&from=listing&topDate=2008-07-25

The latest available estimates for aggregate MOD direct equipment and personnel expenditure in the Government Offices for England, Scotland and Wales are detailed in the table below. The figures are for financial year 2006/2007.

£ Millions at Current Prices

All figures rounded to the nearest £10M

It should be noted that MOD places work where it obtains best value for money and capability for our forces.  Work is placed 'in' a region but not necessarily 'for' that region. The location of these is not a primary concern. The Defence budget is not allocated on a regional basis.

BACKGROUND NOTE

The determination of regional expenditure by the MOD is complex. It covers the (regional) spending on:

MOD has not formally published figures for the regional split of its direct equipment expenditure because of concerns with the quality of the supporting information. The latest internal estimates detail expenditure with companies that are based in each of the Government Offices in England, Scotland and Wales, with whom MOD directly contracts. This analysis includes among contractors those MOD Trading Agencies that work at arm's length from MOD. Not all of this money will be finally spent in the specified location as these (direct) contractors may place subcontracts with

organisations outside that location. Companies in a particular location of the UK may well receive (defence) subcontracts from firms elsewhere in the UK.

Figures for expenditure on non equipment expenditure in the each of the Government Offices in England, Scotland and Wales are not currently available. Although work continues to support the production of numbers at this level, it is actually very difficult to do so with confidence.

The regional civilian figures were obtained by looking at the regional distribution of civilian personnel costs as at the end year point. DASA is provided with Civilian budgets by TLB and salary information is scaled up by TLB to match the total TLB budget. For Financial Year 2006/2007 an assumption was made that the personnel costs by TLB Government Office Region would remain constant and therefore the civilian personnel costs reflect the size of the TLB budgets.

Expenditure figures for Service personnel in 2006/2007 are based on the 1st April point for each year. These figures are calculated by taking the number of Service personnel in each Government Office Region (GOR) by NATO rank. These are then multiplied by the average pay for each rank. The average pay for each rank is worked out by finding the proportion of people on each pay spine then averaging their salaries. The distribution across spine points is based on 1 April 2003 position. This has been multiplied by the pay for each spine point to give the average salary for each rank.

All figures are for FY 2006-07, have been rounded to the nearest £10M, are exclusive of VAT and expressed at current prices.

I hope you find this helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Williams

If you are unhappy with this response or you wish to complain about any aspect of the handling of your request, then you should contact me in the first instance. If informal resolution is not possible and you are still dissatisfied then you may apply for an independent internal review by contacting the Director of Information Exploitation, 6^th Floor, MOD Main Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail [email address]). Please note that any request for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date on which the attempt to reach informal resolution has come to an end. 

If you are still unhappy following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. Please note that the Information Commissioner will not normally investigate your case until the MOD internal review process has been completed. Further details of the role and powers of the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website, http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk.