The UK will make it easier for military personnel to “zig-zag” into civil service jobs and other parts of the armed forces as part of its latest defense plans, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, in a bid to boost retention of highly-trained staff.
“What I don’t want is that we spend all this time investing in people, training them, being very fortunate to have them and then not hanging on to them,” Sunak told reporters on his way to Lithuania on Tuesday. “So we’re going to make it easier for them to move into government and the civil service, and then back again.”
The UK’s new defense plan, including future troop numbers, military equipment and the ongoing capability of ships, planes and tanks, will be published next week before Parliament breaks for its six-week summer break. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, Sunak put pressure on other members of the military alliance to commit to spending 2% of national wealth on defense.
“A great example is army medics moving into the NHS or nuclear engineers who might want to move not just between the navy but elsewhere and come back,” Sunak told reporters. “But also among all the different services, so we take a tri-service approach so they can more easily move among the services.”
