The UK government has announced a 6% pay rise for Armed Forces personnel, marking the largest increase in 22 years.

This significant pay award aims to address recruitment and retention challenges while recognising the sacrifices made by military personnel to protect the nation.

For the first time, the starting salary for new recruits will align with the National Living Wage, reflecting a substantial boost in initial pay. This move is part of the government’s broader commitment to enhancing service life and making military careers more attractive.

The recently announced creation of a new Armed Forces Commissioner, as highlighted in the King’s Speech, is intended to provide a strong, independent voice for service personnel and their families.

Defence Secretary John Healey stated: “We will renew our nation’s contract with those who serve. Our new government’s first duty is keeping the British people safe. And the strength of our defence lies in the serving men and women of our forces. This pay award will benefit every member of the Armed Forces. It is an important step towards turning around the declining morale and recruitment crisis we have faced in recent years.”

Healey also noted the government’s commitment to fully enshrining the Armed Forces Covenant into law, reinforcing support for service personnel and their families.

Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, added: “This year’s pay award is testament to the hard work and extraordinary dedication of the Armed Forces at a pivotal time for our security. Alongside a comprehensive benefits package, it aims to ensure our people feel properly recognised and rewarded.”

The pay increase, effective from April 1, 2024, follows the recommendations of the independent Armed Forces Pay Review Body and Senior Salaries Review Body. Key highlights include:

  • Initial pay for other ranks during their first six months or until completion of initial training will rise to £25,200.
  • Most service personnel up to and including 1-star rank, including medical and dental officers, will receive a 6% pay increase.
  • The lowest-paid personnel (OR2-01) received a 7.25% pay increase in April 2024, ensuring alignment with National Living Wage uplifts and providing a significant pay rise for around 6,700 personnel.
  • Senior military members (2-star rank and above) will receive a 5% consolidated increase to their base pay.

In addition to the pay rise, service personnel will continue to receive a comprehensive benefits package, including subsidised food, medical and dental care, accommodation, and childcare. The pay award also includes increases to targeted forms of remuneration, resulting in an annual increase of approximately £3,000 in the nominal average salary and an annual increase of around £1,878 in the starting salary for an officer.

Lisa West
Lisa West
Lisa has a degree in Media & Communication from Glasgow Caledonian University and works with industry news, sifting through press releases in addition to moderating website comments.

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83 COMMENTS

  1. And Capita? I understand the RN and RAF do not use Capita, but regards the Army, what about AFCOs with real people, military people, in them?
    And also not mentioned as far as I could see in the article, what gives? This is coming from existing budget I believe? MoD have mentioned “reprioritising”

    • I am not sure where all the money will come from other than some will come from pensioners winter fuel payments, which for some will mean real hardship. For the military I hope this helps stop the terminal decline in numbers, which is the biggest threat to our armed forces. It needs to be followed up by an improvement in accommodation and training facilities along with further wage increases for those at the lower end over the next couple of years. Then perhaps we talk about new equipment, force levels and priorities.
      I have no political allegiance but in this one action they have shown they understand more about defence and real people than the Tory’s with one or two honourable exceptions. A quite incredible state of affairs.

      • The Government is not being exceptionally generous. They just had to accept the independent Pay Review Body recommendation.

        • Correct but if they don’t increase defence spending something else has to give. Whilst they can argue defence spending hasn’t been cut a capability will need to be reduced elsewhere.

          Of course with Tories having run the country so badly for 14 years you’d think their would be some big productivity savings to be had. I wait to see what these are.

      • Indeed, winter fuel payment cuts need a higher threashold so the majority barely managing are protected & it only hits those who can afford to lose the payment. Hopefully that will be corected before it hurts pensioners this winter.

        • Reeves cuts the £300 winter fuel allowance to very many (the majority?) of pensioners. She does not say that she draws a parliamentary allowance of over £2,400 p.a. to heat her home!!

          • Shameful hypocrisy. Unless they’re prepared to take cuts themselves, HMG should not be inflicting them on others, especially the aged, poor & sick. Up to Labour to demonstrate they’re more than just tory-lite.

    • RAF and RN don’t use Capita yet. Outsourced tri-service recruitment was on the cards for this year, but fortunately it was delayed. Instead Capita’s contract with the Army was extended to 2026.

      • I doubt the RN and RAF will use it now.

        I’m willing to bet that Capita’s contract doesn’t get renewed after 2026. Just let it expire without renewing, and then there’s no chance of them taking the MoD to court.

      • No idea why they started with the largest service, way back. They should have tried Capita out on the RN or RAF first.

    • It’s not clear where all the funding will come from for this. Right now that’s not unreasonable in my view since I think it’s fair to expect to have to wait until the 30th October budget before we get the full cross-departmental picture of overall tax and spending changes and can see if the sums add up and it is unreasonable to expect such a proper joined-up budget to be done within weeks (look what happened when Liz Truss tried to throw a budget together in that sort of timescale).

      Rachel Reeves did however mention a few measures during the announcement. Limiting winter fuel allowance and delaying implementing a social care cap were the cost-saving measures discussed most in the media but she also mentioned weaning government departments off expensive consultants.

      Maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part but I’m hoping that a reduction on the reliance on consultants might extend to getting Capita out of the recruitment loop and an indication that this is not the direction of travel so hopefully Labour won’t be tempted to extend the Capita model to the RN and/or RAF.

      Recruitment seems to me to be a job that would be more credibly done by the recruiting organisation itself so why incur the overhead of outsourcing it (Capita will want to have a profit margin after all) for a sub-optimal solution? In many cases outsourcing makes sense – a major pharmaceutical company doesn’t really want the hassle of running its own canteens in its offices around the world – but for the military the quality of its people is a massive differentiator for the UK armed forces and that starts with the initial recruitment process so even with my business hat on I would say that recruitment should be considered an absolute core competency for the organisation and as such should not be outsourced.

        • Personally I consider all the large providers of “Utility services” to the pubic sector as generally incompetent, money grabbing leaches…that generally exist because of political dogma.

      • The funding comes from existing MoD budget. Simples! The better question is what does MoD cut to cover it?

      • The claim made when outsourcing army recruitment to Capita many moons ago is that it would enable 1000 service personnel to be moved to front line units.

      • The new govt has said they want to reduce dependency on consultants all round. Initially they know less than you but as you outsource your expertise you end up powerless in negotiation because you have given away your knowledge and information. It’s called infantilisation. It was a deliberate tory policy.

        • Indeed, if you remove the skill set from the public sector…these utility companies then hover up all the expertise and then milk the taxpayer for everything they can…and even worse they are generally far less competent and integrated than when the service was provided by the public sector organisation itself…as you say driven by political dogma not sound economics…..

        • You’ll find most consultants who work for the MoD are ex Service personnel or ex MoD. If someone spent 20 years in military logistics you’re average Tesco logistics supply chain ain’t going to run the same way. Which effectively means they end training as an HGV driver rather than using their knowledge and contributing to solving new problem like how does a drone work to resupply on the battlefield. It’s nothing to do with politics it’s logic use of wealth of experience of ex service personel.

          • I think an example situation would be the way consultancy firms were used in covid. Rather than use the expertise in local authority public health departments , who do understand the principles of infection control, the govt chose to pay raw graduates £5k a day to learn how to do it! It was to do with politics.
            The posts here seem to be about recruitment – whether Capita have the skills knowledge and enthusiasm to sell an army career to recruits. It’s a specialise job. Maybe they focus on Tesco lorry drivers 🤔

          • Er no your post said the government want to reduce consultants all round then rather than applying any logic to the pros and cons of using a consultant made it clear your post was political rather than rational. My response was more logic highlighting to pros of consulting and non political. You followed up with another post now trying reframe your existing post. Your also now quoting capita which is a recruitment company not a consultant or consultancy company. Have you any experience of actually working with consultants or drafting a consultants contract or scope of work? Could you explain why as you have such a negative view of them why private companies use them despite in your eyes them being useless waste of money?

            There are of course example of bad contracts but that’s the customer’s fault not the consultants. But letting the same person who employs the consultant who was not give a strong contract to deliver to then let them employ a full time person with no clear goals to deliver will not save the government money. The route cause of any contractor, company or consultant not delivering value for money lies with the civil service. Minister Tory or Labour aren’t going to be reviewing and signing these contracts it’s below their pay grade.

          • Our discussion has widened.
            Several points. Firstly I do make a political point and don’t apologise for it: the last government used expensive consultants out of ideology because they wanted to ‘infantilise’ the civil service.
            Secondly, I agree there are situations where consultants do add expertise you don’t have in your own organisation. As Edwards Deming said, inspiration and need ideas need to come from outside. Its often a good idea for management to do a performance / quality audit in order to justify making organisational changes.
            Thirdly I don’t know the extent to which the above points apply to army recruitment. But many posting here would like to see the army doing its own recruitment. I suspect what they instinctively feel is that industry standard psycho testing is less useful when recruiting to the army; that the main task is not so much selection as selling service life and conveying the sense of family, camaraderie and esprit de corps which characterise service life. Have a good one!

          • How did you come to be aware of Deming, it’s usually know by those who work in industry?

            For the record I don’t disagree on capita Im from an era where a chap turned up at school in uniform a bistowed the merits of joining up. The local army careers office was staffed with real service personnel, it worked.

          • Was a ‘trained trainer’ in his system in a past life. Process improvement vs target setting, control limits, stability, root cause analysis, system causes vs special causes, monitor charts, qi groups….all good fun. 🙂

          • I see, we use the same techniques to help companies mainly in manufacturing improve processes but with digital transformation as drivers to improve.

      • There is plenty of money.

        Remember Labour wanted an extra £20 Billion for their green industrial plan.

        The average government spends £20-30 Billion a year on top of their fiscal targets.

        No government ever follows such strict fiscal rules. Our borrowing and debt is lower than the G7 barring Germany.

        Liz Truss isn’t comparable in scale.

        She introduced energy price support costing £150 Billion over 2 years and markets were OK given the war. (It lowers prices).

        The problem was £30 Billion a year of tax cuts when inflation was 8% and headed to double digits.

    • Perhaps it will be necessary for the AFCOs to nudge the appropriate people to obtain a similar increase. Salaries will probably have little impact on overall budget especially as Army numbers are down.

      • Until next year. The public have sympathy atm but those of us in the private sector who pay for this don’t have unlimited funds to keep giving to the government. Be interesting to see how big the public sector becomes. It’s like a business employing more back office staff than shop floor workers eventually it’s cost will exceed what those shop floor employees can make and sell. Reeves is going to have inspire the private sector(shopfloor)to make alot more money otherwise just like a business we’re going bust. And as someone who works in the private sector I’m not inspired by the new government atm.

  3. Good start to fixing issues, retention is shocking i hope this will help. Next lets see real money and contracts signed for the Ammo and kit needed to fix the shambles the Army has sadly been run down to.
    I have a feeling that this government may be good for the battered military.

    • Lets hope, until the calculations come in and is no money left and cuts need to be made to pay for this. Fingers crossed the funds can be raised and allocated properly.

          • Well that figure in itself is smoke and mirrors! According to the IFS there is some creative accounting going on here,but hayho she is a politician😉

          • Exactly. I wonder how many people including journalists have actually read the latest OBR forecasts in full. I have( it’s hard going) but it makes you realize how many assumptions have to be made in trying to produce numbers out to 2028/9. Most of the so called black hole arises from this government ‘s decision to accept every pay review body recommendation in full. The balance is little more than a rounding adjustment to expenditure running at more than £1200b per year.

          • You believe that. Pretty much I said before Labour took over they’d blame the last government and they have. It’s call kitchen sinking a long established rouse to justifynext actions. You’ll find it in chapter 4 of politics for dummies.😀

      • MoD has to cover the cost of the Pay Award, as always, from within existing budget. They will lobby for more money in the next Spending Review, but they may not get it.

    • You mean Defence cut Spending Review, if all goes as normal, sadly, but i have a feeling this one might be fine

  5. A percentage wage rise also widens the gap between those at bottom and those further up. The Public sector local Councils agree a fixed amount of money each year so the gap does not widen as it does in the Services with those needing it lower down benefitting more.

    Its not all about money that is bleeding the services of personnel but conditions and equipment (cant get spares with make do a big part of it). Not forgetting the WOKE culture that has taken over.

    What about all of us that only had 1% yearly if that for many years? Affected the Service Pensions. The new system is not even a consideration anymore as it is so low in value compared to the previously given.

    Little Hope for the future as the youth today are really so pampered.

    Conflict is and always will be a Horror which today’s generation do not wish to deal with rather stay at home and play on their soft toys.

  6. Wallop in a pay rise but don’t take any time to think about it. Same as Labour is doing with every other madcap scheme they are announcing almost every hour. Eight per cent is going to cost how much.?

    • A fair question but also consider that pay increases aren’t as cut and dried as an expense. Almost all the money the Treasury hand out in wage increases they’ll recoup as aggregate demand in the economy increases as a result

      • Which would be true if Reeves wasn’t giving with right hand and taking with left. She seems to have Diane Abbot Syndrome.. two plus two equals seventeen. She pretends to know nothing about the borrowing requirement prior to the election so says she is £22 billion short which was fairly common knowledge and then starts spending like there is no tomorrow. Maybe there isn’t 🙄

      • HMT won’t be providing funds for this pay award. MoD has to find the money within existing budget. They will of course lobby for more money downstream at the next Spending Review.

    • These are nothing more that the pay review recommends…not really controversial to be honest…Simply put workforce economics cannot alway be ignored by government…once Tesco start paying more than your junior grades…you pay up or don’t have any staff to manage your critical national infrastructure.

      • It’s not so much the pay award as the way it’s been done. Just slap a number on it and off you go. If we are going to live and fight in the 21st century we have to look at grades for different role assessment, career structures, benefit packages for individuals. Why do we cling to the idea of military housing? Why can’t we look at getting people on the housing ladder with executive supported mortgages? Private medicare for all the family? We need thought, not a number.

        • The recent pay award is the result of a long and complex annual process conducted by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. They did not just slap a number on it.

          Military housing. Not every service man or woman lives in military housing, of course. Some have bought their own place and will live in it when they can. Others, such as co-habiting (but not married or in a Civil Partnership) couples, will choose to rent a place near to barracks.

          The provision of military housing near to barracks is very important. I find it hard to fathom a world where that was unavailable. You cannot live in your own private house, if you have one, for very many years as officers are posted about every 2 years and soldiers about every three.

          There have been MoD schemes in the past to help with home ownership.

          • Time will tell Graham. If we don’t have a recruiting problem this time next year it will have worked. Fair comment about the discussions but what is the point of an award prior to a defence review. “Here’s a pay rise, Oh ah, actually we were going to increase the size of the army but now we can’t afford it”. Alternatively we need more pilots, drone operators, cyber specailist et al but we haven’t give any thought as to incentives to compete with the private sector.
            The biggest single problem with our armed forces at this moment is that we are trying to do too much with too little, and it has been going on for thirty years. Before anything happens we as a country need to decide what it is we NEED TO DO, what WE WANT TO DO and what we can AFFORD TO DO.

      • All very well but I’m in my third year with no pay rise as we decided not to past on rises to customers. That’s a proper real world tough decision. Take note the private sector doesn’t have pay review bodies we take decisions based on what our clients will tolerate otherwise they go elsewhere including to overseas companies. When they do we stop paying income and corporate taxes that pay the public sector wages.

        • Yes but remember I along with all other nhs professionals got a total of 4% increase over 8 years from 2010 to 2018…which was around 10% less than the private sector …the government only brought in the pay review bodes because essentially the workforce collapsed and they were buggered, you can pay want you want, but if no one will work for the money or start down the road to train as a healthcare professionals then your to put it bluntly fucked….and we are around 450,000 heathcare professionals short of what we need to run even the most basic western system ( and the NHS is just about the most bare bones system in the west) basically we import 20% of our healthcare workforce and if you look at nursing it’s 30%….we then simply don’t recruit to 10% of posts and run empty because we are not even competitive on the international market ( the US pays around 75% more than the NHS…£47,000 to £95,000 vs £29,000 to £56,000..so most international nurses go to the US)….the big problem is it takes around 6 years to get a decent basic staff nurse and a decade to train a senior nurse..with an advanced practioner coming in after around 15 years….so if you crash your workforce….it takes at least a decade to fix it….and if your population object to immigration..your double buggered.

          • Private sector is always beholden to what it’s clients will pay and typically the area I work is under constant pressure from overseas companies so sub inflation pay rises were the norm. Plus you have to consistently be looking at productivity improvements otherwise your competitors will take your business. So don’t think everyone in the private sector is getting the headline rates. I’ve also lost 2 private pensions when companies went under, meaning I’m having to work well beyond what your average public sector work would deem acceptable. Many in the private sector get government minimum sick pay and 4 weeks leave. People forget most of the private sector are not tesco or Lloyds but small to medium enterprises who have to make very real decisions sometimes on a knife edge to ensure the business stay afloat. Here’s any example a couple of years ago I had a skip delivered this was during the fake HGV driver crisis. I spoke to the driver about it and said you must be getting a good pay hike. They said the owner had presented the books showed them his salary and how he’d not taken any payrise and said I can either give you a pay rise but I need to loose one of you or give you all a lower pay rise. That the nature of real life in private sector.

            I don’t actually begrudge the current pay rise. Most of in the private sector know its long overdue. Oddly after 14 years of shoddy government Labour could only find what amount to pocket change in productivity improvements to pay for it. Surely a country run so badly for so long there must be huge productivity improvements to be had.

            And aside I went for another test on the NHS the other day. Sat for 40 minutes waiting whilst 2 nurses discussed there week end the was led to a room the nurse pushed a but on a computer I did what I was told and the computer executed the test. In manufacturing we’d never have highly skilled employee doing button pushing. Seems NHS should employ some lean process engineering experts to get best use out of the skills they have.

  7. Last year was a 5% pay rise plus a 1000 GBP increase to everyone across the board.
    Pretty sure that would beat this years rise…Is someone spinning the award for a “Look at us! Aren’t we good on Defence”?

    Anyway, if you are a SSgt, CPO, Flt Sgt in the middle of your pay spine( Level 6) you are now going to be in the higher tax bracket so you can expect to see only slightly more than half of what you awarded. Add on allowances and they will also be in the higher bracket for tax.
    If you are receiving trade pay the higher tax bracket will now be at the PO/ Sgt Level for most engineers.
    Retention payments for engineers will definitely push you into the higher tax bracket as well at the lower end of the PO/Sgt level
    Don’t forget of course that if you have kids your Child Benefit payment will start to reduce over 60K.There are going to be a few thousand people who now discover that little gem. And if you dont tell the govt of a change and they dont action it automatically you are liable to repay it. Having a none contributory pension scheme in the Armed Forces is a disadvantage for this

    Living in a quarter the rent will increase by 6%.
    Furnished charges up 2.4%
    Food charges are no longer an AFPRB function so the MOD will comeback with their own figures for that…Bet its not a cut though…

    Positive yes…sort of….but the devil as always is in the detail
    Some people will dip in at the lower end of there rank structure
    Some will dip in less .
    Some are going to find themselves dipping out a lot probably at the SNCO level who where previously not paying higher rate tax…

      • As long as I was in and after I left the pay increase was always reduced by inflation. Accounting for previous real terms loss in pay over the years it’s not that great.

        I think the only time I dipped in was post Falklands and GW1 & GW2.
        As a 16 year old in 1981 my first pay rise resulted in a loss as they increased pay by less than the increase in food and accom I suddenly went from having 100gbp a month to 75 gbp!

        As I said the devil is always in the detail. They only shout out about the things they want you to be happy with… They don’t shout out about the negatives… Ever…

        • Yes, but what the current gov has just done is the opposite of what you described. By increasing pay more than inflation they have given not just a nominal pay rise, but a real terms pay rise. That is to say, in real terms you are actually better off than you were past year.

    • Thanks, GB. Very interesting – shows up the pros and cons of an apparently generous payrise.
      They didn’t have a ‘pay spine’ when I was in. Never been able to find out just what it is. Grateful if you could enlighten me, please.

  8. I recommend downloading the document and having a read. There is also a lot of detail on how people view forces life now. Its not a pretty picture.

    • Yes, its the right call to honour the pay review recommendations for public service staff. I hope the govt will also put more money into services accommodation. Taxes will have to rise in the October budget and I would expect the load to fall on comfortable pensioners, pension tax allowances and capital gains. It was a spiteful move by Hunt to reduce NI, cynically characterising it as a ‘second tax’. This has made Ms Reeves job much harder, but hey, that’s life.

      • I’ll think you’ll find many of us will.just stop contributing with the threat of means testing pension many will be thinking it better to just stop contributing to private pensikn reduce working week, no pint in having savings or any inheritance outside your house. No pint in working just to hand it back to the government
        Tax people at zero % you get nothing tax people at 100% no one bothers work so you get nothing. There’s a sweet spot we’re you get the more tax and it’s not always by raising it.

        Ni is just tax it not ring fenced for it’s original purpose any more than fuel duty which doesn’t pay for roads. If Reeves has any sense she’d scrap it to and have just one tax on income and an employer tax for the employee. That’s not a political comment just common bloody sense NI was a concept of a by gone era . We’re not stupid we understand that scrapping NI means the equivalent rise in income tax it would make people lives far easier when looking at their payslip with just one deduction instead of 2 at different rates.

        • Well, I agree it is the case that NI is not a hypothecated tax, which the Treasury don’t like. However it has a symbolic value in that it represents the post WW2 commitment to the principle of mutuality i.e. as a society one the values which binds us is the sense of mutual obligations; the young and healthy contribute to caring for the old and sick.
          That said I have to say I’m uncomfortable with some of the labour tax ideas ideas being floated. I ( or my estate) will avoid capital gains / inheritance tax if I give money to the RSPCA but not if I give it to my son who can’t afford to get on the housing ladder. I like dogs as much as anyone else but the UK has 12 million. I think that’s more than enough.

          • We all agree tax is needed. I would prefer to see on my pay slip I payed x in income tax the a breakdown of what it goes on.

            Inheritance tax, I’d rather pay more income tax and know what’s left to do what I want with. It would also provide the treasury with known revenue upfront.

    • 😂 They have a long way to go yet. I’ll save my applause for them creating the conditions for the economy to grow. That is the only way the defence budget will rise as everyone hopes, and there will be more money for the NHS etc.

      • It’s no good raising GDP if GDP per capita sinks then that means we have more likely paid people who contributing less but still need service it may also mean higher earners have left who usually use private sector for services but contribute far more in taxes. So just having growth means little for the defence budget.it has to be productive growth.

        On the plus side with high earners leaving and more low paid workers the average wage will reduce and as poverty is measured as 60% average wage then the government will have reduced the number of people in poverty while actually reducing living standards.

        • I specifically said “creating the conditions for the economy to grow” to avoid the GDP argument. Business in the UK creates growth. A government can’t really create growth but it can damage it quite severely. It is a complex area and we are probably going to find out if Labour are going to spook the markets in the Autumn. The Blair / Brown Government stuck to the rules they made – most important. If you break your own rules that is the end bar the shouting.

          • Yes, I’m wondering if the new labour laws will see a massive offshoring of jobs. Companies will be saying well if they don’t have to come to the office, they won’t answer the phone after hours, I give them full rights from day one, they could be on strike marathons. Better just offshore the job.

  11. I am pleased that for the first time ever recruits will now get the Living Wage.

    I wonder how much food and accomodation charges will go up by?

  12. About time. Tories praise the forces generously while running down virtually everything & allowing pay to stagnate, a retention nigtmare.

  13. Broadly speaking a recruit will earn the same as our friends 18 year old daughter working in Sainsbury’s stacking shelves. In London Sainsbury’s staff would be earning more. Plus a 15% discount for in store spend for employees across the board.
    Pay rise is to little to late. As with the RFA a massive jump in pay and conditions is required across the Military.

  14. We ought to start by recognising that recruitment is a real problem. For example, it was recently reported that the Royal Marines are 600 men under strength. Secondly, the so-called peace dividend belongs to an age which is behind us. The threat from a revanchist Russia to our North Sea windfarms is very real and yet we do not spend as high a proportion of GDP on defence as Poland. The real name of the game now is deterrence. To achieve that effectively we must raise and spend more money. I say that every British passport holder must be subject to the British tax regime whether he/she lives in Monaco or Miami, such people should pay to HMRC the differential between the tax they pay in their chosen area of residence and that which they would pay if resident in the UK. Secondly, there should be an end to tax havens such as the BVI. Thirdly, we need a wealth tax. It is absurd the Sunaks, Jacob Rees Mogg and a few other members of the recent Tory benches have enough wealth among them to purchase TWO of thecnew AS frigates currently under construction at Rosyth and on the Clyde. That is absurd.

  15. Good. It’s about time we had a government that actually APPRECIATES the men and women who serve. Being in the armed forces SHOULD carry a pay premium and while I am not sure if this establishes a military pay premium, we are at least moving towards incentivising military service. All the Challenger 3s, F35s, and Type26 frigates in the world mean nothing without anyone to MAN them

  17. Ironically the pay rise is affordable because the armed forces are all so badly under their approved strength. If it results in a hoped for surge in retention and recruitment then big budgetary problems for the MOD in a year or two.

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