NEWS
Rishi Sunak said he wanted army medics, military nuclear engineers and other service personnel to be able to take other jobs in the public sector to avoid losing them to private companies.
Speaking on the way to the annual Nato summit in Lithuania, Mr Sunak said “he was concerned the armed forces were not hanging onto talented troops. We’re very lucky in the armed forces – we’ve got people with extraordinary experience, I think it is important that we benefit from that more broadly as well, so what we are doing is making it easier for people to move from the services into the civil service and into government so we can then benefit from their expertise because that set of skills is equally valuable to the country and government.”
The idea, known as “zigzagging”, will be announced in the Ministry of Defence’s new Command Paper, which is expected to be published next week before MPs’ summer recess.
Transfers will become easier
Soldiers who transfer into civilian government jobs will be able to move back into the military if they choose, while personnel of each of the three services will be more easily able to transfer to others, Mr Sunak said
“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. So we want to make it easier to do that, so we’re going to make it easier for them to move into government and the civil service, and then back again. But also among all the different services, so we take a tri-service approach so they can more easily move among the services.
He added: “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. So I think that will be good for the armed forces, good for the country but also be good for those individuals who will have a richer career and actually more fulfilling and more likely to stay.”
