Constant deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing amount of time spent away from home are key factors causing people to leave the Armed Forces, a committee of MPs said yesterday.

The number of officers leaving the Army and RAF early – and also other ranks in the air force – are at a ten-year peak, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said.

The committee disputed the Ministry of Defence’s claim that servicemen and servicewomen being deployed overseas were “stretched but not overstretched”.

The MPs said: “The impact of continuous downsizing [manpower cuts], pressures and overstretch is affecting the [MoD’s] ability to retain and provide a satisfactory life for Armed Forces personnel.” They said that the MoD had been operating “above the most demanding level of operations under defence planning assumptions since 2001 but has not adjusted its manning requirements”.

The MoD accepted that current operations, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, were “placing a strain on personnel”, particularly in key areas such as nurses, armourers and vehicle mechanics. “However, it does not agree that this factor is leading to an increase in people leaving early,” the committee said in a report on recruitment and retention in the Armed Forces.

Yet in a survey carried out by the National Audit Office among personnel in the so-called pinch-point trades found that frequency of deployments, contributed to two of the top three reasons for people leaving: 70 per cent of those intending to leave and 53 per cent of those who had left said that their inability to plan ahead in life outside work was an important factor in their decision to leave.

The MPs pointed out that with more people leaving early, it also placed greater strain and pressure on “those who stay”.

Currently about 15 per cent of the Army “are away more than is planned for, and for some trades the figure is a third or more”.

The MoD’s consistently stated position was that “the Armed Forces are significantly stretched by the combination of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but that they are not overstretched, as they are continuing to do all that is asked of them”.

However, the MPs said there were “severe shortages” of personnel in some key specialities, and the MoD’s “harmony guidelines”, under which service personnel are supposed to be guaranteed set periods of time at home in between overseas operations, were being “routinely broken”.

The MPs also accused the MoD of failing to have a consistent long-term approach to recruitment and retention. “Recruitment drives have been cut back by pressures to downsize or to make funding cuts,” the report said.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “The MoD has been relying for too long on the goodwill and courageous spirit of our servicemen and women to compensate for the increasing shortages of personnel in all three services.”

He added: “The staffing situation has reached the point where there are simply not enough service people to meet levels of military activity, planned some years ago, let alone the heightened demands now being placed on them by commitments such as the Iraq and Afghanistan operations.”

He said it was not surprising that increasing numbers of servicemen and women were deciding to quit the Armed Forces.

Derek Twigg, a Defence Minister, acknowledged that the high tempo of operations was putting pressure on the personnel involved, but he insisted that the forces could cope.

“The Chief of Defence Staff himself has said that the Armed Forces are very stretched but can sustain what they are currently doing,” he said.

“With the drawdown of troops in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the reductions already made possible in Iraq, some of the pressure should soon start to ease. I accept that there are manning challenges and shortages in some specific areas, but we are taking action.”

The MPs’ report found that the overall shortfall in armed forces personnel stood at 5,850 – or 3.2 per cent of full strength – in April this year, up from 5,170 the year before.

Numbers leaving early have risen for the past two years and are now at a ten-year peak for Army and RAF officer and RAF other ranks, said the report, entitled Recruitment and Retention in the Armed Forces.

“The impact of continuous downsizing, pressures and overstretch is affecting the department’s ability to retain and provide a satisfactory life for armed forces personnel,” it warned.

Several key factors for quitting early, such as workload, inability to plan for life outside work and the impact on family life, “have not been addressed”.

Since 2001, the Armed Forces have continuously operated above the highest level of activity envisaged in their defence planning assumptions, said the MPs. But despite the extra operational burden, the MoD has not boosted manning levels in that period.

Past cuts in recruitment activity in the 1990s have had a knock-on impact on staffing levels now.

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