Defence written question – answered at on 3 June 2010.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the policy of each of the armed services is on recruitment of people with a criminal record; and which criminal offences are a bar to recruitment to each force.
Applicants for the armed forces are required to declare any unspent convictions, in terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, as part of the application process. The general principle applied by each of the services is that any unspent convictions will be a bar to recruitment. However, in some exceptional cases applicants with unspent convictions are able to enter service, for example a one-off offence committed as a minor, but this is subject to authorisation from the appropriate single service manning authority.
There are some offences that will never be spent in terms of the Act and will permanently prevent service in the armed forces, for example, a custodial sentence of 30 months or more. Failure to disclose an unspent conviction represents a breakdown in trust and stating a falsehood on attestation. This will invariably result in dismissal.
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