The Former Armed Forces Minister has admitted the Conservatives ‘should have sacked Capita years ago’, describing the current recruitment drive as ‘an unmitigated disaster’.

Mark Francois, who sits on the Defence Select Committee, said he believes ministers ‘haven’t had the nerve’ to fire them.

Speaking to GB News, Mark Francois said: “The Army has got three fundamental challenges at the moment. One is the whole woke agenda.

“The second major problem is equipment. Some of the Army’s equipment is 40,50 or even 60 years old. We’ve had some procurement disasters like Ajax or Morpheus, the new comms system that is years away from working.

“The third is recruitment and retention. In some bits of the Army for every person that joins, three are now leaving. And in some specialist areas, it’s even worse than that.

“The army is bleeding out.

“Capita are affectionately known to us on the committee as Capita and since they took over recruiting in 2012, it has been an unmitigated disaster.

“Every year bar two, they missed the targets by thousands, so that meant each year the army was several thousand short and the same the next year and then the next year so there’s a cumulative effect.

“In this year, in the year 2024, their target was a little under 10,000 soldiers.

“Three quarters of the way through the year they’d recruited barely 5000. When we push them on, what’s your best you can achieve, they said about 7000.

“I think the blunt truth is because I think a lot of very senior civil servants and some generals were heavily invested in this outsourcing and they simply cannot bring themselves to believe that they were wrong. They are in complete denial.

“A sergeant major said to me once, ‘Excuse me, Sir, is it true that Capita actually worked for the Russians, because it’s done more damage to the British Army than Vladimir Putin ever has?’

“Could Labour do worse on recruiting? Well, they’d have to go some.

“We should have sacked Capita years ago but there are too many senior civil servants who are just too embarrassed.

“The Conservative government should have done this. I could drown you in quotes from me on the committee saying, ‘sack these people, they’re useless.’

“Ultimately the Conservatives have been in power; I’m not trying to pretend that we haven’t been in government for 13 and a half years.

“But on this one point, many of us on the committee, for a very long while have pleaded with ministers to get rid of Capita and for the reasons I’ve given you, they haven’t had the nerve to do it.”

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