(UPDATED) The MoD said on Sunday 24 Sept that it had accepted a request from the Home Office, under Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA), to "provide routine counterterrorism contingency support to the Metropolitan Police, should it be needed".

The linkage of the request to counterterrorism support excluded the use of armed defence personnel for armed police duties not connected to counterrorism.

The Met said the next day that the Army had been 'stood down' because enough of their own officers had returned to firearms duty.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has pledged that, if his party win the next General Election, they will create a new "Squaddies' Tsar" to represent armed forces personnel and their families.

In an interview with The Sun on Sunday ahead of Armed Forces Week 2023, Sir Keir said that the Armed Forces Commissioner would sit outside the military chain of command, and have the power to investigate and highlight issues affecting Forces and their loved ones.

With the 2023-24 pay award still awaited, Sky News reports that some military personnel and their families have been forced to use food banks as high inflation and rising costs tip members of the Armed Forces into crisis.

Internal RAF documents seen by Sky News - as well as interviews with military sources and charities - offer a sense of the wider impact of the cost of living crisis on defence, including:

The House of Commons Defence Committee (HCDC) has published the Government's response to the report of the Committee's inquiry about the Afghanistan withdrawal, dealing with

• The Doha Agreement and fall of the Afghan Government
• The Evacuation and Relocation of Eligible Afghans
• Mental Health of Veterans
• Learning Lessons from Afghanistan

The 'Independent Inquiry to investigate certain matters arising from the deployment of British armed forces to Afghanistan between mid-2010 and mid-2013' has held its first formal session today, 25 April 2023.

The Inquiry was announced by the Defence Secretary last December, and is chaired by Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, whom some members will recall chairing the 2009 Nimrod review into the loss of RAF Nimrod MR2 aircraft XV230 in Afghanistan. He also served as the judge in charge of the terrorism list between 2017 and 2018.