Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, visited award-winning group Recruit for Spouses at its Corsham offices on Friday night.

Recruit for Spouses is a social enterprise employment agency specifically set up to provide a support network for military spouses looking for work across the country.

They told the minister of their experience in looking for work and highlighted the barriers military wives and partners often face.

Mr Duncan Smith heard that employers might reject job applications from those with a connection to the military because members of the military often move round the country.

He said although he had served in the army in the past, he was unaware of the employment issues military wives and partners were facing and he would work with them to solve this.

He said: “I’ve never thought about it to be honest, I didn’t think it was an issue.

"I’ve got a lot of other things going on so these people need to be brought to me and I will lean on the MoD to do some stuff themselves.

“I am very interested to come down here and see these things because I think it’s an area we can do more in.

"I have said they can come on up and discuss things a bit more and I will ask them to come up with a plan of how we can attract more businesses.

“I don’t have specific funds, but we can certainly look at what we can do.

"I have under my control the single biggest network of business organisations in the country, I run a retail outlet for getting people back to work.”