Defence strategy at risk after cuts, warn MPs

A report by the Commons Defence Select Committee rejected Prime Minister David Cameron‘s assurance that Britain retains a “full spectrum defence power”, warning that without firm spending commitments for the future, the Government risks failing its military forces.

The committee said the National Security Strategy (NSS) was in danger of becoming no more than a “wish list”, noting mounting concern that the military is already operating at the maximum level envisaged by October’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).

The report warned that any extension of our current military commitments would have serious implications. “The Government should ensure that sufficient contingency is retained to deal with the unexpected,” it said. “It is not sufficient to wait for the end of combat operations in Afghanistan at the end of 2014”.

Future fears

The committee said the biggest challenge arising from the SDSR is the Future Force 2020. “We have serious concerns about whether it will be achieved, particularly as the provision of necessary resources is only a Government aspiration, not Government policy,” MPs said.

The Government plans to increase spending on equipment by 1 per cent above inflation each year after 2015, but this is dependent on Mr Cameron staying in Government, and on the country’s economic state.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told the committee that little could be read into the spending pledge.

“For the MoD to be able to afford its current plans up to 2020 would, as far as I understand it, require real-terms growth after 2014 of the order of 2 per cent per annum. I think it will be pretty difficult to reach that level of real of real-terms growth, but it depends on the broader geopolitical climate and on the country’s economic prospects,” he said.

Read the committee's report in full, here

The committee said it was “not convinced that, given the current financial climate and the drawdown of capabilities arising from the SDSR, UK armed forces will be able do what is asked of them after 2015”.

Defence chiefs agreed that they are currently stretched, but not overstreched. However Wing Commander Andrew Brookes, Director, Air League, told the committee that the UK would not be able to meet a third task, outside operations in Afghanistan and Libya.

He said the SDSR covered three scenarios or Defence Planning Assumptions. “There are three tasks that are laid down: an enduring stabilisation operation, a non-enduring complex and a non-enduring civil intervention—that is, an Afghanistan, a Libya and rescuing everybody out of Zimbabwe,” he explained.

“We can no longer do the third; the third is beyond us. We already do not have the funding to do what is in there,” he warned.

The report backed the military chiefs and warned that ministers’ hopes that full spectrum power can be maintained through co-operation with allies like France may be misplaced.

Military cuts

Defence Secretary Liam Fox announced last month that a further 10,000 Army jobs would go between 2015 and 2020; reducing the Army to its smallest size since the Boer War, with troop numbers down to 84,000 by 2020.

It has also emerged that civil servant numbers are to be cut by 40 per cent – down from 82,000 to 50,000 by 2020 to help “bear down further on non-front line costs”.

This follows plans outlined in October’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) to reduce the Army by 7,000 personnel and the Royal Navy and RAF by 5,000 each as part of a cost-cutting exercise which also saw the cancellation of equipment including Nimrod MRA4 reconnaissance planes and the early withdrawal of HMS Ark Royal and Harrier jump-jets.