Fox says ex-MoD chiefs partly to blame as job cuts loom

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15120821

 

The defence secretary says former senior military and MoD figures are partly to blame for £5bn budget cuts leading to defence force job losses.

 

Some 1,020 Royal Navy personnel have been hearing they are being made redundant as cuts continue.

 

Liam Fox told the Guardian the MoD had "consistently dug a hole for itself".

 

Former navy chief Admiral Lord West said the military had been cut to a "dangerously low capability" but it was "no good blaming things in the past".

 

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said Mr Fox had to take responsibility for his actions.

 

But he added: "Savings must, of course, be made and Labour has recognised that long-standing, systemic faults with the MoD's procurement system were not tackled by successive governments."

 

The Navy is cutting numbers by 5,000 to 30,000 by 2015, as part of 22,000 armed forces cuts designed to help save £5bn.

 

The personnel losing their jobs are being informed throughout the day. A third of the redundancies are compulsory. Some 810 sailors applied for redundancy and 670 were accepted. RNAS Yeovilton base in Somerset has confirmed that it is losing 124 personnel.

 

Earlier this month about 920 soldiers and 930 RAF personnel were told they were being made redundant, in the first tranche of cuts announced in last year's Strategic Defence and Security Review.

 

The next round of redundancies is due in March. The Ministry of Defence is also shedding 32,000 civilian staff over the next four years.

 

Lord West told the BBC: "We have cut and cut and cut for many years and I think we are in real danger of cutting so deeply that we are unable to do things that we require as a nation.

 

"It is very sad," said Lord West, who was security minister in the last Labour government. "It's sad for the people involved, obviously, 300 of them are compulsory... these are people who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the nation.

 

"It's a bit worrying that 800 said they would voluntarily go. It's a bit worrying that they felt there was not a future for them."

 

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, Dr Fox reflected on the actions of military chiefs under previous government, saying: "I think the MoD consistently dug a hole for itself that it eventually found that it could not climb out of.

 

"It is irritating to hear some of those who helped create the problem criticising us when we try to bring in a solution."

 

A "complete breakdown of trust" between the military and the government over ballooning costs reached its zenith towards the end of Gordon Brown's premiership, the defence secretary said.

 

Defence job cuts by 2015

12,000 Army

5,000 Navy

5,000 Royal Air Force

32,000 civilian staff

Armed Forces cuts at-a-glance

He added that he wanted the armed forces to "take the pain early" so the military could balance its books and regain lost credibility.

 

Morale within the forces had "taken a knock" but most people understood that reform "had to be done", Dr Fox said.

 

But Lord West said it was "no good blaming things in the past".

 

"When I was an admiral, I used to make people captains of ships. I expected them to run that ship really well. If they kept telling me how bad it was before - at the end of the day, I'd sack them," he said.

 

Lord West said Mr Fox needed to battle with the prime minister and Treasury to get adequate funding for the armed forces.

 

"It would take a very little shift in resources from areas like foreign aid, the welfare budget, the National Health Service - a tiny, tiny fraction of those budgets - into defence would give us the capability to be able to build up to the force he's talking about," he said.

 

Commodore Michael Mansergh, the head of Royal Navy manning at the Ministry of Defence, told Radio 4's Today programme the reduction in personnel followed a reduction in equipment, including four frigates an aircraft carrier.

 

Commodore Michael Mansergh: "I wouldn't want to underestimate the pain"

"There are certain, certain equipments that are no longer in service and people who are technically suited to operate those equipments will no longer be required," he said.

 

He told the BBC News Channel the government decided the navy's commitments.

 

"We are looking very much to the future and, clearly, what the government asks us to do is to protect our interests around the world and the size and scale of that is very much a government decision. And we're just meeting what the government are asking us to do."

 

Only personnel not on or preparing for deployment, and who have taken all their operational leave, have been considered for redundancy from the Royal Navy.

 

This includes sailors who took part in the Libya campaign on HMS Cumberland and other ships now being decommissioned. Plymouth-based HMS Cumberland was the first UK warship sent to Libya earlier in the year.

 

The MoD says the decisions it faces are not easy but that they will "help to defend the UK, protect our interests overseas and enable us to work effectively with allies and partners to deliver greater security and stability in the wider world".

 

Many of the job cuts in the coming years are expected through a decrease in recruitment and by not replacing those who leave, but more than half are likely to be redundancies.

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Well, all I can say is, I sincerely hope that next time The "Prez" phones us up and asks us to commit troops to whatever next Neo-Imperialist piece of shit "war" invading another country of brown people and killing thousands of little brown babies, our "glorious leader" will tell him to get stuffed because we've not got the bloody military capabilities......

 

And Admiral West, you can f/uck off too, divert funds from the NHS or Welfare....?? I guess we shouldn't bother paying the soldiers, sailors, pilots and civilian staff who are about to be sacked their Job Seekers' allowance then... Twat..... <_<

Oh, hang on, just had a thought, they'll likely just conscript 18-20 year-olds the next time America wants to wave its dick around and invade someone...... -_-

The defence cuts are a complete joke.

The defence cuts are a complete joke.

 

Indeed, and so is this "government".... They cant have it both ways, if they're going to cut this country's defences to the bone, then it'll have to become just that - DEFENCE, and not "join America on whatever Crusade they're on this week...".

 

I would say that spending on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are part of the reason our economy's f**ked.....