David Cameron scales down defence cuts

The national defence budget has been finalised after a personal intervention by the Prime Minister. The final settlement puts the cuts to the Ministry of Defence's £37bn a year budget at around 7-8%. This is significantly lower than the 10% cut favoured by the Treasury. Military chiefs said that drastic cuts would damage the front line in Afghanistan, something David Cameron has made clear he is not prepared to do.
.
Defence secretary Liam Fox, who has fought fiercely for his department, appears to have won this particular battle with the Treasury. Hillary Clinton's comments earlier this week, in which she expressed concern about the expected defence cuts, could have added pressure on the coalition.
.
A senior Downing Street source has revealed that the comprehensive spending review will not outline any substantial cuts to the number of Army personnel. The source added that £750m is to be saved over four years on Trident, although there is uncertainty about how such savings would be made.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Michael Clarke, of the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said Army numbers had to be cut. But that would not happen before 2015, when a withdrawal from Afghanistan would be under way, he said. Mr Clarke described the defence cuts as a "bellwether" for NATO, which would be watching closely to see where the axe fell.

On the same programme, former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West said: "Politically, I can understand how the government finds it difficult to cut Army numbers when our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan." He said that "strategically it would make sense" to cut numbers by 20,000.

Both of the planned aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, will be built - but the Royal Navy stands to lose a significant portion of its surface fleet, while the order for the joint strike fighters for the carriers will be scaled down substantially.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Egyptians turn to unlikely source

As reported earlier today, Iran has followed Egypt in blocking access to online news sources such as the BBC, Reuters and Yahoo News. However, Egyptians are getting their news from an unlikely source- The Thorpe-Apps Report.  The Thorpe-Apps Report was founded by Andrew Thorpe-Apps in January 2011 and has become popular with young internet surfers.  The emergence of such sites makes it nearly impossible for national governments to effectively censor information on the web. The Thorpe-Apps Report can be found at  thorpe-apps.blogspot.com
Read more

Reflections on the revolution in Europe

Mass immigration into Europe in the past 50 years has profoundly changed the continent and is likely to change it even more over the next half century. Yet it is a subject so immersed in fear and wishful thinking that it often seems we still don't have a proper language in which to discuss it. It is partly for this reason that Christopher Caldwell's new book,  Reflections on the Revolution in Europe , will seem rather shocking. He asks some unusually direct questions: can you have the same Europe with different people? Why did mass immigration happen when so few people actually wanted it? Immigrants want a better life but how many of them want a European life? Why is minority ethnic pride a virtue and European nationalism a sickness? Is political correctness just fear masquerading as tolerance? This 2009 work investigates the impact of mass immigration on Europe. Caldwell argues that the mass immigration by Muslims to European countries' cities is altering ...
Read more

The rise of the benefit cheat police

Hit squads of inspectors are to be sent to areas where problems with benefit cheats are rife, the chancellor George Osborne has said. Mr Osborne compared welfare cheats to muggers robbing taxpayers of their hard-earned money. He also warned that repeat offenders could have their benefits cut off for up to four years. Benefit and tax credit fraud costs the taxpayer an estimated £1.5bn a year. The government is planning to reduce the annual welfare bill by a further £4bn, on top of an £11bn cut made in June. Details of how the savings are to be made are to come in next week's Spending Review. The new anti-fraud drive will use hi-tech data-tracking techniques and another 200 inspectors are to be recruited to a new investigation service. Welfare reform minister Lord Freud said minor offenders would face instant £50 fines and offenders caught three times could face a three-year benefit ban. He also said investigators would seek to seize more assets from benefits cheats.
Read more