Danny Alexander: "Military should accept more cuts"

[dutchman]

The military should accept more spending cuts because it has "more horses than tanks", a Liberal Democrat Treasury minister has said.



Mr Alexander hit back at the Ministry of Defnece after the head of the Army said further cuts would be dangerous, disruptive and damage the country’s ability to win wars.

His comments are likely to inflame tensions at a time when the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence are currently locked in a battle over spending cuts.

The Treasury is seeking £11.5 billion of cuts across all departments and is expecting the Ministry of Defence to submit to its share of cuts.

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, has promised to make as many savings as he can without harming Britain's capabilities.

However, he has suggested that this is likely to fall short of the Treasury's demands, as deep cuts would involve sacking many more military personnel.

Today, Mr Alexander slapped down the suggestion that ordering the military to find further any savings would be damaging.

“Of course in a department that has more horses than it has tanks, there are room for efficiency savings without affecting our overall military output, which of course is what we need to maintain," Mr Alexander told Sky News.

"And finding efficiencies, reforming the ways our services operate are critical to ensuring that what I want to achieve, which is maintaining the quality of our services.”

He has previously criticised ministers for publicly criticising attempts to cut their budgets, saying that is "no way to do business".

The row comes at a critical stage in negotiations between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury ahead of the Spending Review on June 26.

Gen Sir Peter Wall said it would be dangerous to lose more troops when the Army is already being reduced from 102,000 to 82,000 personnel.

“Imposing more on us now before the last round of efficiencies have really materialised properly in a balanced way would be very disruptive," he said last night.

"We have got to the point in a number of parts of our set-up where we can’t go any further without seriously damaging our professional competence and our chances of success on the battlefields of the future.”

Gen Nick Carter, the most senior British officer in Afghanistan, also said that politicians and not the military would be to blame for any depletion of Britain’s military resources: “At the end of the day our politicians need to determine what they want the Army to do. If they determine that the Army is going to do less then it’s reasonable for them to reduce it still further.”

He added: “We are bound as military people to point out the risks during the course of this to our political masters and ultimately it’s down to them to look themselves in the mirror each morning and determine whether or not those risks are manageable.”

[rebbonk]

This muppet is still wet behind the ears.

Looking at the global situation, cutting military strength isn't the smartest thing to do.