Defence cuts 'put operations at risk'

The Commons Defence Committee said the strategic defence and security review (SDSR) – which will determine where the spending axe will

fall – was being pushed through so quickly that mistakes were bound to be made.

It expressed concern that the review could be dominated by short-term security issues and threats at the expense of the medium to long-term defence needs of the country.

At the same time, the committee warned the prospect that the Ministry of Defence could have to shoulder the full costs of updating Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent could have "very significant" consequences for future defence spending.

The SDSR is being carried out alongside the Government's overall comprehensive spending review (CSR), which is due to report next month.

While the committee acknowledged the need for Ministers to move swiftly to tackle the deficit, it warned that the MoD was having to do "too much too quickly".

"The rapidity with which the SDSR process is being undertaken is quite startling," it said.

"A process which was not tried and tested is being expected to deliver radical outcomes within a highly concentrated time-frame. We conclude that mistakes will be made and some of them may be serious.

"We can understand that there is an urgency to the SDSR process, both in terms of alignment with a CSR intended seriously to address the deficit, and in terms of the pressing need for a defence review a decade since the last was undertaken.

"However, the department could end up with only short-term priorities, misaligned resources, a barely reformed acquisition process and a structure short of manpower to deliver good performance and improperly configured for its tasks."

While the MoD's budget has received some protection, the committee said that it was still facing cuts of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent, in contrast to spending on health and overseas aid which has been ring-fenced.

"The capacity of the country even to sustain current in-use capabilities and therefore current operations could well be put at risk by the proposed cuts of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent," it said.

It also voiced concern at Chancellor George Osborne's insistence that the MoD must meet the cost of replacing Trident from within its existing budget, even though the SDSR was not supposed to cover the nuclear deterrent.

"The implications of this for the MoD's budget would be very significant. In practice, this decision seems to put the issue of Trident renewal into the SDSR without making this explicit, which unhelpfully reduces the transparency of the process," it said.

The committee said it had "serious concerns" that there had been only limited consultation with the defence industry in drawing up the SDSR plans.

At the same time the failure to engage more widely in public debate on the SDSR risked widening the sense of public "disconnection" with defence issues in the wake of the unpopular Iraq war and faltering support for the mission in Afghanistan.

"We consider that the SDSR represents a missed opportunity to reconnect the people of the country with defence issues," it said.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox said nothing in the review would jeopardise current military operations in Afghanistan.

"Any outcomes from the strategic defence and security review will not undermine our main combat effort in Afghanistan," he said.

"The SDSR will address the most immediate threats to our national security, while maintaining the ability to identify and deal with emerging ones."