Premier confronted by soldier's bereaved mother

Ann Probyn told the Prime Minister that her son Daniel, serving with 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was sent out on patrol without bomb detection equipment.

“He didn’t have any equipment at all so my son was sent out on a night patrol in the dark with just his gun,” she said.

“He knew he was a soldier, but would you like your son to go out on a night patrol with no equipment?”

Mrs Probyn challenged the premier as he faced a panel of disgruntled floating voters assembled by BBC1’s Politics Show.

Mr Brown has been on the back foot over defence since he gave evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry earlier this month and said he had never turned down a request for kit – leading senior military figures to accuse him of being “disingenuous”.

During today’s programme, Mrs Probyn said her son, who died in May 2007, was not well enough equipped.

“Two days prior to my son going out on this night patrol, somebody blew themselves up with one of these IEDs and they said it was a low risk for my son,” she said.

“They should not have sent my son out on a night patrol when somebody had blown themselves up two days prior.”

But the Prime Minister replied: “We’ve now brought in all the equipment that we can for aerial surveillance, for ground surveillance, for electronic detectors.

“The minute we’ve seen that this threat has been growing, we’ve put in as much equipment as we can to deal with it.”

Mr Brown was also pressed over claims that the Ministry of Defence’s helicopter budget was cut from 4.4bn to 3bn in 2004 – meaning more troops had to make treacherous trips by road.

However, he responded: “What happened in 2004 was that we agreed a new budget settlement with the Ministry of Defence.

“They got more money than they had and then they made the decision about their ordering programme for the future. Even if we’d ordered helicopters in 2004, they wouldn’t be ready now.”

Tory Shadow Defence Minister Gerald Howarth said: “Gordon Brown has repeatedly misled the country on the issue of defence spending.

“Had extra helicopters been ordered in 2004, then they would have been in service by 2008.”