SENIOR Tory back benchers have issued a veiled but significant warning

to Chancellor Kenneth Clarke that the reduced defence expenditure

announced yesterday must not be carried any further in his autumn

Budget.

Their reaction to the White Paper, Defending Our Future, presented by

Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, which makes a reduction of about

#1000m in the #24 billion defence budget, was ''so far but no further''.

At the same time, Scottish MPs of all parties expressed concern that

the fresh cut in the surface fleet to ''about 35 destroyers and

frigates'' called into question the refit work promised to Rosyth

dockyard as consolation for the monopoly on nuclear submarine refits

awarded to Plymouth Devonport.

Mr Rifkind repeated his promise that 18 major capital ship refits

would be done at Rosyth but Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, Tory MP for Perth

and Kinross, urging him to abandon the ''about theory'', said this could

mean as few as 30 vessels.

Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown, in his capacity as MP for the area,

suggested that a consultation document to be published by the Ministry

later this week would show how the dockyard had been ''betrayed'' by the

Government.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Menzies Campbell said the Scots MPs on the

Defence Select Committee would press Mr Rifkind hard when he gives

evidence to them next Monday to go further in providing guarantees that

the ''allocated work'' promised for Rosyth will go there. Mr Brown wants

these promises turned into legally binding contracts.

The SNP parliamentary leader, Mrs Margaret Ewing, said: ''The surface

fleet is shrinking, with every successive defence statement casting

serious doubt on any allocation of surface work to Rosyth, whatever Mr

Rifkind may say.''

Scots MPs fear shrinkage in the fleet will mean less work for both

refit yards and that Devonport will seek, in Mr Campbell's words, ''to

home in'' on work allocated to Rosyth, arguing that it could do it more

cheaply.

This would be likely because of the fixed costs advantage it will

enjoy through its monopoly of submarine refit work. The temptation for

savings might be hard for the Treasury to resist in its present

hard-pressed situation.

Mrs Ewing also added in a statement at Westminster that there would be

anger in Scotland that Mr Rifkind had not announced a reprieve for the

threatened regiments, the Gordon Highlanders and the Queen's Own

Scottish Highlanders.

The Royal Navy bears the brunt of the cuts with arguably the most

controversial decision to eliminate the fleet of four Upholder

diesel-electric submarines, which will be either sold off or leased.

Manpower in the RAF will now drop from the Options figure of 75,000 to

70,000 and in the Royal Navy from 55,000 to 52,500.

The size of the Army will increase slightly from 116,000 to 119,000

following the decision earlier this year to keep two infantry regiments.

Mr Rifkind insisted that the reductions in Britain's submarine and

surface fleets and air defence were justified because the threat

previously posed by Russia had ended. He argued that they were balanced

by increases in ground troops to take account of the military roles the

new world situation now called on the forces to play.

Sir Nicholas Bonsor, Tory chairman of the influential Defence Select

Committee, said that Britain's forces were

already sometimes ''overstretched'' and said Britain seemed unlikely

to be able to reduce its commitments abroad.

''That being so,'' he said, ''it must follow that no further cuts in

resources can be made by the Treasury to the funds made available to the

Ministry of Defence.''

Another senior Tory, Sir Geoffrey Johnson-Smith, said he and many

colleagues did not want Mr Rifkind coming back to the House later in the

year to announce further cuts.

Mr Campbell said the White Paper simply failed to make a clear

judgment of what the UK's military role as a middle-ranking power should

be.

Cruel choices -- 8

Leader comment -- 12

Cut-price defence -- 13