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
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