MoD under fire over stopping soldiers' training

Troops in Afghanistan. The MoD has been accused of cutting soldier's training
12 April 2012

The Ministry of Defence has cancelled dozens of army training exercises to cut costs, it was claimed today.

The Tories said the cuts, which have reportedly hit the regular as well as the Territorial Army, were compromising military capability.

But defence minister Bill Rammell condemned the criticism as "irresponsible scaremongering", insisting training courses were often rescheduled and all troops were prepared for the "challenges they face".

According to The Times, 56 exercises have been cancelled this year.

General Sir David Richards, Chief of the General Staff, told the newspaper: "Whilst in a perfect world we would have wished to keep options open for the various cancelled exercises, in practice the Army is now rightly focusing very much on defence's top priority - training for Afghanistan."

He admitted that troops would not have time between tours of duty to complete all the exercises on the programme and this could jeopardise core skills in the long term. Next year's Strategic Defence Review would need to resolve the problem, Sir David added.

Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: "It's clear that the Government is potentially compromising military capability to save money.

"Training isn't for fun. When we've got the Navy in the Gulf of Aden dealing with pirates and the Army and Marines in Afghanistan, we need to keep their military skills at the highest level of readiness.

"The Government must reassure the Armed Forces that these cuts will not have any impact on their readiness for current operations or to respond to the unexpected."

But Mr Rammell insisted: "This is irresponsible scaremongering without justification.

"Planned training courses have always been subject to cancellation or variation since the year dot.

"No service personnel would deploy to Afghanistan, our main priority, without adequate training.

"Given our current commitments, we must ensure that activity is focused on preparing our forces for the challenges they will face.

"Any suggestion that service personnel are not ready to respond to the unexpected is nonsense, as was seen in the fast and effective response to the flooding in the North of England last month."

In October it was revealed that TA soldiers had been ordered to stop basic training for six months to save £20 million. However, the cuts were reversed after Gordon Brown intervened to persuade the Treasury to meet the costs.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in