As Chancellor, Gordon Brown did not understand defence

By Richard Dannatt Published: 7:00AM GMT 07 March 2010

Britain"s Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks to soldiers during a revisit to the Shawqat brazen handling bottom in Lashkar Gah. Photo: REUTERS

Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, finished a really assured coming in front of the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday and asserted that all that the infantry had requested for operations in Iraq had been provided.

He went on to contend that whilst he has been Prime Minister no new operations have started but the infantry carrying what they needed.

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On the face of it, that is a constrained have a difference from the inhabitant leader, and that, therefore, should be the finish of the matter.

So because did Lord Guthrie and Lord Boyce, both hugely reputable former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, verbalise out in inhabitant newspapers yesterday to disagree?

Why did Geoff Hoon, former Secretary of State for Defence, Sir Kevin Tebbit, a former Permanent Under Secretary at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), and Lord Walker, an additional former Chief of the Defence Staff all give justification to the Chilcot Inquiry that all was not well with the Ministry of Defence"s finances?

The reason is utterly simply that on the have a difference of on condition that income for stream operations the Treasury is thankful underneath Government agreements with the MoD to recompense for the additional costs of operations underneath the Urgent Operational Requirements protocols.

As Chancellor, Gordon Brown was thankful to have these payments and did so, as a result his acknowledgement that whatever the infantry asked for, they got.

But, in front of Chilcot, he did not residence the issue of the underlying underfunding of counterclaim that has been autochthonous given the Strategic Defence Review of 1997/98.

Implementation of that differently glorious Review was hobbled from the begin by the Treasury underneath Gordon Brown not usually not entirely appropriation the result of the Review, but commanding a 3 per cent year on year potency assets target.

To that insufficient baseline needs to be combined the reopening of the MoD"s bill in 2003, a review of the manners and the in outcome removal of a �1 billion year on year what Sir Kevin Tebbit referred to as "guillotining" of the counterclaim budget.

Furthermore, notwithstanding the Government augmenting the title figure of the counterclaim bill on an annual basis, the boost to compare ubiquitous acceleration was next that of counterclaim inflation, that often runs at multiform commission points higher.

So the net outcome over new years has been that the genuine worth the purchasing energy of the counterclaim bill has decreased each year, and the vigour on the MoD and the Armed Forces has increased.

Why else would the Chiefs of Staff have concluded in 2004 to remove �1.4 billion from the brazen helicopter programme?

At the time that seemed to be the slightest deleterious assets option. So it was what was not pronounced at Chilcot on Friday, that is some-more applicable to the altogether issue of counterclaim appropriation than what was essentially said.

And Gordon Brown"s serve criticism about appropriation for operations whilst he has been Prime Minister contingency additionally be placed in context.

We have started no new campaigns whilst Gordon Brown has been Prime Minister so his anxiety was to operations similar to Operation Panchai Palang last summer or Operation Mostarak receiving place in Helmand Province now.

Of course, the commanders on the belligerent would not begin those operations but carrying what they indispensable for them. But it fundamentally meant that they have had to thin out their forces elsewhere to combine their efforts on the new operation.

The infantry has regularly finished this when necessary, but it increases the risk in the areas where the thinning out has taken place.

Had the force levels been higher progressing afterwards the risks would have been marked down earlier.

I know that the Prime Minister "gets" this now, but no volume of rewriting story can recompense for the years when he conjunction accepted counterclaim scrupulously nor was swayed to recompense for it fully.

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt is the former Chief of the Defence Staff