Photograph by Brandon Pomrenke/ISAF Media
4,480 Army personnel are being made redundant in the third wave of job cuts since the 2010 defence review, with an aim of reducing the number of regular soldiers from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2017.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that 3,765 took voluntary redundancy, but there were also 715 compulsory redundancies.
The government claim the cuts were “unavoidable” in a time of austerity, and would make the Army “more flexible and agile”, but Labour called it a “flawed plan for reform”.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said:
“It is with great regret that we have had to make redundancies to deliver the reduction in the size of the armed forces, but unfortunately they were unavoidable due to the size of the defence deficit that this government inherited.
Although smaller, our Armed Forces will be more flexible and agile to reflect the challenges of the future with the protection and equipment they need.”
Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said:
“The government has a flawed plan for reforming the British Army. There is a huge effort going into sacking soldiers but nowhere near as much is being done to plug the gap by recruiting new reservists.
The Labour MP added: “These redundancies represent not just broken promises but a failing strategy, and the level of voluntary applicants will be a signal of morale.”
Whilst the MoD are reducing the number of regular soldiers by 20,000 by 2017, the numbers will be replaced with reservists which will double to 30,000 by 2018. The army will also be putting a greater dependence on contractors in the future, following how they have worked in Afghanistan.
The redundancies come as the MoD is still negotiating its budget settlement before the Whitehall spending review on 26th June.
