OUR TROOPS GET PAY RISE AT LAST

HEROES AWARDED CASH BOOST

THOUSANDS of our Brave Boys and Girls are set for a hard-earned 3% pay rise.

Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood wants the Government to reward our hero troops for serving their country.

He has ordered the Treasury to honour the recommendations of

the pay review body to grant an inflation-busting rise.

It would mean a 3% pay hike for Britain’s 137,000 full-time service personnel.

For the last eight years, pay rises for the armed forces have either been frozen or capped at 1% a year.

Mr Ellwood, a former Army officer who tried to save the life of Pc Keith Palmer during the Westminster Bridge attack last year, said the military personnel deserve a pay rise. He added: “We must look after our people.

“Nobody joins the armed forces for the money as such, but we must avoid pay being an issue as to why they would be deterred from it.”

The Ministry of Defence budget is already overstretched and if it goes ahead the 3% pay hike would cost about £200million a year.

Chancellor Philip Hammond is being pushed into approving pay rises for nurses, doctors, police and prison warders. This means the Ministry of Defence would have to find the money from its own budget which could mean cuts to jobs and equipment.

The first results of the review are likely to be announced at the beginning of July. An MoD spokesman said: “The armed forces pay review body’s recommendations for 2018 are being considered and an announcement will be made in due course.”

OUR brave troops finally look set to get a 3% pay rise – and it can’t come soon enough.

Defence Secretary Tobias Ellwood is piling pressure on the Treasury to boost its spending.

He says the 137,000 service military personnel “deserve” a salary increase.

Of course they do.

Until recently, hard-working NHS workers also struggled under the same 1% yearly pay cap that our troops still languish under.

But from July, more than one million nurses, paramedics and porters will see rises of between 6.5% and 29%.

It is time we bring the military in line and pay up.

The bloody battlefield is a long way from the ivory towers where ministers do their number-crunching.

These men and women risk their lives to keep us safe.

You can’t put a price on that.