Hammond fails to rule out even MORE cuts to defence budget

He dodges question 10 times on TV

FOREIGN Secretary Philip Hammond yesterday refused ten times to rule out cutting defence spending after the next election, despite growing pressure from MPs and military chiefs.

The former Defence Secretary dodged the question repeatedly by insisting Britain had ‘led the charge’ on defence spending across nato member states.

Asked if the UK would look ‘silly’ if it did not commit to the nato target of spending at least 2 per cent of national income on defence, he twice responded by saying the Tories were ‘passionate’ about the Armed Forces. Mr Hammond was last week forced to deny claims he had warned Tory MPs there are ‘no votes in defence’.

But on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show yesterday he failed to rule out cuts in defence spending if the Conservatives win in May, saying decisions would have to be made in a defence spending review planned for after the election. Mr Hammond was also asked if Britain could afford to cut defence spending with the growing threat posed by Vladimir Putin and Islamic State, having admitted Britain’s relations with Russia could be ‘prickly’ for many years and describing the country as an ‘adversary’.

He said it was clear Britain was ‘not going to fight the Russians in Ukraine’, but insisted there was a ‘hard red line’ protecting nato’s Baltic members from Russian incursions. Asked if the Tories would commit to the 2 per cent spend, he responded: ‘We’re the second largest defence spender in nato, we’ve got a huge equipment pro- gramme modernising our Armed Forces.’

Put to him that the UK would look ‘silly’ if they did not commit after asking other countries to do so at the nato summit in Wales last year, he said: ‘We led the charge encouraging our nato partners to make this commitment. Many of them are far, far away from two per cent.’

He later added that David Cameron had always been ‘absolutely clear he is not prepared to preside over any further cuts in our regular armed forces’ but that ‘difficult decisions’ had to be made to tackle the deficit.

Last night former defence minister Sir gerald Howarth said he could not understand why the Tory government seemed ‘hell bent’ on denying the UK the ability to ‘shape the world’. He added that it seemed ‘nonsensi- cal’ to commit the UK to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid but refuse to commit to defence spending.

This week, in a significant challenge to Mr Cameron, at least 35 MPs – most of whom are Tories – are backing a vote to set a defence budget of two per cent in law. Last night one analyst told Radio 4 around 100 MPs could support the motion.

Thousands more armed forced will face the axe in the next parliament whichever party wins the general election, a defence think-tank has warned. A report by the Royal United Services Institute said even if the defence equipment budget is protected, the reductions in personnel would be even greater, rising to 42,000 for the forces as a whole leaving an Army of just 50,000.

‘Tory refusal is nonsensical’