Britain's defense secretary to hold talks over defense cuts
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British Defense Secretary Liam Fox made a lightning return to London on Tuesday from the midlands city of Birmingham, where his Conservative party is holding its annual conference, to hold urgent talks with senior defense chiefs over cuts in spending budgets which will be revealed later this month.
The Ministry of Defense (MOD) is holding a Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) which will outline cuts of between 10 and 20 percent in Britain's military spending.
Fox dashed back to London to talk to senior figures from all three armed services in advance of a key National Security Council meeting this week, at which many of the key decisions in the SDSR will be made.
The SDSR will see a radical recasting of Britain's military capabilities, and strategic objectives as it reduces the size of its armed forces.
Fox is also dealing with a planned overspend of about 38 billion pounds (about 56 billion U.S. dollars) over the next five years, equivalent to the annual military budget. Foreign Secretary William Hague criticized the last Labor government for the overspend, and blamed them for reckless spending saying it was made up of "money which is not there, and in some cases never was there."
Prime Minister David Cameron agreed with Hague in a BBC radio interview on Tuesday, saying that the last Labor government had left the military budget in a mess.
He said: "We've been left with a mess. We have to clear up that mess in a way that makes some logical and strategic sense. Liam and I work on it very closely together and I think we will answer it."
However, the scale and pace of planned cuts leaked to the media has created a great deal of opposition to the SDSR, and the military is both well-connected and influential and has used all its influence to fight cuts.
A private letter from Fox to Cameron was leaked last week, leading to more front page headlines. Fox told Cameron that the " draconian" cuts planned would leave the armed forces weak at a time when it was still fighting a war in Afghanistan, and would seriously damage morale.
The letter heaped pressure on Cameron to intervene and to lessen the cuts, and both may yet happen.
Fox had been engaged in a public row with the Treasury, the finance ministry, over funding for the nuclear-missile carrying Trident submarine fleet of four vessels.
A decision needs to be made over replacements for the fleet of four in the 2020s, and the 20 billion pound (about 29 billion U.S. dollars) cost would normally have been borne by the Treasury. But Chancellor George Osborne has said publicly he wants the MOD to carry the cost. It's on issues like this where Cameron may have to intervene.
Fox has the support of armed services leaders in his fight against cuts. He said, in a TV interview: "I think we've got far more coherence between myself and the service chiefs than we have seen for a long time."
The army, navy and air force have all fought their own battles to protect their own force and future projects. Threats hang over all services, with the army's tanks and the air forces jet fleet looking likely targets for cuts.
For the navy, the threat is that one or both of the large aircraft carriers under construction, at 65,000 tonnes each they will be the largest Royal Navy vessels yet, could be cancelled. But influential voices have put a lot of political pressure on the government.
The former prime minister Gordon Brown said the carrier- building program, on which 1.2 billion pounds (1.7 billion U.S. dollars) has already been spent and which will see the first carrier launched in 2016, should go ahead to protect jobs in vital industrial sectors and areas of the country where skilled jobs are scarce.
He was joining a vocal campaign by the devolved Scottish government, which fears an end to the program could seriously damage Scottish industry. The Scottish government also fears that wider cuts in military spending could result in military bases in Scotland being closed, which be a blow to both jobs and the economy.
Unions are also opposed. Unite, one of the largest unions, warned of the dangers the SDSR posed to the manufacturing sector.
Bernie Hamilton, Unite's national officer for defense, said: " The coalition believes wrecking the UK's sovereignty to manufacture defense equipment is a price worth paying."
He added: "Tens of thousands of job cuts in some of Britain's most deprived regions will have tragic consequences. These skilled manufacturing jobs won't get replaced."
The SDSR is being carried out at the same time as the government prepares for the largest spending review since the Second World War on October 20.
Cuts of 111 billion pounds (about 160 billion U.S. dollars) over the next four years will be outlined, in a bid to tackle a record public spending deficit which this year stands at 153 billion pounds (about 224 billion U.S. dollars). Some departments could face cuts in budgets of up to 40 percent.
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