By IRNA,
London : Britain’s coalition government is having to deal with a “dangerous deficit” in the country’s defence budget and drastic reforms are needed, Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, warned on Friday.
Fox said that changes would be “difficult and painful” and suggested that the number of senior military officers could be cut to help fill the “unfunded liability” of £37 billion ($57bn) over 10 years left by the previous Labour government.
“We cannot demand efficiency from the lower ranks, while exempting those at the top,” he said in a speech at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in London.
In June, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) warned that Britain is facing such a magnitude of budget cuts that the “pain” will have to be shared across the capabilities of all three of the country’s armed forces.
Illustrating the consequences of a ‘balanced reductions’ policy for the medium-term, RUSI estimated estimates that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) could face “a cut in total service personnel numbers of around 20-25 per cent by 2019.”
Fox ruled out merging the armed forces but said there would have to be a cultural shift “which will see a leaner and less centralised organisation”.
“Fundamental assumptions” about tour lengths and intervals for armed personnel must be challenged “taking into account the varying pressures on our personnel resulting from widely varying missions”, he said.
Last month, the defence secretary admitted that the British government’s plans to cut the size of the country’s army in line with necessary defence budget reductions were being hampered by the war in Afghanistan.
“Everything that we might want to do with the Army will be constrained by what’s happening in Afghanistan,” he said when warning that the government cannot afford to protect Britain against all potential threats to its security.
In his latest speech, Fox set out plans to reorganise the department into three pillars, Policy and Strategy, the Armed Forces, and Procurement and Estates.
There would also need to be a ”cultural shift which will see a leaner and less centralised organisation combined with devolved processes which carry greater accountability and transparency,” he said.
The government is currently carrying out a strategic defence review, which is due to be complete this autumn, but has so far ruled out changing, cancelling or delaying controversial multi-billion plans to replace the country’s Trident nuclear missile system.