Defence staff braced for mass redundancies

A total of 42,000 jobs are to be lost from UK defence by 2015 after the Ministry of Defence was handed an 8 per cent budget cut in last week’s strategic defence and security review (SDSR).About 7,000 jobs will go from the army and 5,000 each from the navy and the RAF. But civil servants at the MoD will be hardest hit, with 25,000 jobs going as the government seeks to alter the ratio of civilian staff to armed personnel. There will be some new spending, including £650 million to set up a cyber security programme.