MPs criticise compulsory redundancies in armed forces

“Grotesque” that military personnel treated differently to civilian MoD staff

The high proportion of compulsory redundancies in the armed forces compared to civil service defence staff has been described as “shocking” by MPs.

The cross-party defence committee said it was “grotesque” that 40 per cent of service personnel redundancies had so far been compulsory, while all civil servants leaving the Ministry of Defence had done so on a voluntarily basis.

Some 11,000 servicemen and women and 25,000 civilian MoD staff are being made redundant as part of government’s strategic defence review, in a bid to tackle a £38 billion gap in the defence budget.

Of the 2,860 military personnel who were laid off last year, about two in five were made compulsorily redundant – while the first two phases of the civilian redundancies were voluntary.

In a report released today, the committee questioned whether the severance package being offered to the armed forces was “fair and appropriate”.

The committee said it was not persuaded by arguments put forward by MoD permanent secretary Ursula Brennan, who said the discrepancy had arisen partly because civil servants were more “flexible”, while the armed forces tended to have “specific trades”.

Chair of the defence committee, MP James Arbuthnot, said: “The stark and shocking differences between redundancies in the MoD require an exceptionally persuasive explanation, which we are yet to hear.

“Look at the areas where the armed forces are undermanned. Why cannot the MoD retrain service personnel, who face redundancy, to fill those many trades where there are shortages, such as combat medical technicians or intelligence gatherers?”

The committee was also critical of the assertion that not enough active service personnel had applied for redundancy.

The report added: “The MoD should consider whether the terms of redundancy offered to either the military or civilian staff are fair or appropriate in the light of the stark and shocking difference between the application of compulsion in redundancy to the two branches of service in the MoD.”

Defence minister Philip Hammond disagreed with the committee’s findings, saying military personnel were given “every opportunity” to retrain, and severance pay-outs were “not ungenerous”.

The MPs’ report also censured the MoD’s annual accounts for not providing “adequate audit evidence for over £5.2 billion worth of certain inventory”.

Concern was expressed over the level of theft and fraud last year, after equipment worth £1.9 million – including £50,000 helicopter blades – went missing, but only £19,000 worth of stolen kit was recovered and 11 prosecutions made.