MoD spends £2.3billion on new offices while families of soldiers live in 'squalor'

The full cost of refurbishing and running the Whitehall office provoked fury from within the armed forces, along with demands from MPs for a financial inquiry.

The huge outlay - to be met by taxpayers over the next 30 years - involved the demolition of three miles of walls to create an 'highly innovative' open plan HQ, with restored marble and oak features.

The 3,100 civil servants have luxury office chairs, worth more than £1,000 each, three large plasma screens on each of the 10 floors, a gym, restaurant, coffee bars and 'quiet rooms' for relaxation.

The building also contains 3,500 oak doors for a total cost of £3m, or up to £1,200 each, and a 'terrazzo' marble and stone floor It contrasts starkly with the disgraceful conditions of ordinary troops, whose families live in ageing barracks blighted by leaking roofs, broken windows, faulty wiring and damp.

The overall cost of the HQ is almost half of the value of the long-overdue £5 billion renovation project a shamed Government was forced into promising them last week, albeit over the next ten years.

Colonel Tim Collins, who led an infantry battalion into Iraq in 2003, said civil servants took 'every opportunity to feather their own nests' at the expense of the armed forces.

He told the Daily Mail: 'That is why they are sitting in £1,000 chairs, while soldiers live in rat-infested quarters.

'What these people need to remember is that soldiers have to go and fight and die, they do not. They get a choice of where they live, soldiers go where they are sent.'

Soldiers and their families swamped Army messageboards to complain at the revelation.

Gail Richardson, 34, a soldier's wife who lives in a damp and cold prefab in Bulford, Wiltshire, said the high cost of the building 'smacked of hypocrisy'.

The Tories called for an investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO), the spending watchdog, into the private finance refurbishment project.

The party said it was concerned that the scheme -where the government repays the cost of refurbishment and maintenance over 30 years - was not value for money, even allowing for inflation during that period.

Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said the cost for the building 'stretched credibility' at a time when British troops were short of vital equipment, including armoured vehicles.

He added: 'It will infuriate ordinary servicemen and women who are paying taxes to subsidise the lavish headquarters of the MoD when they themselves have to live in sub-standard accommodation.'

The government has previously admitted to a cost of £746m for the private finance deal.

But when inflation is taken into account, actual payments over the 30-year period - as revealed in a parliamentary answer - will be £2.35 billion.

Luxurious fixtures and fittings include 3,120 European oak doors bought from Swift Horsman, a specialist supplier, while a further 380 original oak doors were restored at a cost of £1,200 each.

Matt Roberts of Swift Horsman. 'Everything was to the highest standard. Each of the original oak doors had to be restored by hand.'

The Herman Miller Aeron chairs - the kind used by David Dimbleby on the BBC's Question Time - have been described as 'the most comfortable office chairs in the world'.

One senior officer said: 'I've worked in a good few headquarters in my 16-year service career and these are certainly the best. It's plush and incredibly pleasant.'

It comes at a time when, in addition to the squalid living conditions in barracks, the Armed Forces are facing a shortage of funds.

The government admitted that almost half the Royal Navy's 44 warships might have to be mothballed to save cash.

The £2.3 billion could have funded the annual salary bill of 160,800 newly-qualified soldiers earning £14,300-a-year, 82 Apache Longbow gunship helicopters, 13,772,455 sets of bullet-proof body armour, costing £167 each or 766 Challenger II tanks, at a cost of £3m each.

It also emerged the Queen could lose a third of the soldiers who guard her at Buckingham Palace because they are badly needed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army cutbacks mean the men will be sent to the troublespots to reduce the amount of time troops are spending on the frontline.

The move could affect around 700 of the 2,000 or so troops who are tied up on palace ceremonial duties in London and at Windsor Castle.

The MoD said there was no overspend on the headquarters and the deal had been praised in an audit by the NAO in 2002.

A spokesman said: 'The modernisation has been a huge success, allowing us to dispose of five other central London buildings and save £18m a year - money that is being reinvested in the front line and other essential areas, including new accommodation for service personnel and their families.'