Ex-defence chief calls for cuts

General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank said the priority in the forthcoming strategic defence review (SDR) - to be held after the election - must be to strengthen Britain's land forces.

He called for the Royal Navy's two planned new aircraft carriers to be scrapped, the number of RAF Typhoon fighter jets to be slashed, and a scaling back of Britain's nuclear deterrent.

In a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, he also called for the Ministry of Defence's "bloated" bureaucracy to be radically reduced, suggesting that it was "not fit for purpose".

His comments came as the individual service chiefs are gearing up for a fight for resources in the SDR, and Lord Guthrie acknowledged that he would be seen as "a prisoner of my past" in the Army.

However, with an estimated shortfall of between £6 billion and £35 billion in the defence budget over the next 10 years, he said that there would inevitably be "winners and losers" in the SDR, whichever party formed the next government.

Lord Guthrie, who was the chief of the defence staff at the time of the last SDR in 1998, insisted that the highest priority had to be to strengthen Britain's land forces.

"The threats of the present, and the future, point to the need for more troops, not less. This will mean that cuts have to be found elsewhere in the budget," he said. "Land operations are likely to be by far the most important operations we will undertake. Peace-keeping, counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism are all manpower-intensive. Manpower is expensive but is what we need now."

While the aircraft carriers would be "nice to have", Lord Guthrie said the country could not afford them and that the Navy would be better off with a larger fleet of smaller, cheaper ships. He also suggested the current submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent could be replaced by a cheaper system - such as cruise missiles - which would still be able to create "the right strategic effect".

However, he reserved his strongest comments for the MoD itself, which he blamed for the "mismanagement" of the procurement programme. He said: "Dr John Reid, when he moved from Defence to the Home Office, questioned whether it was fit for purpose. Could he have asked the same question of the MoD."