Cameron vetoes more army cuts

Downing Street vetoed an option to cut army numbers further even though it was backed by service chiefs, according to Whitehall figures involved in negotiations over the defence budget.

A plan brought forward by General Sir David Richards, head of the armed forces, proposed shedding up to 5,000 additional army personnel to free up money for other priorities.

However, this was rejected by David Cameron’s team because the prime minister was unwilling to back cuts that could lead to some veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan being laid off.

The proposal reflected the widespread realisation in Whitehall that the army emerged relatively unscathed from the defence review, at the expense of civil servants and the other services.

Under a last-minute deal agreed with Downing Street in the final hours of last year’s defence review, army numbers are set to fall by just 7,000 to about 95,000 by 2015.

But the financial planning for the review assumed numbers would fall by 20,000 by 2020, making a shortfall in funding after 2020 even worse.

“Even the army are now prepared to entertain the idea of more army cuts. But No 10 are just not interested,” said one senior Whitehall figure.

“Richards and Wall realised that they overplayed their hand during the SDSR,” he added, in reference to the chief of defence staff and General Sir Peter Wall, the head of the army.

Mr Cameron’s political strategy is to ring-fence operations in Afghanistan from cuts, a pitch that makes it hard to squeeze army numbers. However, it has generated great resentment in other services, which complain the army is not being required to improve its force generation.