Jim Ferguson

This is a serious blow for Brown and his discredited Labour Government. Even the very top brass of the British armed forces cannot stomach his outright dishonesty and disrespect for our armed forces.

The sooner our brave men and woman of the United Kingdom’s armed forces have a Conservative Government they can trust the better.

Jim Ferguson

PM Admits Iraq Inquiry Defence Spending Error

6:54pm UK, Wednesday March 17, 2010

Miranda Richardson, Sky News Online

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has admitted giving incorrect evidence to the Iraq Inquiry on defence spending.

Mr Brown told Sir John Chilcot’s panel that the defence budget had risen “in real terms every year”.

But House of Commons reseach shows Mr Brown’s claim was wrong, and he has now written to Sir John to correct it.

Mr Brown was asked by the Inquiry if he was aware senior figures from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said they were concerned that the 1998 strategic defence review had not been fully funded.

The PM said that the Treasury had agreed spending with the MoD for 2002, 2004 and 2007.

“The Iraqi expenditure was being met, but at the same time the defence budget was rising in real terms every year,” he said.

Repeating his claim, he told them: “The spending review of 2004 gave the Ministry of Defence a rising level of real spending, moving from 1.2% to 1.4% in real terms each year.”

But a research note prepared by the House of Commons Library in October last year showed defence expenditure had fallen in real terms in four financial years since Labour came to power in 1997: 1997/98 (-2.2%); 1999/2000 (-0.4%); 2004/5 (-0.7%); and 2006/7 (-0.1%).

The average annual increase between 1997 and 2009 was 2.7%, it said, but noted that “this figure is likely to have been distorted by current operations”.

Asked at Prime Minister’s Questions whether he would correct the record, Mr Brown said: “Yes. I am already writing to Sir John Chilcot about this issue.

“Because of operational fluctuations in the way the money is spent, expenditure has risen in cash terms every year, in real terms it is 12% higher, but I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms.”

The Prime Minister’s evidence to the Inquiry sparked condemnation from senior military figures.

Lord Boyce – who was the head of the military at the time of the invasion – called him “disingenuous” and insisted the MoD was starved of funds.

“He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous,” Admiral Boyce told The Times newspaper.

“It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed

“There may have been a 1.5% increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds.”

Lord Boyce’s predecessor Lord Guthrie accused Mr Brown of costing soldiers their lives by failing to fund the army properly.

The Tories described Mr Brown’s admission as a “humiliating climbdown”.

Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: “He has made repeated and fundamentally false claims, misleading Parliament, the public and worst of all the Armed Forces and their families.”

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said Mr Brown had “taken the first opportunity” to tell MPs about the mistake.

<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=2001437c67″>Prime Minister’s Questions</a>