Removing the operational hardship allowance for armed forces serving as back-up in the Gulf is a cheeseparing decision worthy of Sir Humphrey rather than a Defence Secretary intent on supporting personnel on active service. The instruction to restrict the operational allowance of £2320 for a six-month tour (and a £140 council tax rebate) to those "in the front line" in Iraq and Afghanistan will save less than £1m but will deal another blow to morale in the armed services. While those flying over Iraq and Afghanistan and sailing in Iraqi territorial waters will be eligible, back-up personnel in the wider Gulf area will not; some will, therefore, qualify some of the time but not all of the time. This decision will divide a group of people whose lives depend on good teamwork in life-and-death situations, where air crews rely on good maintenance and infantry on good logistics and supply. It is unfair in failing to recognise that those in the combat zone are also away from home for a lengthy period of time and living in makeshift conditions, and it will require far more administration than a blanket payment.
In the longer term, restricting these payments will do nothing to halt the continued loss of trained personnel of all ranks, which has been acceler- ating since the invasion of Iraq, despite "golden handcuff" payments of £314m by the MoD since 2003. That surely is proof that the problem of morale in all three services is too deep-seated to be assuaged by one-off payments. Alarming evidence from a series of inquests that lives could have been saved if the right equipment had been in the right place at the right time shows that the real issue here is that the entire defence budget is a shambles.
That was shamefully clear from The Herald's revelation on Saturday that civil servants at the Ministry of Defence are to be paid bonuses of more than £41m, despite allowing procurement costs to overrun by £2.6bn and projects to fall decades behind schedule. Heaping rewards on the incompetent while removing small sums from those willing to lay down their lives in the course of duty simply adds insult to our overstretched, under-resourced forces. When the Defence Secretary Des Browne announced a £140 council tax rebate for soldiers serving in Iraq or Afghanistan at the Labour Party conference in September, in addition to the operational allowance, it was criticised as "spin" because the money was to come from the defence budget which is all-too-obviously overstretched. His words of praise for the forces' "tremendous work when separated from their loved ones in a hostile environment" ring hollow when £2320 plus a 25% rebate for those who pay council tax is deemed too high a price for six months in that hostile environment. This petty paring-down of the initial promise reveals it as a headline-generating token of support for our armed forces rather than a genuine commitment to their wellbeing and to the operations in which they are engaged.
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