As evidence accumulates about the social injustice and stupidity of the Ministry of Defence's treatment of our young service personnel and their families, how about exempting them from counter-inflation policy and ring-fencing their pay and allowances?

The Armed Forces Pay Review Body is well into its annual cycle of determining remuneration for the next 12 months, and its next report is likely to be published in late February or early March. The problem is that the cake is weighed out by the Treasury; the Review Body can only slice it up. The slices reach the more senior ranks and the technically qualified, and rightly so. But, wrongly, only the crumbs fall down to the ordinary seamen, private soldiers and junior aircraftsmen. Almost every year their pay is held back to meet inflation targets.

So we get the absurd anomalies of striking firemen being covered by service personnel on a fraction of the firemen's pay rates, with no overtime payments; bus drivers being paid £25,000 a year while Army drivers in Iraq or Afghanistan get half that; police recruits - who admittedly volunteer for a dangerous job - being paid twice the rate of young men being sent abroad repeatedly, many facing daily attacks by mortar fire, snipers and suicide bombers. No wonder personnel are leaving the forces at unprecedented rates.

Many of my generation were brought up in poor families during the Second World War and saw their father for two weeks between 1941 and 1945, if at all. We were brought up to believe social justice was all about getting a fair deal for the ordinary working man and his family. I look at the present government with sadness, seeing them lining the pockets of the very rich who do not pay taxes at the rate imposed on our young service personnel, and I wonder where wartime dreams of social justice went so badly wrong.

The pay review body has a new member, believed to be the first from the trades union movement - Anthony Young, originally a GPO Telecom apprentice and now ennobled for his public service as Lord Anthony Young. Will he be able to sway it towards a fairer deal? Perhaps the review body should top-slice and ring-fence the share of the cake for the most junior ranks this year. Surely admirals, generals and air marshals would happily tighten their belts to help.

Major (Retd) Michael Hamilton, Dounbye House, Stichill, Kelso.