12/06/2012

4,000 Military Staff To Lose Jobs Today

4,100 Armed Forces personnel will find out today that they have been made redundant.

About a third will be compulsory redundancies in a second wave of job losses, this follows 2,860 job cuts announced in August and September 2011.

In this latest round 2,900 posts will go from the Army, 900 from the RAF and 300 from the Royal Navy.

The Ministry of Defence wants to cut 29,000 military and 25,000 civilian posts by 2015, to plug a £38bn defence budget gap.

This should be the last major wave of job losses for the navy and the RAF. The services should be able to achieve the majority of the remaining personnel reductions by other means.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said he regretted the redundancies, which were due to a "multi-billion pound black hole in the defence budget".

He said: "We've now brought the defence budget back into balance for the first time in a generation. We will have smaller Armed Forces but we will ensure they will have the protection and equipment they need."

(H)


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