UK War Sec: cut welfare not defense

British War Secretary Philip Hammond has controversially called for cuts into welfare to protect the armed forces from further savings.

The Conservative minister said defense should be given the “first priority”, claiming other Conservatives in the cabinet also believe welfare spending should be falling.

“I shall go into the spending review fighting the case for the defence budget on the basis that we have made very large cuts to defence, we’ve done that with the collaboration and co-operation of the military,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“Any further reduction in the defence budget would fall on the level of activity that we were able to carry out – the idea that expensively bought equipment may not be able to be used, expensively employed troops may not be able to be exercised and trained as regularly as they need to be. I am not going into the spending review offering any further reductions in personnel,” he added.

Hammond’s comments come as he had earlier expressed his frustration at the rate of military cuts and had warned the austerity would have a significant impact on the armed forces’ effectiveness if pushed further.

The Ministry of War has already faced cuts worth tens of billions of pounds in the 2010’s Strategic Defense and Security Review as well as in the defense spending plan for 2013-2015.

This comes as the Treasury has warned that the ministry could face further reductions in its budget in the spending review for 2015-2016 to be unveiled later this year.

His comments are expected to spark huge criticism, especially by anti-austerity campaigners, who have been outraged by the massive government waste of money on the ongoing war in Afghanistan, last year’s war on Libya and the fresh British incursion into Mali to assist a French invasion.