Liam Fox has made clear that the Conservative Party is planning to slash the number of civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence as a way of balancing the military budget if they win the general election in 2010. “We have 99,000 people in the Army and 85,000 civilians in the MoD. Some things will have to change – and believe me, they will,” Fox has said.
But if the Conservatives thought they had stumbled across a sure-fire criticism of Labour’s way of war, in The Times, ex-soldier, author (and, I will wager, future MP) Patrick Hennessey asks the public not to lay off the “MoD desk-jockeys.”
‘The MoD deploys civilian staff into operational theatres. They work incredibly long hours facing similar conditions to many of the troops, who receive the tax-free operational bonus of more than £2,000 regardless of whether or not they find themselves on the front line.
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