Lord Cryer
Main Page: Lord Cryer (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Cryer's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Brazier
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. We are confident that we will meet the targets. I say again that in the last three-month period we achieved almost double the equivalent level for last year. We are committed to those targets so his question does not arise.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
After this expensive disaster, does the Minister have a shred of a regret about hacking away 20% of the Army’s strength, particularly given the fact that some regular soldiers served in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the Olympics and were then told, “There’s your P45. Now sod off.”? What a disgraceful way to treat soldiers.
Mr Brazier
This Government have taken huge steps to build the armed forces covenant and to ensure that veterans who left the armed forces on redundancy terms were well looked after. Members of the hon. Gentleman’s own Front-Bench team made it clear that under Labour there would have to be cuts in defence. The previous shadow Secretary of State said:
“The truth is the Labour Party would have to make cuts if we were in power.”
We have had to make difficult decisions because of the economic circumstances we inherited.