Ben Wallace says UK must cut troop numbers or send them out with ‘pitchforks’

Army needs to be ‘perfectly formed’, says defence secretary as he defends cuts to personnel

Outgoing defence secretary Ben Wallace has said cutting the size of the British Army is necessary or troops would have to be sent into battle equipped with “pitchforks”.

Mr Wallace said it the UK had to find a way of paying for more tanks, as he prepares to set out the military’s spending plans in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The defence secretary is expected to announced that the number of soldiers will fall from 82,000 to 73,000 by 2025 – the Army’s smallest-ever size.

But ahead of a statement in the Commons, Mr Wallace defended the cuts. “I’m not prepared to cut the Armed Forces by about £5bn to put on a postcard, ‘I’m going to go back to 82,000’,” he told reporters.

“You’ve got to equip those soldiers with married accommodation, barracks, night sights, helmets, guns, whatever equipment you’re going to give them,” he said.

Mr Wallace added: “If it’s going to be a battle group, are you going to buy 300 armoured vehicles or am I just going to give them a pitchfork? I mean, that’s the choice.”

The government’s defence command paper plan will pledge £2.5bn to boost the war-fighting readiness, and a further £400m to modernise accommodation for service families.

Mr Wallace said the most important lesson from the Ukraine was that Britain’s military needed to be “perfectly formed”.

He added: “You better be 360. And you better be enabled. And I’m not prepared to sacrifice that just to satisfy a top trump card [on troop numbers].”

Ben Wallace during a visit to a British Army military base (PA Wire)

The defence secretary – who announced on Friday that he was leaving at the next reshuffle expected in September – said the Ministry of Defence would invest in tanks.

“We do need tanks, no one is writing off tanks,” he said. “But whatever tanks we have, we need to invest in them to make sure they’re properly defendable, properly deployable and they’re properly serviceable.”

Mr Wallace said he has not thought about his own legacy ahead of the publication of the paper that will set out the Armed Forces’ future. He told the Sunday Times his departure is due to the strain the job has put his family life under.

He said he was prepared to speak out as a backbencher if Rishi Sunak did not stick to his promise to increase military spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP in the run-up to the general election.

Asked if he would hold the PM’s “feet to the fire” once he steps down, Mr Wallace said: “What I will say is that it is important that everyone sticks to the pledges that they have made.”

Rishi Sunak warned Ben Wallace will speak out on spending levels (PA Archive)

Despite its publication being one of his last major actions as defence secretary, Mr Wallace said he does not think of it as his “legacy” – but as fulfilling a debt he owed to servicemen and women.

Mr Wallace also reject criticism by General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the army, who recently said people were “simply wrong” to say “we can hide behind the armies of other Nato contributors”.

Responding, Mr Wallace said: “We haven’t hid behind any of our allies. We have been part of alliances since the First World War.”

Mr Wallace said the discussion about personnel numbers has been a “distraction from the simple realities”. He said: “I’ve increased the funding – a significant rise in real-term funding to defence. I’ve made sure that we were invested in reversing some of that hollowing out.”

Mr Wallace‘s Wyre and Preston North constituency in Lancashire will disappear at the next general election because of boundary changes and he said he will not seek a new seat.

Labour warned that the defence plan was “not a good enough response to war in Europe”. Shadow defence secretary John Healey said Mr Wallace “must explain if he is pledging new money for stockpiles or these are funds already announced”.

“The British Army is being cut to its smallest size since Napoleon and there is still no plan to ensure our Nato obligations are fulfilled in full.”