North Tayside Liberal Democrats

CARMICHAEL BACKS FAIR PAY FOR ARMED FORCES CAMPAIGN

Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael has today added his support to the Liberal Democrat campaign to increase the pay of the UK's lowest paid troops by £6,000 a year.

The proposals would mean no service personnel in the Army, Navy or RAF would receive less basic annual pay than a new-entrant police constable or development-level fire-fighter and would be funded within the MoD's existing budget.Alistair Carmichael MP: Orkney & Shetland

Key points include:

o The lowest paid personnel would receive an increase of £6000 - placing them on £22,680 and an equal footing with a development-level fire-fighter or new-entrant police constable.

o Privates and lance corporals would receive an average annual pay increase of over £3000, with the average annual basic pay across these two ranks rising to around £25,000.

o Higher NCO ranks would receive an average annual pay increase of around £1,000.

Commenting, Mr Carmichael said -

"It is wrong that we are asking our young men and women to fight on the front line for us, whilst receiving a smaller starting salary than someone in the fire or police service. We hear of growing problems with morale amongst our armed services and constant reports of poor standards of equipment, army overstretch and poor pay and conditions are all contributing to a situation where action must be taken and urgently. Improving the pay for junior servicemen is action the government needs to take now to reassure our armed services that the military covenant is still respected and will be protected.

"The fact is that that for every two servicemen there is a desk job in the Ministry of Defence. I fail to see how this can be justified. The priority for government should be the fair pay and conditions for UK soldiers fighting on the front line."

Notes:

1. Liberal Democrat proposals on Forces' pay:

The lowest paid personnel would receive an increase of £6000 - placing them on £22,680 and an equal footing with a development-level fire-fighter or new-entrant police constable. (The basic pay for the lowest paid Private is currently £16,681).

There would be an average annual pay increase of over £3,000 for Privates and Lance Corporals, and around £1,000 for higher NCO ranks.

Under our proposals no service personnel would receive less basic annual pay than a new-entrant police constable or development-level fire-fighter.

A fully-trained Private would receive:

o An average basic hourly wage of £9.44 up from the current £6.74 per hour, amounting to £430 per week; this is an extra £115 a week

The average basic pay across the ranks of Private and Lance Corporal would rise to around £25,000:

o This means an average basic hourly wage of £10.40 an hour up from current £8.80 per hour, amounting to £480 per week; this is an extra £73 a week

Other Non-Commissioned Officers would receive pay rises of £20-30 per week, or around £1,000 per year, depending on rank.

2. Paying for the Policy:

Cost: around £300-400million or 1% of the MoD's total budget.

At the moment there is one MoD desk job for every two servicemen. We believe the ratio should be reduced, particularly as so many desk jobs in the MoD are already done by serving officers. Other countries with similar sized militaries have much smaller ratio.

The Defence budget and Department itself are in such chaos that there the next Strategic Defence Review will have to make tough choices. Now is the opportunity to ensure that pay levels are not compromised or salami-sliced further.

Therefore savings can be achieved through a headcount reduction in MOD staff of around 10% (around 10,000) through:

o rationalising procurement practices in the MOD

o Reducing non-essential staff such as communications (currently almost 1000, equivalent of a whole infantry battalion)

o natural wastage over the course of the next Parliament

o re-alignment of priorities of the Strategic Defence & Security Review

MoD Waste & the Price of Paying our Soldiers:

In MoD waste and bungling terms the pay of all Privates and Lance Corporals could rise to levels proposed for the price of:

o 4 Eurofighters (unit cost around £70m). Widely regarded as an expensive Cold War white elephant.

o The loan that Lord Mandelson has given to keep production of the ailing A400M aircraft going (£340m).

o The amount wasted on the bungled FRES armoured utility vehicle programme.

Also:

o One Eurofighter would pay a battalion of Privates (400) for a decade.

o The budget over-run on the new Destroyers alone covers the salary increase for five years (Destroyers are reported as having over-run by £1.5bn).