Forces starved of cash before Iraq war, Hoon tells inquiry

THE British armed forces were starved of cash in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the official inquiry into the conflict was told yesterday.

Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon said the forces’ budget was underfunded for years prior to the war and had to rely on efficiency savings.

As a result, he said, the Ministry of Defence had to buy much of the equipment needed for the conflict at the last minute through the system of “urgent operational requirements” (UORs).

But prime minister Tony Blair refused to allow active preparations for war to begin until just five months before the invasion was launched because he did not want to undermine diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis through the United Nations.

As a result, some kit – such as desert combat fatigues and desert boots – failed to reach the front line in time for the start of the war in March 2003.

“Some got to theatre in time, some did not,” he said. “There were certainly complaints about desert combats. Quite a lot of soldiers went into action in green combats and they didn’t like it. Some soldiers did not have the right boots.”

Hoon said when he became defence secretary in 1999 there was a belief in the MoD they had never received the cash that they needed to fund the 1998 strategic defence review.

When he pressed the Treasury for additional funding, he was rebuffed.

“There was quite a strong feeling that it was not fully funded. Part of the way that it was funded was by a commitment to serious efficiencies to the way existing equipment was used to release cash for some of the new acquisitions.

“I think everyone accepted that was a pretty challenging target,” he said. “Certainly, in subsequent CSR (comprehensive spending review) programmes we asked for significantly more money than we eventually received.”

Hoon said the MoD had to submit a list of UORs to the Treasury, which was finally approved on October 4, 2002.

By that time he and the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, were becoming concerned Mr Blair had still not decided whether he wanted to deploy an army division in support of the Americans, which would take six months to prepare for.

When they tried to press the prime minister for a decision so they could begin the necessary preparations, Hoon said they were told to “calm down”.

“When we both went to meetings in Downing Street saying ‘Look, you need to get on with this’, we were told ‘Calm down, you can’t get on with it while the diplomatic process is under way’,” he said.

“The argument I was given very clearly from the prime minister and the foreign secretary (Jack Straw) was that if we were seen to be overtly preparing for war, that would affect our ability to secure a (UN Security Council) resolution.

Hoon admitted some British troops in Iraq were left without enhanced combat body armour because of problems in tracking the distribution of equipment.

Some military units were given double the required sets of armour and some were provided with none, he said.

Hoon said: “Something like 36,000 sets were shipped to Iraq. From the lessons-learned process afterwards, one of the problems was that there was not a very effective tracking system once the containers were unloaded.

Hoon told the inquiry he was told in September 2002 that enough enhanced combat body armour was available for all the frontline forces.

He said military officials told him extra body armour should be ordered for the other troops but advised this was a “tranche two requirement”.

Inquiry panel member Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, a military historian, pointed out that this shortage caused the death of a British soldier.