Anger as MoD 'pen-pushers' outnumber personnel in the RAF and Navy

Bureaucrats working at the Ministry of Defence now outnumber all service personnel in the Royal Navy and RAF combined.

The total of MoD civil servants jumped by 6 per cent to 63,702 between 2020 and April this year.

The ranks of full-time trained service fighters, including the Army, fell to 72,510 in that period.

But there are 28,840 trained members of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines plus 28,420 in the RAF. That means the combined total of 57,260 is less than the number of civil servants working in the Whitehall department.

This equates to the smallest number of service personnel since the Napoleonic era more than 200 years ago and is forecast to plummet to below 70,000 next year.

The figures come despite the previous Conservative government having planned to slash MoD civil servant numbers by 3,000 to save cash.

Lord Lee of Trafford, a defence minister in the 1980s and the Liberal Democrat peer who uncovered the figures, told The Times: ‘We have ended up in a situation where there are 63,000 civil servants employed when the Army itself is only 72,000-strong. 

'I can’t think of a large private sector firm that hasn’t, through efficiencies and modern telecommunication, reduced their headcount and yet in the MoD, it has actually increased. The whole thing is extraordinarily lopsided and surely it’s time to take a really hard look at these [figures].’

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Britain's Armed Forces are 'not ready to fight' says Defence Secretary John Healey

Lord Lee supported a reduction in civil servant numbers, saying this would free up more money to spend on ‘the sharper end in terms of equipment and accommodation for the forces, which is in a pretty deplorable state’.

The overall civil servant tally increased from 384,230 in 2016 to 510,665 in March this year.

It comes amid calls for the new Labour Government to hike defence spending to at least 2.5 per cent of GDP after it ditched the target, which the Tories had pledged to hit by 2030.

Last week Defence Secretary John Healey admitted that the Armed Forces are not ready to fight a war.

He said: ‘The UK, in keeping with many other nations, has essentially become very skilled and ready to conduct military operations. What we’ve not been ready to do is to fight. And unless we are ready to fight, we are not in a shape to deter.’

Mr Healey added that ministers found the state of the Armed Forces was ‘far worse than we thought’ after Labour took power in July.

The Daily Mail’s Don’t Leave Britain Defenceless campaign has repeatedly highlighted shortages and weaknesses in service personnel and has been calling for an immediate rise in spending to the 2.5 per cent of GDP target, increasing to at least 3 per cent by 2030.

Around 2.3 per cent of GDP is currently being spent on defence, just above the 2 per cent target for Nato countries.