Troop numbers won't increase for at least four years, says Defence Secretary

Telegraph

01-06-2025

Troop numbers will not increase for at least four years, the Defence Secretary has admitted.
Ahead of Monday's publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), John Healey said he did not expect the number of people in the Army to rise until the next parliament.
It comes despite speculation that Labour could look to reverse the British Army troop cuts made under the previous Tory government.
Asked on the BBC's Sunday Morning With Laura Kuenssberg when the 'depleted' Army would reach its target of 73,000 people in the force, Mr Healey said there had been '15 years of a recruitment and retention crisis in our forces', of which the 'last government set and missed targets every year in every service for those 14 years'.
'We've narrowed the gap, but we've still got more people leaving than joining,' he said.
'The first job is to reverse that trend and then I want to see in the next parliament our ability to start to increase the number of our full-time forces.'
However, pushed on why this target could not be achieved sooner Mr Healey said: 'My first task as Defence Secretary is to reverse that long run decline, that deep set crisis in recruitment, deep set crisis in retention.'
In May last year the number of Army personnel fell below 73,000 for the first time since the Napoleonic era.
Under Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, it was announced that the Army was to be reduced to 72,500 personnel by 2025, scrapping the 82,000 target which had been set in 2015.
Troop numbers have been cut by around 27,500 since 2010. When Labour was last in office, the Army had more than 100,000 soldiers.
Mr Healey also sidestepped questions about whether he had any guarantee from the Treasury that funding would be committed to boost defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2034.
Asked what he would tell Nato allies at an upcoming summit after calls for members to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence, he said: 'The heart of this is not just how much the nations spend, but how we spend it.
'And you will see just as much concentration on what are the capabilities that Nato together needs in order to deter adversaries in the future.'
'We have to be prepared'
The Defence Secretary said that Monday's SDR would send a 'message to Moscow'.
He said: 'This is a message to Moscow as well. This is Britain standing behind, making our Armed Forces stronger but making our industrial base stronger, and this is part of our readiness to fight, if required.'
Mr Healey revealed Russia is ' attacking the UK daily ' in cyberspace.
Asked if he expected a form of real-world attack by Russia on the UK in the coming years, he said: 'We have to be prepared. Nato has to be prepared. We see Putin in Ukraine trying to redraw international boundaries by force... it's part of the growing Russian aggression.'
Mr Healey added that is why Nato and the UK are 'stepping up our ability to deter as well as to defend in the future'.
'The world is more uncertain. The tensions are greater but we prepare for war in order to secure the peace. If you're strong enough to defeat an enemy you deter them from attacking in the first place.'
Earlier this week Mr Healey announced the British military is to spend more than £1 billion on artificial intelligence and a hacking-attack team.