Iraq inquiry: Gordon Brown defends defence spending curbs

Published: 5:01PM GMT 05 March 2010

Link to this video

He told the Chilcot Inquiry that the move was required to forestall open finance management arching out of control.

But he insisted he supposing income each time counterclaim chiefs asked for new equipment.

Solider killed in Afghan blast Brown tells Iraq inquiry: I entirely corroborated the fight British infantry denied equipment, says SAS head Brown at the Iraq inquiry: highlights Key questions faced by Gordon Brown Brown at the Iraq Inquiry: as it happened

Mr Brown pronounced profitable for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - that have cost Britain about �18 billion in total - did not outcome in cuts to alternative services.

But he acknowledged: ""It"s a really sizeable total of money.""

In 2002, the Ministry of Defence used new Whitehall accounting manners to explain it had completed potency assets of �1.3 billion that it had dictated to outlay on new equipment.

But Mr Brown pronounced there was no explanation that the assets had been achieved.

""The Ministry of Defence were formulation to outlay 9 per cent one some-more income that year. They had been allocated 3.6 per cent. If we had each dialect you do what the Ministry of Defence was doing, we would have had the additional cost of �12 billion that would be the homogeneous of raising income taxation by 3p in the pound,"" he said.

Former MoD permanent cabinet member Sir Kevin Tebbit formerly told the exploration that, after Mr Brown instituted his ""guillotine"", he had been forced to run the dialect on a ""crisis budget"".

However, Mr Brown insisted that the MoD had still been left with some-more income than it had been allocated in the 2002 Government Spending Review.

""The Ministry of Defence finished up with some-more income than had been approaching originally,"" he said.

Mr Brown pronounced he positive Tony Blair in midst 2002 that income would be no intent to troops action.

""I told him that I would not - and this was right at the commencement - I would not try to order out any troops choice on the drift of cost, utterly the opposite,"" he pronounced

He went on to accede to ""every singular request"" from the armed forces.

""I pronounced that each singular ask for apparatus had to be met and each ask was met,"" he said.

The Prime Minister was asked how most stroke the dispute had on Britain"s finances.

He replied: ""I think the goods of the Iraq advance are far less than, for example, the goods of the tellurian monetary predicament on the economy.""