Nico Hines and Philippe Naughton
Gordon Brown has been forced into a humiliating retreat in his battle against the retired generals who accuse him of giving disingenuous evidence on military funding to the Iraq inquiry.
The Prime Minister told the House of Commons that he now accepted that his evidence had been wrong. He admitted that defence spending “did not rise in real terms” in every year under the Labour government and said he had written to Sir John Chilcot to clarify his mistake.
“I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms,” Mr Brown told MPs at Prime Minister's Questions.
In fact, it fell in three separate years, according to figures compiled by the House of Commons library — four years if 1997/98 is included, although the financial year had already started when Labour came to power.
Two of those years — 2004/05 and 2006/07 — were while Britain had troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Throughout his testimony before inquiry, Mr Brown repeatedly insisted that military spending had increased in every year since 1997 and claimed that all urgent operational requests were met immediately.
His claims were greeted by incredulity amongst ex-servicemen including General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, the former Chief of Defence Staff and Admiral Lord Boyce, the former defence chief. They accused him of giving deliberately misleading evidence to the inquiry.
Mr Brown's admission follows the publication of figures in the Commons Library that directly contradict his claims.
Mr Brown admitted that his evidence was incorrect in a response to Tony Baldry, the Conservative MP for Banbury.
“Yes. I am already writing to Sir John Chilcot about this issue,” he told the House.
David Cameron congratulated Mr Baldry for extracting an admission from Mr Brown.
"In three years of asking the Prime Minister Questions I don't think I've ever heard him making a correction or retraction,” he said. “Perhaps, on the day when he has to admit that he can't get his own figures right we shouldn't have to put up with him talking about Conservative policy".
Former military commanders had accused Mr Brown of misleading the inquiry when he appeared to blame the military for failing to equip the Armed Forces properly.
Admiral Lord Boyce said: “He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed”.
As the bitter row over equipment and funding escalated, Labour backbenchers appeared to suggest that remarks by retired military officials criticising Mr Brown were motivated by party political affiliations.
Asked how Mr Brown, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer for a decade, could have got the figures wrong, his spokesman said today: “Budgets are pretty complex.
“This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, budget in the UK Government.
“One has to accept that the broad direction and the increase in defence spending has been absolutely clear and significant over the last 13 years”.
The spokesman insisted that Mr Brown had “taken the first opportunity” to tell MPs about his mistake - but repeatedly refused to say when the PM first became aware of it.
He had not done so at Prime Minister's Questions last week because he was not asked “the kind of direct question” posed today by Mr Baldry, he explained. “I don’t think the Prime Minister has ever had anything to hide on this.”
A research note prepared by the House of Commons Library in October last year showed defence expenditure had fallen in real terms in four financial years since Labour came to power in 1997: 1997/98 (-2.2 per cent); 1999/2000 (-0.4 per cent); 2004/5 (-0.7 per cent); and 2006/7 (-0.1 per cent).
The average annual increase between 1997 and 2009 was 2.7 per cent, it said, but noted that “this figure is likely to have been distorted by current operations”.
Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said the Prime Minister had repeatedly mislead Parliament over the issue.
“This is a humiliating climbdown for Gordon Brown as his attempt to rewrite history has failed and his fantasy figures have been exposed.
“He has made repeated and fundamentally false claims, misleading Parliament, the public and, worst of all, the armed forces and their families.
“I was pleased that Sir John Chilcot did not rule out calling Gordon Brown back in front of the Iraq Inquiry and it is now crystal clear that the Prime Minister has some serious explaining to do”.
Times Online
