London: Britain denied a newspaper report on Saturday that it was considering making deeper cuts to its army than previously announced and soldiers wounded in Afghanistan would not be exempt from losing their jobs.
The Daily Telegraph said it had seen a leaked memo sent to senior commanders in Afghanistan that said cuts in army numbers would be more than double the figure originally announced, and could include wounded soldiers.
Britain's Ministry of Defence said the information in the internal memo, which it said had been written by a junior officer, was incorrect. "Beyond those already announced, there are no further army reductions planned," it said in a statement.
The report came at an embarrassing time for the government, falling on the weekend that Britain remembers its dead from two world wars and more recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Military cuts are also sensitive as some politicians and retired commanders have expressed fears that they will seriously weaken Britain's armed forces, which recently played a leading role in NATO operations in Libya.
The Daily Telegraph quoted the confidential document as saying the 102,500-strong army could be cut by 16,500 by April 2015.
That is more double the 7,000 reduction in army numbers that Britain's coalition government announced in October 2010 as part of sweeping public spending cuts aimed at reining in a swollen budget deficit.
The newspaper said the Ministry of Defence had quietly announced a further 5,000 job losses earlier this year, but the memo referred to total cuts of between 15,500 and 16,500 by April 2015.
The report said 2,500 wounded soldiers, many of them injured fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq, would not be exempt from the cuts. Army chiefs had previously given assurances that soldiers badly wounded on operations could stay in the army.
Some 350 soldiers have lost limbs, many as a result of explosions. The newspaper said the army had so many wounded soldiers its fighting strength was being diminished.
The Ministry of Defence said wounded soldiers would continue to be exempt from redundancy while undergoing treatment.
"There is absolutely no plan to change our treatment of service personnel who are wounded, injured or sick. Personnel injured on operations will not be included in the redundancy process while they are undergoing medical treatment. No one will leave the armed forces until they have reached a point in their recovery that is right for them," it said.
Jim Murphy, the opposition Labour Party's defence spokesman, said the newspaper report was "worrying".
"The worry is that at the end of this process, the army, the navy, the air force and our capability will have shrunk to such an extent that it is strategic shrinkage in our ability to project force across the world and it's being done by stealth. So the government, I think, has to be open, has to be clear and tell the full truth of this," he told BBC Radio.
"No one who has been seriously injured as a consequence of their service in defending our country should be sacked from the armed forces. They should be supported into other roles in the Ministry of Defence," he said.
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