WELSH SOLDIERS DESERVE FAIR PAY - WILLIAMS

9.48.32am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 7th Sep 2009

Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Wales Roger Williams MP has today given his backing to a Liberal Democrat campaign to increase the pay of service personnel.

Under the Liberal Democrat plans, which would be funded by reassigning Ministry of Defence expenditure, such as reducing the number of non-essential desk staff, and changing procurement priorities:

A fully-trained Private would receive an average basic hourly wage of £9.44 from current £6.74 per hour. This amounts to £430 per week, an extra £115 a week.

The average pay across the ranks of Private and Lance Corporal would rise to around £25,000. An average basic hourly wage of £10.40 an hour from current £8.80 per hour amounting to £480 per week, an extra £73 a week.

Other Non-Commissioned Officers would receive pay rises of £20-30 per week (around £1000 per year depending on rank).

Commenting, Roger Williams said:

"Welsh soldiers are being asked to do an extremely difficult and high-risk job, but they are not being paid properly for it.

"Many soldiers are dissatisfied with their pay levels, and they also face further problems with the lack of support available when they return from combat duties. There is much that needs to be improved to meet our duty of care, and we must at the very least ensure that our armed forces are paid what they deserve.

"The Government has wasted millions on equipment that is of very little use to our armed forces such as the Eurofighter, while they have neglected the safety and welfare of our troops.

"These proposals would be a much needed step to improving the welfare of our service personnel, and ensuring that we honour the Military Covenant."

Notes:

Details of the Liberal Democrat campaign below:

1. The Problem

Over 51,000 (over a quarter of the Armed Forces) receive less in basic pay than a new recruit police constable or fire-fighter. The basic pay for the lowest paid Private is £16,681.

13,000 lower-ranks personnel receive under £17,000 a year basic pay. Even with operational allowances, they receive less than a new recruit to the police force.

46.2 hours per week during 2007-2008 - average hours worked by Junior Ranks according to the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.

£6.74 is the average hourly pay of a Private. There is an operational Allowance of £2,380 and Separation Allowance of £1,100 paid to all personnel on operations and no opportunities for overtime pay

2. What Our Troops Say

There is dissatisfaction with basic pay among the lower ranks, almost half unhappy with their pay (around 40%). 60% of lower ranks in the Marines are dissatisfied with their pay. Compared with only 20% of all officers dissatisfied. 63% of other ranks believe that the X-Factor is inadequate compensation for Service lifestyle, working conditions and expectations

3. Our Solution

Our proposals would bring the pay of the lower ranks in line with the hourly-rate of trainee and development-level fire-fighters, as well as new-entrant police constables. Under our proposals no service personnel would receive less basic annual pay than a new-entrant police constable or development-level fire-fighter.

A fully-trained Private would receive an average basic hourly wage of £9.44 from current £6.74 per hour. This amounts to £430 per week, an extra £115 a week.

The average pay across the ranks of Private and Lance Corporal would rise to around £25,000. An average basic hourly wage of £10.40 an hour from current £8.80 per hour amounting to £480 per week, an extra £73 a week.

Other Non-Commissioned Officers would receive pay rises of £20-30 per week (around £1000 per year depending on rank).

4. Policy cost: Around £300-400million or 1% of the MOD's total budget.

At the moment there is 1 desk job for every 2 servicemen. We believe the ratio should be reduced, particularly as so many desk-jobs in MOD are already done by serving officers. The Defence budget and Department itself are in such chaos that there the next Strategic Defence Review will have to make tough choices.Now is the opportunity to ensure that pay levels are not compromised or salami-sliced further.

Therefore savings can be achieved through a headcount reduction in MOD staff of around 10% (around 10,000):

By rationalising procurement practices in the MOD

Reducing non-essential staff such as communications (currently almost 1000, equivalent of a whole infantry battalion!)

Through natural wastage over course of next Parliament

Re-alignment of priorities of the Strategic Defence & Security Review

5. Misguided Priorities: Where that money is going now/how it is being wasted

In equipment terms we could raise the pay of all Privates and Lance Corporals for the price of:

4 Eurofighters (unit cost around £70million). Widely regarded as an expensive Cold War white elephant.

The loan that Lord Mandelson has given to keep production of the ailing A400M aircraft going (£340m).

The amount wasted on the bungled FRES armoured utility vehicle programme.

Also…

1 Eurofighter would pay a battalion of Privates (400) for a decade and the budget over-run on the new Destroyers alone covers the salary increase for five years (Destroyers reported as having over-run by £1.5bn).