Tragic soldier was let down by government

By George Tyndale on Sep 20, 08 04:43 PM

The youngest British soldier to die in Afghanistan lost his life because he was let down by his Government.

Private Ben Ford was just 18 when the vehicle in which he was travelling was destroyed by a radio-triggered mine. An inquest has been told that the 4X4 should have been fitted with a device to jam radio waves which would have saved the teenager and his colleague, Private Damian Wright who died alongside him.

The shameful failure of the MoD to properly protect these young men is just the latest in an apparently endless series of similar scandals.

But a shortage of vital equipment is just part of the reason why 20,000 soldiers quit last year. Other causes include poor pay, inadequate housing and constant demands to serve overseas.

And it is not just the army that is affected. A new report from the pressure group UK National Defence Association says that all of the forces face being "paralysed" by a shortage of manpower and funding.

Our Navy is now down to 52 ships and in the past ten years the number of ground attack aircraft in the RAF has plummeted from 368 to 171. Support helicopters have slumped from 119 to 66. The service is so run down that it is incapable of meeting commitments by a wide margin, says the report.
It suggests that spending on defence--currently £34 billion--needs to increase to £50 billion over the next three years.

It is simply inexcusable that New Labour which has ordered our forces into the totally misguided conflict in Iraq and the saga of a pointless engagement in Afghanistan should be so dramatically failing the young men and women in the front line.

But there is a wider scandal here. By allowing the dramatic--and dangerous-- rundown of our armed services it is not just creating victims like young Ben Ford.
It is guilty of a breach of trust with every one of us.