At the Trades Union Congress, Prospect will present a motion highlighting the crisis in MOD caused by a budget which is inadequate to support current operations in the Middle East and will warn that the crisis is about to deepen.

At the end of August, the High Court delivered its judgement on the legality of the department’s early release scheme. On the same day, MOD told Prospect that additional job cuts are to be announced as part of the Chancellor’s pre-budget report in October. The union believes that up to 7,000 jobs will go: a cut of over 15% in a workforce which has already been slashed by a third since the government came to power.

In March, the Prime Minister launched his Public Value Programme and instructed MOD to undertake two ‘value for money’ reviews: into the civilian workforce and defence procurement. The first review will extend the current cuts programme, which applies to MOD headquarters and Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), to the rest of the department in pursuit of year-on-year 5% savings.

National secretary Steve Jary said: “These new cuts will come on top of the 7,000 or so job losses already in train in London and DE&S. A further 7,000 will mean MOD losing 1 in 5 non-industrial civilians over the next few years.”

The new cuts will fall disproportionately on Army, Navy and RAF front line commands and will have a direct and immediate effect on support to military operations.

In Brighton for the TUC Congress, deputy general secretary Dai Hudd, said: “It is a strange coincidence that the unions were told of these savage cuts just after delivery of the High Court judgement on the department’s early release scheme. In the court case, MOD claimed that it was not in a pre-redundancy situation. The judge found otherwise and now we find that 20% of our members will be losing their jobs.”