Royal Navy: Defence secretary admits force doesn't have enough sailors to staff ships amid "serious problem"

As reported in the Daily Express, John Healey has given a scathing assessment of Britain’s military capabilities, stating there is a “serious problem” with the Royal Navy, British Army and RAF. The Labour MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough also warned troops are being force to live in homes with “no running water”.

The government has recently relaxed rules on Armed Forces recruitment for soldiers, sailors and aviators. People with Asthma and Exma can now sign up. “We know there are serious problems, with our Armed Forces hollowed out and underfunded over the last 14 years,” Mr Healey told The Express. And the problems the Tories have left are much worse than we thought.

“As defence secretary, I know this myself, ships without enough sailors to crew them, military housing with no running water, defence plans with billion-pound blackholes and yet, despite everything the Tories did the total commitment of civilian staff, industry workers, service personnel to defend this nation, remains undiminished.” Mr Healey told the national publication that all three forces are missing out on “great talent” as a result of these problems.

He said there are plans to bolster the nation’s defences against Russian online intelligence operations, with gamers and cyber experts being fast-tracked into the UK’s defence force. Russians have been caught try to hack into Britain’s core defence structure 90,000 times over the past two years. The Labour Party claims the British Army is at its smallest size in 200 years, with the RAF and Royal Navy also struggling to recruit enough personnel.

In an effort to bolster recruitment, armed forces personnel were granted a six per cent pay rise earlier this year. Mr Healey said the first steps are being announced to fix the Tory recruitment crisis, which includes scrapping 100 “outdated” policies that block people joining the forces, setting targets for the armed forces to reject or make a conditional offer to individuals within 10 days, give people a training start date with 30 days, and set up a direct route to hire cyber military recruits.