ONCE again the Treasury has let the armed services down by failing to increase the budget sufficiently to fund the operations in Afghanistan.

The result of this is that the Army has to save some £43million in the next six months, and has gone to the usual sacrificial cows to achieve this.

Hardest hit is the Territorial Army, which is to stop all training activity (unless voluntary and unpaid) for the next six months.

The TA has been magnificent in supporting operations since 1991, the Regular Army could not have managed without them. Our local unit, B Squadron, Royal Wessex Yeomanry at Old Sarum, has supplied 25 individual volunteers for operations, more than 30 per cent of their strength.

Despite all this, they are being told they are not important enough to warrant any money being spent on them.

My observation is that the cuts in the TA will not affect any regular officer’s career, so they are a “soft target” once again.

In addition, the same edict has gone out to the University Officer Training Corps, which supplies 40 per cent of candidates to Sandhurst. This is madness, it will harm officer recruiting.

Finally, all recruiting is to be frozen for six months. That is fine for the Rifles, who have a six-month waiting list, but other under-recruited parts of the Army will suffer, and history has shown it is easy to turn off the recruiting tap, but it takes years to turn it back on again.

I spoke informally with a number of TA commanding officers who are devastated by the news, and are dreading the effect on the morale of their soldiers and units. I do not normally let politics enter this column, but this is a prime case of the government giving with one hand and taking away with another. The operation in Afghanistan is under-funded and is costing lives, now the morale of those not on operations is to be undermined as well.