THE county's own Regiment, R Mon RE, faces a cap on recruitment following a Government decision to cut £2.5 million off the Defence budget, which will effectively halt their recruitment, it has been revealed. In a letter to local MP., David Davies, the Ministry of Defence have confirmed that in order to save £2.5 million, limits will be placed on regimental recruitment for the next two financial years and that R Mon RE will be one of the worst effected regiments. The funding cut has been slammed by Mr Davies, himself a former TA soldier. "I am staggered that the MOD are going to cut defence spending on recruitment at a time when we are fighting wars on two fronts. Not only that but they have singled out a regiment which has already sent scores of TA soldiers to Iraq with more expected to leave next month. "The Royal Monmouthshire Engineers which will effectively be banned from recruiting by these cuts, are going to find it much harder to call up reservists in future which will put existing troops under even greater pressure. "British soldiers are often undertaking six months tour in Iraq or Afghanistan then returning for a few months before being sent straight back out again. By supplementing their numbers TA units like the RE are relieving some of the pressure. "It is simply unbelievable that while soldiers are being sent into war on two fronts as well as peacekeeping duties across many other parts of the world defence budgets are being cut. £2.5 million is a relatively small amount of money for a government which has spent millions of pounds on special advisors and thousands of millions more on consultants even though nobody seems certain what they do. "The Royal Monmouthshire Engineers founded in 1539 is the oldest Regiment in the British Army and has a long and distinguished history of service. Its recent operations in Iraq have been a huge success, with local people giving up their jobs and leaving their families for six month stretches to help reubuild the country. Sadly all of this seems to count for nothing at the highest levels of Government. "The government needs to decide what it wants from our Armed Forces. If it expects to be able to send large numbers of troops to war fronts around the world then it must fund the military properly" added the MP.
