I thank my right hon. Friend for his advice. It is the case that vast majority of the headcount reductions across the Ministry of Defence have taken place within the bureaucracy—as my right hon. Friend calls it—of civil service support to the armed forces.
The lesson here is that it is no use having a budget of £34 billion if it is not spent efficiently. Driving efficiency savings out of our budget is an important part of what we have achieved, which is to get more capability for our armed forces out of the money that we spend on defence.
In 2010, the defence budget was the second largest in NATO, and the largest in the EU. In 2015, it remains the second largest in NATO and, by some margin, the largest in the EU. Using NATO’s figures, the UK defence budget is now some $8 billion larger than the next largest EU budget, which is that of France. That gives the UK one of the most effective and deployable armed forces in the world. This very day, the UK has more than 4,000 military personnel deployed overseas on 20 key operations, in 24 countries worldwide.
Our funding also enables the UK to be and remain the most reliable partner to the US in NATO. Since August, we have been the US’s largest partner in the coalition air strikes against ISIL, conducting more than 10% of air strikes. A key capability in the effort, for example, has been the result of investment in the Brimstone missile, the most advanced precision missile system in the world. We are now working to integrate Brimstone on to other platforms such as Typhoon. This is just a single capability within our £163 billion costed, funded, affordable equipment plan, which in turn enables the UK to be one of only four NATO countries consistently to meet the key metric, spending 20% of defence expenditure on major new capabilities.
The clarity of this plan allows us to invest in next-generation capability. I shall give a few brief examples. Our new aircraft carriers will deliver a step change in capability. They are half as long and weigh almost three times as much as the previous Invincible class, yet will deliver their cutting-edge capability with the same size crew. They will have the next-generation F35 aircraft flying from them, and we have ordered four aircraft to form part of the operational squadron in addition to the four currently in test and evaluation in the United States. That platform will be far more capable than the Harrier that they replace. As the Prime Minister confirmed again yesterday, the Conservative party is committed to maintaining a continuous at-sea deterrent and will build a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines, with the final investment decision due in 2016, of which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) will approve.