Women to serve on Royal Navy submarines from 2013

[Lex]

Philip Hammond said he had accepted a recommendation that women should be allowed to serve on submarines. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA
Women are to be allowed to serve in Royal Navy submarines for the first time, the defence secretary has announced.

In his first major speech, Philip Hammond said that the armed forces shouldn't be "slaves to tradition" and had accepted proposals for change.

"In that spirit I can announce today that I have accepted the recommendation of the first sea lord that women should be allowed to serve in submarines in the future," Hammond told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank.

"Female officers will serve on the Vanguard submarines from late in 2013, followed by ratings in 2015.

"Women, officers and ratings, will also be able to serve on the Astute class submarines from about 2016."

Hammond warned the military that there was likely to be more pain for the armed forces as the Ministry of Defence struggled to cut costs and reform itself over the coming years.

He said: "Eliminating the black hole in the defence budget is the only way to sustain military capability over the long term.

"If we don't reshape now we won't be in a position to order new equipment in the future.

"Our challenge is to move from the fantasy budgets of the past to firm foundations for the future. This is a transition that is essential to the future of defence – but no one should be under any illusion that it will be easy or pain-free."

Hammond was speaking seven weeks after he succeeded Liam Fox as defence secretary. He is not expected to change the course of the radical reform set by Fox, who pushed through last year's Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and endorsed a sweeping redundancy programme that will see up to 60,000 civilian and military posts being axed.

Like Fox, he blamed the previous government for the MoD's financial predicament. "Labour ministers were ordering equipment they had no money for and forced the military to live a hand-to-mouth existence. As the budget spiralled out of control, and as the room for manoeuvre on individual projects was constrained by contractual arrangements, decisions were increasingly taken on the basis of in-year cash management not on military priority."

Hammond said he would not allow the MoD to "remove critical skills and capabilities that are irrecoverable ... we will not carelessly throw away core competencies that may be essential to our defence in the future. But let's be under no illusions. Unpicking the SDSR piece by piece is simply not an option."

Hammond claimed that the final cost of the Libya operation would be £212m – less than Treasury estimates made earlier this year. Some experts have, however, cast doubt on the official sums. In his own study, the defence analyst Francis Tusa has claimed the government's figures are heroic underestimates.

Speaking at the defence select committee on Wednesday, Hammond said he was attempting to look in detail at all the major decisions made by Fox. He acknowledged that he had not had time to look at them all – including the costly decision to change the design of one of the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers to take the US-made Joint Strike Fighters.

He also stepped in to defuse a row between veterans of the second world war Arctic convoys and the junior defence minister Andrew Robathan.

Some of the veterans were enraged when Robathan seemed to dismiss their claims for a separate military medal recognising their services.

In a debate on Tuesday at Westminster Hall, Robathan appeared to say the UK didn't want to become like authoritarian regimes which "often throw medals around".

He said: "Medals in the UK mean something, and we pay tribute to the people in the public gallery who are showing the medals that they won through risk and rigour. Authoritarian regimes and dictators, such as Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, often throw medals around. North Korean generals are covered with medal ribbons. We have traditionally taken the view in this country ... that medals will be awarded only for campaigns that show risk and rigour."

When he was challenged about the remarks, he apologised, but that did not stop some veterans calling for him to be sacked.

Hammond told the committee that he "deeply regretted" any offence that had been caused.

"I don't think he meant to cause offence. It was an unfortunate juxtaposition. These are people that performed with incredible bravery. If any offence has been caused then I deeply regret that. I am sure that the parliamentary under-secretary deeply regrets it as well."

The Guardian
Thursday 8 December 2011 10.29 GMT