Brown tackles Afghanistan roadside bombs
Updated on 14 December 2009
Gordon Brown pledges to spend an extra £150m on new measures to protect British soldiers from roadside bombs in Afghanistan.
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth is due to make the announcement today as part of a wider Afghanistan-support package.
The spending boost could be accompanied by some cuts as the government tightens its belt to try to rein in a ballooning public deficit.
The £150m over three years will be funded through a reprioritisation of the defence budget, the official said, without giving further details.
Many of the 100 British troops killed in Afghanistan this year were victims of roadside bombs planted by the Taliban.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, facing an uphill battle to win an election due by next June, has been accused of failing to give British soldiers enough protection from the bombs.
At the weekend Brown became the first prime minister it is thought since Churchill to spend the night in a theatre of war. He bedded down with troops in "basic quarters" in Kandahar to demonstrate empathy for their day to day lives.
Brown and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met at an Afghan air base on Sunday, aiming to fix a relationship that has grown bitter as the Afghan war grows deadlier and more unpopular.
On Friday Channel 4 News reported exclusively that the Ministry of Defence is to close an RAF base in a bid to tackle a £6bn overspend.
Channel 4 News understands that the government plans to announce hundreds of millions of pounds of spending cuts at the MoD after overspending on big projects like ships, submarines and aircraft.
Senior Whitehall sources told political correspondent Cathy Newman that the MoD had wanted to go public with the savings in time for last week's pre-budget report.
