The true cost of the UK’s involvement in the Libya conflict could be as high as ￡1.75 billion (US$2.7 billion) — almost seven times as much as government estimates, according to a new study.
Research by a respected defense analyst suggests that the government has given a misleading picture of the costs of supporting the military operation, now in its seventh month, leading to demands for a proper spending breakdown.
Although former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s regime has crumbled in recent weeks, Royal Air Force (RAF) strikes against forces remaining loyal to him have continued at an exceptionally high rate, depleting stockpiles of expensive precision weapons the British Ministry of Defence will want to replace. That will add to the overall bill, which is still rising and which the British Treasury has promised to meet from its special reserves.
Concern over funding for the operation has been mounting as government departments, including the defense ministry, have to cope with deep spending cuts because of the fragility of the economy.
Reacting to the latest analysis, the opposition Labour party renewed its call for ministers to provide more details of military costs and promise there will be no knock-on effect for the defense budget.
“It is vital we have transparency on this,” Labour defense spokesman Jim Murphy said.
The Treasury has still not paid the defense ministry for the “wear and tear” costs of equipment used in Iraq, raising further concerns within the military about the long-term consequences of the deployment to Libya.
This month the ministry revealed that British combat aircraft had flown more than 1,600 missions over Libya — around one-fifth of all NATO strike sorties — and destroyed or damaged about 900 targets. Those figures will have risen significantly in the last two weeks.
The UK has also deployed 32 aircraft, warships, a helicopter carrier, a submarine and anti-mine vessels.
Using data provided in answers to parliamentary questions, and figures provided by the RAF, Defence Analysis editor Francis Tusa was able to make two sets of detailed calculations about the costs of the Libya operation in the first six months.
Using one method, he estimated the cumulative cost of the operation to the end of last month at between ￡1.38 billion and ￡1.58 billion.
Using a second method, the costs were potentially even higher — between ￡850 million and ￡1.75 billion.
In June, the government said the overall costs of the Libya campaign were in the region of ￡260 million. An earlier estimate by British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne put the operation in the “tens of millions.”
Tusa did not include the cost of the most recent sorties, which have included several RAF Tornados flying from the UK to Libya, or the “start-up” costs incurred when, in the early weeks of the mission, the defense ministry hired fleets of trucks and trailers to take equipment to the military base in Gioia del Colle, Italy.
“Where there has been any doubt, I have underestimated rather than overestimated in my calculations,” Tusa said. “With the number of missions the RAF has flown in the last fortnight, I am sure the cost of the campaign has gone up.”
Murphy said the government needed to be open about the costs, and challenged the way ministers had appeared to deliberately downplay the money spent so far.
When the UK government said Libya would cost taxpayers ￡260 million, it gave limited information about how it had reached the figure. It said that ￡120 million was needed to cover the cost of day-to-day running, over and above the money already set aside for training and exercises. The other ￡140 million represented the cost of the munitions used so far. Neither the Treasury or the Ministry of Defence said it had anything further to add at this stage.
Giving evidence to the British Defence Committee in June, British Chief of Defence Materiel Bernard Gray was asked whether the Treasury had yet paid for the wear and tear costs from the war in Iraq.
When asked if it was true the ministry had received “nothing so far,” he replied: “Yes.”
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