BASE PRIORITIES SLATED

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30529, 26 August 1964, Page 17

BASE PRIORITIES SLATED

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, August 25.

Britain’s armed forces were criticised yesterday by a Parliamentary “watchdog” committee for failing to provide decent living accommodation for service families overseas.

Parliament's all-party estimates committee, in a report published yesterday, said too much money was being spent on welfare facilities and luxury accommodation for officers.

The committee recommended to Parliament that the Minister of Defence should undertake a review, base by base and garrison by garrison of the cost of meeting British military commitments abroad, now exceeding £350,000,000 a year. Sir Frank Markham, a Conservative member of Parliament and the committee chairman, said after publication of the report: “Millions of pounds could be saved on overseas spending. We have too many bases In and around the Mediterranean.”

He said seven bases were not needed to discharge Britain’s responsibilities in the Mediterranean area.

Criticising “a lack of suitable standards and priorities in the provision of building overseas,” the committee gave the example of “extremely luxurious” naval officers’ flats in Gibraltar costing more than £9OOO each. Below Standard

But, not far away, the report said, 200 service families were living in private accommodation • “well below the standard that a serviceman overseas is entitled to expect.”

In Libya, some married quarters at El Adem cost more than £9OOO each, but in Tobruk other service families were “living in squalor,” the report said. The committee described as “incongruous” the comparison between a new Royal Air Force gymnasium .in Gibraltar and the caravans provided out of semi-charitable funds “which are sought after by naval families as being better than the average private accommodation . available.”

The report mentioned Middle East examples of a £50,000 N.A.A.F.L, a swimming pool and an “elaborate church” which, though desirable in themselves, “illustrated the same theme of being out of proportion to the need and out of proportion to the. inadequate accommodation available for servicemen and their families.”

The report found that the prevision of service buildings overseas had- not been plan-, ned with a proper regard for the prior necessity of giving servicemen and their families decent living accommodation.