James Arbuthnot, head of parliament’s Defense Select Committee that holds the government to account on military issues, also said it would be hard to support replacement of Britain’s multi-billion pound Trident nuclear missile system given the country’s financial constraints.

Britain has launched a harsh austerity program to tackle a record budget deficit.

“The public will believe that we as a country have a certain place in the world and will suddenly discover that we are incapable of bearing that place,” he told Reuters on Tuesday at the annual conference of the Conservative Party, which heads a coalition government.

“The reason it matters is because defense is the most important duty of government, and if the government’s view of defense is completely different from the people’s view, and at the moment I think it is, then the mismatch is a serious issue.”

Reduced defense spending could affect Britain’s military alliances with the United States and Europe, its ability to safeguard sea trade routes and possibly weaken the country’s diplomatic voice on the world stage, analysts say.

Speculation has mounted during a wide-ranging government spending review, whose results will be announced on Oct. 20, of big cuts to army numbers, of reducing two planned aircraft carriers to one or none, and of cutting the fast jet fleet.

At the same time, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) is conducting a separate Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR), due to be completed by November.

Arbuthnot said the SDSR was rushed and finance-driven and said he was alarmed at a lack of consultation.
 

The SDSR is taking place over five months, while the last such review was conducted over 13 months, Arbuthnot said. The MoD, which has a budget of 36.9 billion pounds ($58.6 billion) this year, is believed to have been asked by the Treasury to plan for cuts of 10 percent over four years.

Who foots the 20 billion pound bill for renewing Trident, a submarine-based nuclear missile system, is a big question mark. The MoD and the Treasury each insist the other should pay.

Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Defense Secretary Liam Fox have publicly said they would keep Trident, but Arbuthnot, also a Conservative, questioned the decision. He said his support would depend on the money available.

The system is only useful against other “rational” states that would fear a nuclear deterrent and that were not already deterred by the threat from UK ally the United States, he said.

“The question is, is it right to vote such a large proportion of such a small defense budget to that particular small number of targets? And the smaller that defense budget becomes, the harder it is to answer yes to that question.”

His argument gives ammunition to the Liberal Democrats, who oppose Trident and are the Conservatives’ government partners.

The SDSR and defense cuts have already highlighted tensions within the Conservative Party, with a leaked letter from Fox to Cameron last week warning of “grave” and “brutal” consequences if severe spending cuts are pushed through.

Arbuthnot said his concerns were already registered by the MoD, and was starting to reach the party’s leadership.

“I’m beginning to think this is getting through .... This is an issue that’s rising in the Richter scale.”