THE 46,000 British Armed Forces personnel sent to fight in the war in Iraq last year faced greater risks during the conflict because of “utterly unacceptable” shortages in vital equipment, a committee of MPs said yesterday.

The Ministry of Defence had also failed to learn lessons from past conflicts, dating back to the mid-1990s, when similar problems with equipment had arisen, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said in a report.

In the latest attack on the Government’s supply of equipment for the troops in Iraq, the committee said that the speed of the deployment to the Gulf had exposed areas “where risks had been taken” because “gaps in capability could not be met in time”. The report follows similar criticisms from the National Audit Office, the independent watchdog on government spending, and the Commons Defence Committee.

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “UK military operations in Iraq demonstrated the commitment, bravery and professionalism of our Armed Forces and those civilians and contractors who support them.

“In return, our Service personnel deserve the proper tools to do the job and the best possible protection.”

He added: “My committee’s report today underscores once more that our Forces faced greater risks as a result of shortages of equipment, particularly enhanced combat body armour and nuclear, biological and chemical detection and protection.” Mr Leigh called the shortages “utterly unacceptable” and urged the MoD to identify the gaps in available equipment and address them “in time for any future operations”.

Some of the failures included: special filters for armoured vehicles, designed to protect crews from nuclear, biological or chemical attacks, did not arrive until fighting was over; few troops had their full complement of desert clothing, boots and enhanced body armour; and the final 10,000 rounds for the Army’s Swiss-made grenade-launchers were not delivered until after the war because Switzerland withdrew the export licence.

The committee’s report noted that one feature of Operation Telic, codename for the campaign in Iraq, was that “ordinary men and women’s experiences and perceptions of equipment shortages were often communicated through the media or through unofficial mechanisms”.

In an implied criticism of the MoD, which initially dismissed reports of shortages in boots and desert clothing, the MPs said: “It is important for the experiences of those at the battlefront to be given weight and for personnel to feel that their views are valued.”

One of the longest-running problems had been the lack of a proper computerised system to track where every item of equipment was at any one time. The MoD had spent more than £550 million since the Gulf War in 1991 in new computerised systems, including an asset management capability, but there was still no credible way of tracking equipment.

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