Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces Minister, today defended the Government from the findings of a National Audit Office report which warned that more than a third of British services are not ready for battle.

The parliamentary watchdog highlighted concerns about training cuts and equipment shortages, concluding that all three Services would struggle to respond to a future threat because investment is failing to keep pace with increasing military commitments.

Assessors said that across the board more than a third of the Services would struggle to deploy within the time set by military planners. It revealed that 38 per cent had "serious weaknesses" in their readiness levels and 2 per cent were described as "critical".

The report warns that if the issue is not addressed, the ability of troops to respond to emergencies will diminish further, with a potential knock-on effect on recruitment.

Michael Ancram, Shadow Defence Secretary, said that the audit highlighted serious issues for concern at a time when Britain's armed forces are already stretched. The MoD is preparing to send a further 5,000 soldiers to Afghanistan in May, and there is the potential requirement for future intervention in Kosovo and Sudan.

He said: "This is a very worrying report that the Government can't brush aside. The Treasury is not giving the Forces the resources they need. This Government is effectively sending our Forces to war with one arm tied behind their back.

"At a time of increasing commitments we need to see more troops on the ground rather than less and all of our armed forces properly equipped and trained.

"Our commitments are going up while our resources are going down and this needs to be addressed or the capability of our armed forces will be degraded. This is a reckless and highly dangerous practice."

The Royal Navy has been particularly hard hit. Under a series of defence cuts, the report reveals that the Navy’s fleet of destroyers and frigates is being reduced to 25.

The National Audit Office (NAO) predicted that the Navy’s readiness status would keep falling, recovering only "in a best case" from 2006-07, but in a worst case not until after 2010. In the worst case, only 50 per cent of the fleet would be ready for operations by 2009.

The shortfalls are not described in detail, for reasons of national security.

Mr Ingram insisted that mechanisms were now in place to address the concerns raised in the NAO report. He was optimistic that progress in the Northern Ireland peace process could release the forces from a commitment which dwarfs the number of troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said: "We have the largest sustained increase in defence expenditure for 20 years. We have a major shipbuilding programme, we have major renewal of the RAF and major investment coming along for the Army.

"We are steadily identifying where the demands are, where the shortfalls are. We have begun to put in place this process that can deal with it," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"I think it creates a very healthy debate about what it is we ask of our armed forces and what it is we need to do to make sure they are capable of carrying out those tasks."

However, Lord Garden, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman and a former Assistant Chief of Defence Staff, warned that the report highlighted the increasing pressure on the forces from the high tempo of operations.

He said: "I am afraid it is getting to the stage where, if we can’t have a bigger defence budget, we are going to have to take some rather difficult decisions about what sort of forces we need in future."

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