One fifth of armed forces ‘unfit to battle’ as prime Tory blames lack of dental examine ups

A lack of dental check-ups is keeping troops from being deployed as they are deemed medically unfit, a former defence minister has claimed.

Tory James Heappey, who served as armed forces minister under three Conservative PMs, said serving troops are automatically categorised as unfit if they have not had the appointment in the last six months.

It comes as the Ministry of Defence revealed 13,522 people across the army, navy and air force can’t be deployed due to medical conditions. The figures, disclosed by Defence Minister Al Carns in a written question, also show 14,350 service personnel can only be deployed if the mission meets certain conditions. This means around a fifth of the regular armed forces cannot be relied upon to fight.

Some 99,560 are fully fit to engage in combat. The Ministry of Defence said that about 90% of its armed force personnel were deployable “at any point”.

Mr Heappey told TimesRadio: “I’ll bet you that a big chunk of the non-deployable, medically downgraded people are downgraded for dental reasons. And what that tends to mean is that they’ve not had a dental check-up in the last six months, and so they are automatically declared dentally unfit, and therefore not fully deployable.”

“Secondly, there is a reality about the nature of some of these injuries that mean that they couldn’t deploy to go on a discretionary operation today in peacetime, but if war was to come, then they would be absolutely able to go and fight because the needs of the nation would rather trump that rather discretionary take on their medical capacity.”

Mr Heappey, who served in the army in Afghanistan and Basra and like Mr Carns is still a reservist, said some armed forces personnel were needed to do back office jobs, including in the National Cyber Force.

“Those would be the mitigations I would deploy if I was still the minister for the armed forces, all of which would be true,” he said. “But that doesn’t escape the fact that the headline is very arresting and, of course, the real concern.”

Mr Heappey said the armed forces needed to grow in response to threats from abroad, including the war in Ukraine. Numbers have been falling since 2010 – and Defence Secretary John Healey recently told MPs the number of soldiers in the Army could dip below 70,000 next year.

Mr Heappey said: “I think the reality is that the number that are in the army, navy, air force at the moment is below what is required for the threats that face our nation. And I would imagine that the army probably needs to regrow to something like 85,000, and probably another few thousand people each for the navy and the air force.”

Mr Carns, a former Royal Marines colonel who is also a reservist, recently warned the regular British army could be wiped out in six months if forced to fight a war like in Ukraine. Mr Heappey backed his comments, saying: “Al is not yet really a fully credentialled politician, he is a senior military officer and he says it exactly as it is. And nobody should find that particularly salacious, those are the realities.”

Ex-Security Minister Tom Tugendhat also backed the calls to expand the size of the military, saying: “The reality is that we have too few men and women in our armed forces, I’ve been calling for a massive increase for a long time.”

Mr Tugendhat, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, added: “The reality is we have a major change in the world… It’s the end of the era that we’ve had for the last 30-40 years since the end of the Cold War, where we’ve seen automatic peaceful relationships between countries as the expected norm. That’s over. We need now to prepare.”

It comes as the Government faces pressure to spell out how it plans to hike defence spending in the face of global turmoil. Keir Starmer promised to increase the amount the UK spends on defence to 2.5% of GDP but has so far only committed to providing a “pathway” to reaching 2.5% in the Spring.

New figures show Russia, Iran and China have all ramped up their defence budgets since 2014 – with the UK’s defence spending lagging behind. Research by the House of Commons Library, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, revealed that Russia, Iran and China have ramped up defence spending by a 34%, 57% and 60% respectively since 2014. The UK’s defence budget has increased by 14% during that period.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves signed off an extra £2.9 billion next year in the Budget. The Government is also conducting a Strategic Defence Review, considering how the UK can meet changing threats.

An MoD spokesperson said: “The vast majority of our Service Personnel – around 90% – are deployable at any point, with most of the remaining members of our Armed Forces employed in wider military roles. We are committed to providing world-class medical treatment to ensure personnel can return to duty where possible, or to support their transition to civilian life.”