Libyan campaign heroes facing the sack in Royal Navy cutbacks

Scores of sailors who risked their lives during the Libyan campaign are expected to be among hundreds who will be sacked this week.

Several dozen of the 250 sailors from the frigate HMS Cumberland, which helped to rescue British citizens from Libya in February, are thought to be among those who will be told on Friday that they no longer have jobs in the Royal Navy.

Crew from eight of the ten other ships that took part in the campaign are also in line to be sacked. HMS Cumberland, the first warship to be sent to enforce the blockade on Libya, was decommissioned in June.

It is understood that the government will issue compulsory redundancy notices to up to 400 officers and ratings out of 1,100 navy personnel who will lose their jobs in the first round of Ministry of Defence redundancies.

The plans to cut posts were announced this year as part of a programme that could see 11,000 redundancies across the RAF, army and Royal Navy by April 2015 in an effort to tackle the deficit and bring the defence budget under control.

This month 920 soldiers and 930 RAF personnel were told they were being made redundant.

An MoD spokeswoman said: “No-one who is preparing for operations or deployed on operations on the day that redundancy notices are issued will be made redundant unless they have volunteered.”