Hoon: Fight to save regiments is sentimental

Geoff Hoon today dismissed the campaign to save famous army regiments as "sentiment".

The Defence Secretary, who is considering plans to merge 19 historic names including the Black Watch, said: "To maintain the current structure would be to concentrate not on building effective fighting forces and improving soldiers' conditions, but to focus on sentiment alone."

In a sign he intends to endorse controversial proposals from army chiefs to create a single super-regiment, Mr Hoon denied the move was driven by cost cutting. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he said, adding that any savings in the infantry would be invested in engineers, logistics and intelligence staff where there are shortages.

Mr Hoon, writing in the Daily Telegraph, said the changes would allow the Army to deploy more quickly to remote areas where terrorists were active.