THE Government did not do enough to support British troops at the start of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defence Secretary admitted.

THE Government did not do enough to support British troops at the start of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defence Secretary admitted.

Bob Ainsworth said military personnel had been justified in complaining about a lack of interest in their work during the early years of the campaigns.

In an interview, he insisted improvements to support, pay and equipment over the past two years had been "absolutely essential".

"People were pretty cheesed off with the attitude not only of the Government, but of the British public," Mr Ainsworth said.

"They were out there in Iraq, they were out there in Afghanistan, they were doing hard yards and putting their lives on the line - and nobody back here was nearly as interested as they ought to have been."

He predicted that the defence budget would have to be given a higher priority in future, whichever party ended up in government.

"We are going to wind up with a real debate on defence. It has not necessarily had a high enough profile," he said. "We have tended in politics in this country to concentrate on the domestic, on the here and now - the what's in it for me'."

Mr Ainsworth accepted that some decisions to cut defence programmes in the past could now be seen as mistakes.

In 2004, Gordon Brown's Treasury imposed a significant cut in the Ministry of Defence's budget for helicopters.

"You can't totally and utterly predict where the threat might be," Mr Ainsworth said.

Labour's commitment to increase spending in areas such as health had put limits on defence spending, he added.

"The defence budget has gone up but it has not gone up as fast as some other budgets," he said.

"If you stand at an election and put a manifesto in front of people saying you're going to improve health care, you have to stick by that."

Mr Ainsworth, who had never held a Cabinet post before his appointment in June and has been mocked as a lightweight, admitted he had intellectual "weaknesses".

"I have strengths and I have weaknesses. I don't pretend to be able to write a great thesis or doctorate - I have no pretensions in that direction," he said.

"But I'll tell you what I do have, I have a good feel for ordinary people, for politics, and those are my strengths. I understand, I hope instinctively, where many of our Armed Forces come from.

"I don't try to second guess decisions that are quite properly taken in the military chain of command.

"I don't try to pretend I am cleverer than a general or the Chief of the Defence Staff.

"But I can bring something else, a knowledge and understanding of Parliament, and of civilian life."

Mr Ainsworth dismissed much of the criticism of him as class-driven. "I speak with a Midlands accent. I drop my aitches," he said. "I suffer with an asthmatic-related condition that means I speak with a gravelly voice. I have a moustache that some people appear to take offence to. I don't know what motivates these people."

ends