LONDON: British troops invading Iraq were deprived of vital equipment, including body armour and protection against chemical or biological attack, as well as such basic items as desert boots and clothing, a devastating report on the failure to prepare the army properly for the war revealed on Thursday.

The report, by parliament’s public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, discloses that troops were so desperate that they were driven to carry out a “considerable degree of misappropriation” to get their hands on equipment they needed.

The watchdog describes an extraordinary catalogue of problems, with commanders unaware of where equipment was stored, life- saving plates for body armour “disappearing”, and weapons turning up so late that soldiers did not have enough time to train with them.

The report also states that many troops were not protected against chemical weapons — a particularly damaging finding in the light of the weight and publicity the government gave to claims in its intelligence dossier in September 2002 that Iraqi forces could attack western soldiers with them within 45 minutes of an order to do so.

Thursday’s report was published as the Ministry of Defence released a white paper in which it said Britain’s armed forces should be equipped with hi-tech weapons systems and that the number of tanks, ships and aircraft should be cut. It also said they will need to be “interoperable with US command and control structures”.

The NAO contradicts claims by the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, that all was well on the supply front before and during the Iraq war. On May 14, he told the Commons defence committee: “All the requisite numbers of boots and clothing and equipment were there ... The truth is that when they went into operations all of our forces were given the right boots. There was sufficient clothing and protective equipment in theatre to deal with a force of this size.”

Mr Hoon said he was waiting for apologies “from either individual journalists or from their editors” for criticizing inadequacies in the MoD’s supply line.

The audit office said British armed forces were given an “insufficient number” of body armour sets, partly because no one knew where the supplies were located. Up to 200,000 sets, costing #170 a piece, had been issued since the 1999 Kosovo war but these “seem to have disappeared”.

A quarter of all soldiers in the 7th Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, still had black boots and green uniforms rather than desert kit throughout the war.

David Clarke, the director of the audit team which visited Iraq in the summer, pointed out that this particular problem had not affected combat effectiveness. But he said it had had a profound impact on morale. “We’re out here fighting and you can’t even be bothered to buy us a uniform,” was an attitude expressed by soldiers.

There was a “significant shortfall”, of about 40 per cent, in the number of nerve agent detection systems, the report says.

As many as 4,000 sets of a vapour detector used to monitor residual chemicals after an attack were unserviceable. There were no NBC defence filters for armoured vehicles to help protect the crew and soldiers inside.

A lack of supply confidence at the headquarters of 1 Armoured Division “led to a considerable degree of misappropriation of equipment and stores moving through the supply chain — items included desert combat clothing, boots, and nuclear, biological and chemical protective clothing”.

Because commanders did not know when consignments of spare engines and other parts of equipment for Challenger 2 tanks and AS90 long-range howitzers sent by sea would arrive, they ordered batches cannibalized from equipment in Germany to be flown in.

But the report says British weapons performed well. It praises the defence establishment and military chiefs for the invasion’s success and for deploying 46,000 personnel in 10 weeks, half the time it took in the first Gulf war.

Samantha Roberts, the widow of a British soldier killed in Iraq, told Channel 4 News last night that she was “disgusted” by the report’s findings. The MoD is investigating the death of Sergeant Steven Roberts who was shot near Zubayr, near Basra, while trying to quell a riot apparently without a flak jacket.

Edward Leigh, the Conservative chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said: “We expect the men and women of the armed forces to fight and maybe die for us. So it is an outrage that they could not expect all of the proper equipment, protection, and even clothing to do the job we ask of them ... They were shamefully let down.”

The MoD acknowledged last night that its ability to distribute essential equipment to troops needed to be strengthened.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.