Video: Philip Hammond defends 'grotesque' military cuts The Commons Defence Committee report roundly criticised Mr Hammond for suggesting that only Ministry of Defence civilians had the skills to do different jobs and questioned whether redundancy terms were "fair or appropriate." There are more than 2,000 "pinch point" trades positions available such as bomb disposal yet more than 40 percent of troops were made compulsorily redundant in the last round of sackings. MPs said they were shocked that sacked military service personnel could not be retrained for specialist posts. "For military redundancies to be compulsory yet for civilian redundancies to be compulsory in none is so grotesque that it requires an exceptionally persuasive reason," the report said. While thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen have been made redundant not one civil servant has been forced to go despite 25,000 job losses,