Gordon Brown was criticised by the Conservatives yesterday after it was claimed that the Government had merely repeated an earlier announcement to replace Snatch Land Rovers with new vehicles — while cutting the order by half.

Officials travelling with the Prime Minister in Helmand province indicated on Saturday that £100 million would be spent on 200 new vehicles to replace remaining Snatch Land Rovers, under the Urgent Operational Requirement budget.

However, Conservative officials said that the order was simply a repetition of an old commitment made in December 2008 by John Hutton, Defence Secretary at the time, for a programme to replace Snatch and the upgraded Snatch Vixen with “the next generation of Light Protected Patrol Vehicles (LPPV)”. A tender notice for up to 400 LPPVs was sent out in February 2009.

“We have been waiting for years for replacements to the Snatch Land Rovers,” the Shadow Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1. “There is one very curious element about this, because the public tender that was put out was for 400 vehicles to replace Snatch. The Prime Minister yesterday said it would be 200. What happened to the other 200? Tomorrow in Parliament I will be tabling questions to find out whether this is yet another cut to the equipment on Treasury orders.”

Last night Bill Rammell, the Armed Forces Minister, defended the Government. “Liam Fox is wrong. As with most military procurements, exactly how many we order and exactly when we order them will not be finalised until the last contract is signed. But we have not decided to reduce the overall requirement and Liam Fox is entirely wrong to claim otherwise.

"We decided to procure 200 LPPV urgently under a Urgent Operational Requirement as soon as the design was ready, because we are determined — as with other recent new vehicles — to get them out there as quickly as possible. In relation to how many LPPV we need more widely, potentially going beyond Afghanistan, the position remains as in December 2008.”

Campaigners have spent five years calling for the Snatch to be withdrawn from service because of the poor protection it offers from roadside bombs. A total of 37 British soldiers have been killed while using the Snatch in Iraq and Afghanistan.