With RPI currently running at 3.4-3.5% a 3% pay rise looks to me like a pay cut - no matter what spin is put on it - on the basis that most people in the military these days do actually pay housing costs!! Nice to see how much our efforts are appreciated by a grateful government!
I notice in the report that the authors say that RPI is forecast to fall in the next year, so helping to justify only giving us 3% - I shall watch with interest.
There is one conspiracy theory that says the MoD are trying to piss people off, so that enough PVR to bring us down to the latest manning targets. In this way the targets are reached but redundancy payments are avoided! I wonder?