Have to say I am with Nutloose on this. It makes no economic sense to exempt a sector of public services if the government wants to trim the budget and control inflation. It's a bummer for everybody. Many people in private sector have taken massive pay cuts in order to try to save their employer and avoid redundancy, and it's their taxes that pay for these non-performance related automatic pay rises. Should be same rule for all public sector.
Arguably TS, it could be said that we haven't saved our employer, thousands have been made redundant and it has taken/will take years to balance the books. However, the MoD has come up with a financial plan that doesn't involve cutting pay progression. Indeed, for those Service Personnel of the future, pay progression may be seen as an incentive / retention factor as opposed to 'being the norm' in today's public sector.