A charity-run helpline that allows frontline soldiers to make freephone confidential calls direct from Afghanistan, has had all its funding axed by the Ministry of Defence.

SSAFA has had the contract to run the Forcesline, worth £350,000 a year, for the last 14 years.  But according to the charity’s spokesman Michael Ivatt, the MoD informed SSAFA that the contract would not be continuing about a month before it was due to run out at the end of September.

Nine employees had to be made redundant and the Forcesline is now only staffed during weekdays instead of at weekends and evenings as well.  Ivatt said that SSAFA felt the helpline was such a unique and vital service that it opted to continue funding it from charitable funds, albeit for reduced hours.  This will be reviewed in six months.

Forcesline receives around 6,000 calls and emails a year from serving Army, Navy and Air Force officers, their families, and veterans.  Soldiers can call freephone direct from Afghanistan and callers raise issues ranging from suicidal feelings to financial problems, concern about loved ones in the field and relationship issues.

Ivatt said the number of calls had increased recently, though a spokesman for the MoD said exactly the opposite.

"It was not being used as much and was a big draw on funding," the spokesman said.

Shadow minister for civil society Gareth Thomas (pictured) said: “This is a disgraceful decision, taken in the most abrupt and least transparent way imaginable.  The lack of notice suggests a wanton disregard for those servicemen and women and their families for whom this support line was a vital and much-needed service.”

Thomas also pointed to the 10 per cent real-terms cut in funding to the Army Families Federation, saying that charities and community service organisations were “seeing their funding rolled back with little thought to the consequences”.