Britain will spend 2.4 billion pounds ($3.8 billion, 2.9 billion euros) less than planned on its mission in Afghanistan because combat operations will end in 2014, finance minister George Osborne said Wednesday.

Osborne told lawmakers as he gave his budget for the year ahead that the lower than expected spending on the already 10-year-old mission in Afghanistan would help Britain reduce its deficit.

As he spoke, however, the human toll of the conflict was highlighted by the announcement that another British soldier had been killed in the restive southern province of Helmand, where most of Britain's 9,500 troops are based.

"As the prime minister made clear with the US president last week, UK forces will cease combat operations by the end of 2014," Osborne said, referring to David Cameron's meeting with US President Barack Obama.

"As a consequence, I can tell the House that the cost of operations -- which are funded by the government's special reserve and entirely separate from the defence budget -- are expected to be a total of 2.4 billion pounds lower than planned over the remainder of the parliament."

The current parliament is set to end in 2015, when elections are due.

Osborne said some of the savings would go towards an extra 100 million pounds of improvements to the accommodation of service members' families, while a grant paid to families while troops are deployed would be doubled.

Britain is the second largest contributor of international troops in Afghanistan after the United States, and has lost a total of 405 armed forces personnel in the conflict since operations began in October 2001.

The latest death was a soldier from the 2nd Battalion, The Mercian Regiment, who died on Wednesday in a roadside bomb blast in the Mirmandab region of Nahr-e Saraj in Helmand.

He had been working alongside an Afghan security forces' patrol tasked with disrupting insurgent activity, the Ministry of Defence in London said.

The bodies of six soldiers killed in an explosion on March 6 were brought home on Tuesday, the victims of the deadliest single attack on British forces in the country since 2001.

Britain plans along with other NATO countries to pull out all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, with further reductions in the number of soldiers there expected in 2012 and 2013.