Baroness Smith of Newnham
Main Page: Baroness Smith of Newnham (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Smith of Newnham's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(5 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberI agree, and am grateful to the most reverend Primate for drawing attention to the point he made so clearly and well in the debate we had a few weeks ago on the theme of reconciliation. This takes a mixture of efforts across Government, not only from the Ministry of Defence but also through DfID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. All those budgets contribute to doing precisely what the most reverend Primate is advocating. I fully concur with the prescription he laid out.
My Lords, it is clear that leadership elections give Ministers the opportunity to stray into other briefs. The Foreign Secretary was obviously talking about defence. There seems to be a lacuna in policy discussion in the current Conservative leadership debate—other than on Brexit. Maybe there is an opportunity for Ministers in the Ministry of Defence and elsewhere to ask the Conservative leadership candidates what their commitment to increasing defence expenditure might be, and who they are likely to have as Chancellor of the Exchequer, because if they do not agree, defence expenditure will not go up.