Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston
Main Page: Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston's debates with the Cabinet Office
(10 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I agree very much with what my right hon. and learned Friend says about Jim Dobbin. As a passionate Scot, a passionate Brit and a passionate Labour MP, he showed that you can be all three of those things, and we could replace the word “Labour” with “Conservative” or “Liberal Democrat” and say absolutely the same thing.
What is different about this time is that the 2% spending pledge has never before been included in a leaders declaration in quite the same way, and there has never been a time scale for it. I particularly pick out that it puts in its sights those who are below 2%, saying that they need to halt any further decline in their defence spending. I think that is a powerful statement.
On ISIL, of course one has to degrade an ideology. However, when it comes to terrorists who have taken control of a state’s institutions, meaning that they have land, oil, money and weapons, we should be more ambitious and say that the right people to run the state of Iraq are the Iraqi Government and the right people to run Syria are an inclusive Syrian Government, and that there should be no place in those states for these extreme terrorists.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
Can we presume that the implication of the undertaking of those countries spending below 2% not to let that fall even lower is that those countries at or above 2% have undertaken not to allow their contribution to fall below 2%, particularly the United Kingdom?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is basically right, but I refer her to the text of the declaration. Interestingly, it says that all allies
“currently meeting the NATO guideline to spend a minimum of 2%...will aim to continue to do so”,
which is important, and then it sets out the point about spending 20% on equipment, which is absolutely vital. The declaration then singles out allies
“whose current proportion of GDP spent on defence is below this level”.
Page 4 of the document sets out in some detail that those allies will
“halt any decline in defence expenditure…aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as GDP grows”
and
“aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade”.
It is important that for the first time all 28 countries signed up to that sort of specificity.