Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts
Tuesday 27th March 2018

(6 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Boris Johnson Portrait Boris Johnson
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I am afraid the hon. Gentleman is talking complete nonsense. There are 50 new posts in the European network and, in case he missed my earlier answer, 250 more globally. That allows us to have 10 whole new postings—legations, missions, embassies—around the world and will take the representation of this country to the biggest of any European power. That is a fact of which the House should be proud.

Crispin Blunt Portrait Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
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I hope that those 250 posts may have been partly the product of the continued reports of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the previous Parliament about the utter paucity of resources for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, given the task that it now faces in presenting global Britain. How much more revenue money has my right hon. Friend been given to fund those posts?

Boris Johnson Portrait Boris Johnson
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I thank the Foreign Affairs Committee, in all its incarnations, for the support that it has given to the cause of more money for the Foreign Office. The figure that my hon. Friend is asking for is £90 million.