CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

Ed Davey Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has campaigned on this issue for years. I think we will have to spend more. Logically, Mr Speaker, if you protract the commitments that we are making under AUKUS and under the future combat aircraft system, we will be increasing our spending very considerably. What we want to do is to make sure that other allies are doing the same. That is most important. That is why Jens Stoltenberg is, we hope, going to set a new target and allow the whole of the alliance to increase its funding.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

While the Prime Minister was talking about British values at three international summits, he was whipping Conservative MPs to vote to trash one of our greatest British values, the rule of law. While he was talking about increasing defence spending, he was ploughing ahead with plans to cut the British armed forces by 10,000 troops. While he was talking about the problem of global price rises, he was raising unfair taxes on millions of pensioners and families across our country. We are facing a domestic economic crisis and a global security crisis, and the Prime Minister is facing his own political crisis. Can he tell the House precisely what his plan is to take our country forward?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to tell the right hon. Gentleman, since he asks, that our plan is to help the people in this country with the cost of living, as we are, with £1,200 coming in to people’s bank accounts this month, which we can do because of the sensible economic steps we have taken in coming out of the pandemic, and then to build a stronger economy with reforms to our planning, our housing, our transport and our energy networks. We will take down costs for people up and down the country and continue to make this the best place to live and invest in in the whole of our hemisphere. That is our plan for the country, and I commend it to him.