Oral Answers to Questions

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I hope the hon. Lady will welcome the announcement last week that we are going to continue to meet the NATO target. If pensions are on the defence budget, then of course they count as defence expenditure, and they have in fact been on the defence budget for a very long time now. So far as intelligence matters are concerned, money that is spent on defence should properly be counted as defence.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Is it not sheer hypocrisy by the Government to criticise others on maritime patrols and investment when it is their party that has downgraded and stripped our defences to the bone, to the point that we now have no maritime defence, and NATO sea patrols have had to come in and look for alleged Russian submarines that have been dragging Scottish fishing boats under the sea?

[Michael Fallon]

We have plenty of maritime defence, but when we took office we had to end the Nimrod programme, which was years behind schedule and about £700 million or £800 million over-budget. Some 23 Nimrods were ordered back in the 1990s by a Conservative Government, but when we came to office 13 years later not one had actually been delivered.