Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are helping families with child care, not least by giving 15 hours—[Interruption.] That is happening before the election; it has happened under this Government in this Parliament—15 hours of free nursery care for three-year-olds and four-year-olds. [Interruption.] Opposition Members say it is not enough; it is more than Labour ever provided. [Interruption.] It is good to see the shadow Chancellor gesticulating in favour of his leader now; he will be outside in a minute briefing against him.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The whole world has watched with grave concern events in Crimea and the massing of Russian troops on the eastern border of Ukraine. Coming on top of other instability in the world—in Syria, north Africa, the Central African Republic, Venezuela and elsewhere—is it not time that the Prime Minister re-examined the national security strategy and maybe, just maybe, thought about revising some of the recent deep and damaging defence cuts?

[The Prime Minister]

We will review the national security strategy on the four-year rolling basis that we established it—that is the right thing to do. On what we have done on defence spending, we still have a top five defence budget of any country in the world; we have removed the £38 billion black hole that we inherited; and we have set out spending of £160 billion over the next decade on defence equipment. But we would not be able to get that modern defence equipment—the things that modern defence forces need—if we had not taken difficult and long-term decisions at the start of this Parliament.