Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Josh Fenton-Glynn Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I begin my remarks by paying tribute to the many speakers in the debate, and in particular the Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who has been a long-standing advocate for development aid. I have had the great privilege of working with her, and I thoroughly understand her commitment.

I will pay tribute to a few other colleagues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) has been a long-standing, dedicated and passionate advocate not just for 0.7%, but for the effective use of that funding, and for working with the private sector, which he and I have both had the enormous privilege of doing. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) for her commitment. I have had the privilege of working with her as well, and during her time in government she was professional and committed to her brief. Of course, last week the Government sent her here to defend Labour’s indefensible Chagos surrender deal, which uses money transferred from the aid budget to defence to pay for the lease of a site that we have sovereignty over.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Priti Patel]

I will not give way because I do not have time.

To spare the blushes of the Minister, I will not relitigate the debate. I am glad that he is in his place because there is a lot to cover. He will speak passionately about development aid and assistance because of his background and experience. I would like to ask him a question about the British Indian Ocean Territory and which budgets the lease costs will come from. Will it be from the FCO, defence or ODA budgets? We still need an explanation of that. I thank the Minister, because before the debate started I received a flurry of answers to some of the questions I have been posing on this issue. However, just for the record, I still do not have clarification, so there will be more.

I want to speak about defence spending and ODA. The Government were right to follow our calls to redirect some ODA funds to support the defence budget at this critical time.