Lord Bilimoria
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Defence: Budget
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, following on from the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord West, does the Minister agree that the SDSR in 2010 was means before ends? It was negligent in that we had unpredicted events, one after the other—Libya, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine—and our Armed Forces cannot even fill Wembley Stadium. Will the Minister assure us that we will stick to the 2% spending commitment to NATO and that we will not cut our Armed Forces any more?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the Government are committed to that 2% for the remainder of this Parliament and into the next Parliament and to keeping the defence equipment budget growing. Any commitments in the medium term beyond that are commitments that the parties will be making in their manifestos.