Business of the House

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Hill farming is an important industry, as I know well from my constituency, and upland hill farmers are crucial to some of the most beautiful and outstanding areas of the country. We have had debates over many years—I remember promoting such debates more than 20 years ago as a Back-Bench MP. There are opportunities to bring about such debates through Adjournment debates and the Backbench Business Committee, and I encourage my hon. Friend to pursue those opportunities.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Notwithstanding the £38 billion black hole left by the previous Government, may we have a debate on the UK defence budget? Given increasing threats against UK citizens and UK interests around the world, is it not time to increase the defence budget rather than squeeze it?

[Mr Hague]

We have a £33 billion defence budget, which is the biggest in the European Union and the second largest in NATO. I think we should be proud of the fact that we are spending in excess of 2% of our GDP on defence—we are one of only four NATO countries to do so. My hon. Friend will be aware that at the NATO summit we encouraged other countries to enter the new commitment to increase their defence spending in future. We had the Prime Minister’s recent statement on the NATO summit, so I do not think we need to debate all that again immediately. There will be regular opportunities in the course of many debates to raise such issues and the vital importance of defence spending.