EU Council, Security and Middle East

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend, for this reason: it is in Britain’s interests to make sure that we spend our £33 billion defence budget on the assets that we actually need when facing the conflicts that we face today. So we have state-of-the-art Tornadoes that are able to fly over Iraq and Syria to gather intelligence, and we have brand-new Rivet Joint aircraft that can do similar things. The investment in those platforms, and in the brand-new class of submarines that are able to do similar things, is absolutely vital for our country. Yes, there are difficult decisions involved in changing the size and laydown of our armed forces, but unless we make those decisions, we will not have the assets that we need in conflicts such as these.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Will the Newport declaration that follows the Wales NATO summit contain strengthened guarantees to the other small nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to protect them from Putin land grabs?

[The Prime Minister]

May I first say how delighted I am that the NATO conference is coming to Newport? I know that the hon. Gentleman and others in Newport will give the many different delegations and world leaders a warm welcome. One of the most important things at the NATO conference will be to send a clear signal that we take our article V obligations very seriously; all NATO members should be aware of that. As I said in answer to earlier questions, we should see more troops from the different nations in the countries of NATO to demonstrate that.