NATO Summit

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make that point. Part of the readiness action plan is that there should be prepositioning of equipment and better use of bases in central and eastern Europe. He will see from the detail of the declaration that that is very much anticipated by the NATO conference.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

We have always been told that the more we spend on overseas aid, the more it will enhance our security. We have been spending more on overseas aid, but the security threat level has been raised, so that correlation has clearly been shown to be a load of old cobblers. Will the Prime Minister therefore divert some of the money from the overseas aid budget and give much-needed additional resources to our armed forces and security services to help keep us safe in these very dangerous times?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think it is quite right to make that correlation. I would argue that had we not put money into stabilising Somalia, for instance, or Afghanistan or into helping save lives in countries such as Pakistan, we would have seen even more pressures from asylum seeking and migration, and even greater problems with drugs and terrorism. What we have to get right is the balance between armed forces to keep us strong and an aid budget that fulfils our moral responsibility to the poorest in the world, which also helps, I would argue, to keep us safe.