Commonwealth Meeting and the Philippines

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the importance of the aircraft carriers and the capabilities that they will bring. In particular, they will be used as a platform for helicopters, for desalination and for command and control. They will bring a huge amount of capability to tasks like this one.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Given the generous response of the great British public to the disaster in the Philippines, it is clear that this is international aid that everyone can support. All of us applaud the efforts of our servicemen and women and British charity workers on the ground. Given that we meet our target of 0.7% of gross national income, that we are one of the most generous charitable donors of international aid in the world and that the defence budget is one of the tightest in Whitehall, how is our military spending on such occasions offset against our international aid target?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that we have the right balance. As a country, we spend almost £35 billion on our defence budget. It is the fourth largest defence budget in the world and it still will be at the end of this Parliament. Under this Government, there is much better co-ordination between international development and defence. That is why we have the conflict pool, which brings Whitehall Ministers and money together to work out how the money can best be spent. Sometimes that involves using our defence assets to help countries that are in need.