Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Roger Mullin Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I am very keen to support the Porton science hub that he has championed and to make sure that as the public health laboratories move over a period of years, we build up a strong science hub there. That will be helped by the improved transport connections, including the huge billion-pound or so investment in the A303 past Stonehenge in his constituency.

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

Given the Chancellor’s unwillingness—surely not inability—to answer any of the questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), may I ask him again how much has been set aside for reconstruction in Syria?

[Mr Osborne]

The overseas aid budget, which is going up substantially as our economy grows, is being refocused so that as well as helping the world’s poorest— for example, in sub-Saharan Africa and in countries such as Pakistan—we will also have money to help those states on the borders of Europe that are fragile or failing. Some 50% of our overseas aid budget will go towards those fragile and failing states in the world. We are therefore able to increase the resources going to Lebanon, Jordan and the camps in Turkey that are helping the refugees of that terrible crisis. I hope the SNP will look carefully at the arguments that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will make tomorrow in this House.