Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously the hon. Gentleman has not been studying either the documents he gets sent by his own party or the figures. Today, actually, there are new figures out on the NHS, and I am delighted to give him the new figures. We were saying that there were 2,000 extra nurses under this Government. That was wrong: there are 3,000 more nurses under this Government. We were saying until very recently that there were 7,000 more doctors under this Government. I am ashamed to say that was wrong, too: the figure is 8,000 more doctors under this Government. The NHS is performing well because we have put the money in and made the reforms.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Q9. May I commend to my right hon. Friend some advice from Karl Marx, who, as European correspondent of the New-York Tribune, observed that there were“vital interests which should render Great Britain the earnest and unyielding opponent of the Russian projects of annexation and aggrandisement.”He went on to say that in“the arrest of the Russian scheme of annexation…the interests of…Democracy and of England go hand in hand.”Does my right hon. Friend agree that for the United Kingdom, Europe, the west and indeed the whole world, one of our most important foreign policy priorities for 2015 should be to see that Russia behaves, as one would expect a member of the Security Council to behave, in the interests of international law?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend. I have not spent as much time studying Karl Marx as he has, or perhaps even as the Leader of the Opposition has—I do not know what goes on in Camden these days.

In this respect, Karl Marx was right that the interests of the United Kingdom and democracy go together. We should stand up very firmly against the Russian aggression that has taken place, and we led the way in Europe in making sure that there were sanctions. What the combination of the lower oil price and the sanctions is showing is that it is not possible for Russia to be part of the international financial system but try to opt out of the rules-based international legal system. That is what is being demonstrated, and we should keep up the pressure.