Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
William Bain
Main Page: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)Department Debates - View all William Bain's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hague
The cut I announced last week was three quarters of 1% of the World Service budget, having not passed on any of the reductions in departmental budgets for the past two years. That is much smaller than spending reductions across the rest of the public sector in the UK, and I believe that a well-run organisation can take a 0.75% change in its budget. Of course by transferring the funding of the World Service to the licence fee in future, we will remove this problem of the World Service being affected by departmental budgets at all.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
T2. The recent Africa progress report reveals that the moving of resources by companies into lower-tax jurisdictions costs the continent £25 billion a year. Can the Foreign Secretary guarantee that any deal on tax avoidance reached at the G8 will benefit Africa?