Strategic Defence and Security Review

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I would say that conflict affects women and children and that broken states have the worst records on poverty and development. Far be it from me to recommend a reading list to the right hon. Lady, but Paul Collier’s work on the bottom billion and broken states backs up the case for how we should use our DFID budget—yes, for meeting the millennium development goals; yes, for vaccination and malaria reduction and all those extremely worthwhile things; but I think we are mad if we do not put money into mending broken states, where so many of the problems of poverty arise.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

At Warton and Samlesbury, we have a world-class work force building world-class aircraft, but I need the Government to commit and get behind BAE Systems to ensure that those aircraft succeed in a highly competitive world market.

[The Prime Minister]

I strongly support our defence industrial base, which is one of our great industries and a great export earner for our country. We should support it. However, when we were looking at how to make this very difficult budgetary situation work, I checked the figures and found that between 2011 and 2015, we will be spending £17 billion with BAE Systems. We are an enormous customer for it. Just as it behoves us as a Government to spend responsibly and think of our industrial base, so it must ensure that we get value for money for the very many millions we spend.