Peter Luff
Main Page: Peter Luff (Conservative - Mid Worcestershire)Department Debates - View all Peter Luff's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Fallon
The hon. Lady is right that ISIL needs to be defeated not just militarily, but diplomatically and politically with all the instruments at our command, and cutting off its financial sources of support is extremely important. We are working with our international partners to ensure that those financing streams can be cut off, and that proper sanctions can be applied where we can identify exactly where the funding is coming from.
Sir Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
11. What budgetary assumptions he is making to inform the strategic defence and security review.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)
The Government’s priority remains the delivery of the 2010 strategic defence and security review. The next SDSR will not begin until after the election.
Sir Peter Luff
Does the Secretary of State agree that all the major parties in the coming election should commit to a real-terms increase in the defence budget and to the 2% NATO target, because only in that way can we hope to keep our nation safe in an increasingly hostile and menacing world?
Michael Fallon
Since the 2010 SDSR, our planning assumption has been that real growth in the defence budget, with 1% growth on equipment, is required to deliver the highly capable and adaptable armed forces that we set out in Future Force 2020. The scale of our current operations in Kabul, the middle east and Sierra Leone underline the value of the flexibility that we encouraged in that review. So far as the future is concerned, we are spending £34 billion this year; we will be spending £34 billion next year. It is time we heard from Labour whether it will match that spending or whether it plans to cut it.