Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-23
Topic: Defense
Philip Martin Dunne (Conservative, Centre-right): I have sympathy with my hon. Friend’s comment about the accounts, which are just short of 200 pages long. But there are some helpful guideposts through them—including the photographs, which take up a number of pages; they include an excellent picture of the Red Arrows, which, were he here, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough would surely applaud The short answer is that when scrubbing the numbers, as is done from time to time in making declarations, the Department realised that there was a significant gap of billions of pounds between what we spend on defence and what NATO said we spent on defence. We wanted to ensure that we got it right. An exercise was done ahead of this year’s submission to NATO on how much genuine cash was paid by the MOD for defence purposes— it is not the same as the amount of money we receive from the Treasury for spending. It is therefore entirely legitimate for us to take the opportunity to take that into account Another example from the income category is the £50 million paid by entitled personnel for food. I am sure my hon. Friend has had the opportunity to visit many messes, particularly in the RAF bases he has visited, and that he has enjoyed the food, for which some payment must be made. I suspect that he has often been the guest of the base commander and that he has not personally had to contribute to the MOD’s coffers, but personnel routinely contribute. That is hard cash that comes into the Department and is spent. It is entirely appropriate to include income we have generated, which for this year amounted in total to £1.3 billion We included other categories of expenditure this year when we did the exercise, one of which is Government cyber-security spending. We decided to include spending on some aspects of our cyber-security in the NATO calculation this year because the MOD is taking a more central role in providing cyber-defence and co-ordinating that work across Government Departments. Another category is those elements of the conflict stability and security fund relating to peacekeeping activities undertaken by the MOD. In 2015-16, that is estimated to be £400 million. That money is spent by Defence and is therefore eligible. We have also included the costs of defence pensions, because NATO recognises that that is permissible expenditure and other nations include it. That includes the cost of MOD civil servants’ pensions—such pensions are part of other nations’ calculations. Those are all legitimate expenses and are not a sleight of hand, as has been alleged In the same vein, I should like to address hon. Members’ concerns that there is a measure of double-counting in the figures for defence and international aid. Just as NATO sets the guidelines for defence spending, so the OECD sets the guidelines for our official development assistance. We adhere to both sets of guidelines. There is a modest measure of overlap between the two, but that is to be expected. As I will go on to explain in my concluding remarks, defence and development are two sides of the same coin The second element of my hon. Friend’s Bill is his desire to "make provision for verification that NATO’s criteria for defence expenditure are met in calculating the UK’s performance against this target" I would argue that that, too, is unnecessary.