Speeches by Ballinger.

“Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?”

“The right hon. Member talks about recruitment. Does he recognise that 14 years of Conservative government wrecked our armed forces, and that what the Labour Government are doing to invest in our armed forces and in their housing has led to an increase in recruitment, because new people recognise how important that is?”

“The cuts are enormous: up to a quarter of staff, on top of a 40% cut to the ODA budget, which is even more represented among what the FCDO spends on ODA. Could we get your reflections on how that will impact the UK’s role on the world stage? If you are going to continue to be effective, which bits will we be deprioriti…”

“I want to take us back to the joint statement with France and Canada on 19 May. It was a very welcome statement: it is great that our allies are in the same position, opposing the expansion of the offensive in Gaza, opposing the aid system that was used there and also opposing the expansion of settlements. Of course, w…”

“About 1 o’clock, I think. [Laughter.]”

“Fair enough.”

“Finally, with that reduction in ODA to the ISF from £350 million to £194 million—I think that was the figure I saw—will we still be able to support the mine-clearing operations and peacebuilding work that the NGOs are doing, as we did in the past? There is going to be a £200 million uplift in addition to ODA. Is that w…”

“On security, which is the sixth priority you mentioned, the world is becoming much more unstable. The Prime Minister has particularly prioritised our development work in conflict hotspots such as Ukraine and Sudan. I have noticed that the integrated security fund has a particularly large reduction in its support, of 45…”

“Thank you for being so patient, Foreign Secretary. In your Mansion House speech, you announced a new counter-hybrid taskforce that will focus on a “new age of sabotage and subterfuge where technology is power.” I appreciate that in this setting, you will not be able to tell us too much about that, but could you expand …”

“Could you confirm for the public what those six priorities are?”

“It is a paradigm of escalation, as you say, but there will be some people who might say, “A lot of the measures that were taken were symbolic—important, but symbolic.” The suspension of trade talks leaves the trade deal that we had with Israel in existence. There are some who may argue that Israel has broken its human …”

“I agree with you, Foreign Secretary: we have taken a lot of individual actions—more so than many of our allies—but in other circumstances when there is no response to sanctions, or indeed the situation gets worse, there is an escalation, so the Government can choose to take further action.”

“I have a final question, if I may. If we do not get the ceasefire that we are all praying for in the coming weeks—”

“But if that is not the case, and we see the abomination that you have described in the intolerable continuation of the situation in Gaza, will the Government go further to take measures against Israel?”

“Yes—there are a number of things we should be doing. Others have spoken about the issues I meant to cover, so I will come straight to the point: I think is appropriate to have a response from the Government to the ICJ ruling. We have been waiting more than a year for that. It would be great to hear from the Minister wh…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) for organising this important debate. The catastrophic situation in Gaza has meant that much of the media’s attention has been on the death and destruction there, but the situation in the west …”

“I am from the Foreign Affairs Committee, and we have been doing an inquiry into the EU reset. A lot of that is predicated on what is going on in Ukraine. It was great to see the security and defence partnership being such a flagship part of the reset at the recent summit. That had a lot of important stuff around collab…”

“Rob, you said that many banks and insurance companies will not invest in defence companies. What proportion is it, what type of banks are they, and how big of a problem is it that these companies are not getting support from British institutions?”

“Thank you, Rob. I was in Brussels a couple of months ago and I met the Belgian equivalent of the Chief of the Defence Staff. He was talking about using his increase in defence spending to build bridges. There is a role for that, but there is a concern that more of that money would be spent on it than we would like. I h…”

“There have been Israeli Ministers who have said similar things about the population in Gaza and Tehran, if we are picking out individual statements.”