Fallon: Spend aid on halting migrants
BRITAIN’S foreign aid budget must be used to “discourage mass migration”, the Defence Secretary has said.
Michael Fallon said that overseas aid spending “should be used” to help prevent conflicts breaking out in African countries which lead to refugees fleeing to Europe.
He said that it would stop the UK military having to “fish people out of the Mediterranean” when they try to escape from their home countries.
The comments are his strongest indi- cation yet that he wants aid spending to be part of the defence budget, in a move that would help Britain to meet its 2 per cent Nato obligation.
Officials are understood to be attempting to “re-categorise” elements of international development money so that it counts as defence spending.
The Government has repeatedly refused to pledge to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence for the whole of this Parliament.
However, it is legally required to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid.
Critics have said that treating some of the overseas aid budget as defence spending would simply allow the UK to mask deeper cuts in more essential parts of the defence budget while appearing to hit its 2 per cent obligation.
Speaking to the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show about the Mediterranean migrant crisis, which is seeing thousands of people attempting to cross dangerous stretches of sea on boats bound for Europe, Mr Fallon said: “We can pool the intelligence we all have as European countries on these trafficking gangs. We can get more information about the routes. We can tackle their financing.
“And we can use our overseas aid budget where it should be used – to help stabilise some of these countries and discourage this kind of mass-migration from them, so that we don’t have to fish people out of the Mediterranean later on.”
Mr Fallon repeatedly refused to commit explicitly on the issue of 2 per cent of national income going towards defence.
However, he dismissed criticism that the UK was withdrawing from the international stage.
He said that figures due out this week would confirm that the 2 per cent threshold is being met this year. Pushed on whether spending would remain at that level, he replied: “I want us to fulfil our commitments.
“Our manifesto commitment was to spend more on equipment and I have described to you that we are modernising everything for the Armed Forces.
“It was also to replace our nuclear deterrent and a commitment not to cut further the size of the regular Army.”
Challenged that he and other ministers were “weaving and dodging” on the issue, Mr Fallon said: “The reason is very simple – we can’t set the budget on this programme.”