McVey vows to give £7bn foreign aid to police and schools
ESTHER McVey made her pitch for the Tory leadership yesterday with a pledge to cut billions from foreign aid and spend the money on police and schools.
Speaking at the launch of a Blue Collar Conservatism group in Westminster, the former work and pensions secretary, 51, said aid spending should be cut to the levels seen under the last Labour government.
She said returning to 2010 spending levels and scrapping the aid target would provide £7billion, arguing there was an ‘ urgent need for our communities at home’.
The money would be used to close a £2billion shortfall in school spending and combat crime which is ‘blighting our streets and making people at home feel unsafe’.
Miss McVey insisted that she wanted to ‘ immediately shift resources to match people’s needs and priorities’.
‘We can fund this simply by returning spending on international aid to Labour levels which we inherited in 2010,’ she added.
‘This will still ensure we are spending historical and internationally high levels on our international commitments, but also freeing up around £7billion for schools and policing.
‘By doing this we will be doing more than just making up for shortfall here and there – we will be providing transformative funds which communities will feel.’
Aid spending in 2010 stood at some £8.5billion. Last year it topped £14billion.
The aid target was a centrepiece of David Cameron’s ‘modernisation’ of the Tory party. Under a law passed by the coalition government, ministers cent year on of national foreign must aid. spend income 0.7 every per
Miss McVey, who quit the Cabinet last year over Mrs May’s Brexit deal, said Labour had abandoned working class voters and the Tories needed to take on that mantle. She added that the next Tory leader ‘has to be a Brexiteer because it has to be someone who believes in Brexit’.
Miss McVey also described Nigel Farage as a ‘tour de force’ who has caught the ‘mood of the moment’, adding: ‘We can win that mood back when we deliver Brexit.’ The announced Tory MP, her who engagement recently to fellow Tory MP Philip Davies, told the event in Westminster that the UK stood ‘on the brink of the abyss of the most destructive socialist government ever’. Voters had abandoned Labour ‘in their droves’ at the local elections, she said, but they were not returning to the Tories.
‘I don’t need to tell anybody the reason why, we know,’ she added. ‘A majority of these voters voted to leave the EU and on this we have broken their trust.
‘To win that trust back we must only not just deliver what we promised, but we must be prepared to have radical conservative agendas to show we are on their side.’
‘Deliver what we promised’