Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell describes the government’s decision to cut international aid to 0.3% of GDP as “shameful” and “wrong”. The former international development secretary says he was “astonished” to hear about the decision, which will fund extra defence spending, insisting “there are many other ways you can raise that money”. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Well, I was astonished because I wondered what former Prime Ministers like Tony Blair
00:05or Gordon Brown or David Cameron or Theresa May would think. They had shown great commitment
00:11to this because they understood why it was so important to Britain's security and stability
00:15to have this spending on development. And I thought it was pretty shameful, actually.
00:20Well, I think there's a range of opportunities to the Chancellor putting together a budget.
00:25This was a very easy one to do, but it was the wrong one to do. And there are many other
00:30ways in which you can raise that money. One of them would be the suggestion of Jeremy
00:35Hunt when he was Chancellor, which was to go back to the same number of people of working
00:40age drawing welfare that we had before Covid. And if you did that, you would save something
00:45like £40bn on welfare spending, as well as getting a lot of people who ought to be in
00:50work and many of them want to be in work back in work.