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  • 3 hours ago
Tory MP, and member of the Liaison Committee, Sir Bernard Jenkin tells Sir Keir Starmer that his comments on UK defence sound like "you are at peace, while we are actually at war". Report by Ketchs. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00We've all agreed that the government is not on a war footing and needs to be very quickly.
00:06Why is it not on a war footing now?
00:10Because the strategic review commits us to a war footing and we now need to put the funding in place
00:15in order to get there.
00:16I've already announced the increase in defence spending to 2.5%, something that didn't happen under the last government,
00:23and where at the election a credible proposition wasn't put forward by your party.
00:28I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it properly and I want to be able to explain
00:31to Parliament where the money is coming from.
00:33It sounds as though you are at peace while we are actually at war.
00:39With respect, I'm clearing up the mess that I inherited from the last government.
00:42I dare say Winston Churchill had a bit of a mess to clear up from the previous government.
00:47Margaret Thatcher had a bit of a mess to clear up from the previous government.
00:51But now we are facing an urgency. Why were we so unready to defend Cyprus?
00:57Well, we've got a lot of defensive capability in Cyprus, as you know, including the air capability there.
01:06And I've been constantly talking to the Cypriots about this.
01:09I was on the phone yet again to the President on Saturday at some great length.
01:13I was on the phone yet.
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