§ Mr. David NicholsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps he has taken to urge the multilateral, financial and aid institutions to require the reduction of military expenditure as a condition of third world countries receiving loans; and to what extent this is a criterion when deciding on allocations of United Kingdom overseas aid.
§ Mr. Lennox-BoydIt is for each country to assess and provide for its own legitimate defence needs. However, the United Kingdom actively supports the increased emphasis placed by the International Monetary Fund and the World bank in recent years on the implications for economic and social development of the composition of public expenditure. In the recently completed negotiations on the 10th replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA), donors urged that in reviews of public expenditure, IDA management should address the question of whether adequate levels of development expenditures in the budgets of recipient countries are being crowded-out by the weight of large or rising non-development expenditures, including military expenditure, and to take up this question with the Government concerned wherever appropriate.
We have made it clear that we consider the setting of an appropriate level of military expenditure to be an important part of good government. It is therefore one of the factors we take into account when deciding our allocations of bilateral aid.