Boris Johnson has twice ducked demands for a Commons vote on cutting international aid.
In a rowdy Prime Minister’s Questions, by lockdown standards, the Tory leader dodged straight questions from opposition leaders on when he would grant MPs a say on cutting over £4 billion from the UK’s overseas aid budget.
Ian Blackford MP, the SNP Westminster leader, called on Johnson to answer a “simple question, yes or no” to the demand for a Commons vote which the government avoided on Monday when an amendment was ruled out of scope.
Blackford told the Commons: “The Prime Minister has been hiding on this issue for months. This is a government on the run for its moral and legal responsibilities and on the run, Mr Speaker, from the ordinance backbenchers."
He added: “But the Prime Minister can’t hide from this issue any longer and he can’t run from democracy in this House.”
“Will he stand up today, and commit to a straight vote in this House on these inhumane cuts as demanded by the Speaker. Prime Minister, it is a very simple question, yes or no?”
But Johnson simply repeated the answer he had given Labour leader Keir Starmer earlier and said the people had been given a vote in general elections and by-elections “very recently”. He added: “I think they came down very firmly in favour of a balance the government is striking”.
The Prime Minister called on Blackford not to listen to “leftie propaganda” on international aid and said that despite financial constraints the £10 billion being spend by the UK on overseas aid ought to make people “proud”.
Blackford scoffed that Tory rebels against the cut, like former PM Theresa May, could not be so easily dismissed
He said: “I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever heard the previous Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Member for Maidenhead called a leftist propagandist.”
“The simple fact of the matter is every single party every single member of this House stood on a manifesto commitment 0.7 per cent and Prime Minister was reneged on that.”
Blackford added: The Prime Minister has the nerve to brag about the government’s support for the vulnerable, and at the very same time, he is £4.5 billion from the world’s poorest. In the week of the G7 what kind of world leader washes their hands of responsibility by cutting water and hygiene projects by more than 80 per cent in the middle of a pandemic?”
