to fiddle with the electoral system. he must think the whole country is stupid. why are you doing it? . . support to strive for and find the agreement that can pave the way for permanent peace in northern ireland. >> questions to the prime minister, mr. david? >> question number one, mr. speaker. >> mr. speaker, i'm sure that >> order. questions for the prime minister. mr. david evennett. >> question number one, mr. speaker. >> i am sure that the whole house will wish to join me in paying tribute to the service lance corporal graham shaw and corporal liam riley, both from 3rd battalion the yorkshire regiment, attached to 1st battalion coldstream guards. we think of their families and never forget the sacrifice that they have made and the service mr. speaker, this morning i had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. house, i shall be in contact with the northern ireland parties later today. >> i add my sympathy and condolences to the families of those brave servicemen who have lost their lives in the service of our country. mr. speaker, all our constituents are rightly concerned about transparency, expenses and cleaning up politics. with that in mind, now that it is clear that there was a 50,000 pound fund solely for the prime minister's use at his headquarters, will he explain why he did not declare this in the register of members' financial interests? >> i know nothing about what he is talking about. >> jacqui smith. >> across the country, police officers and their community partners are working immensely hard to tackle violent crime. who does my right honorable friend think they should turn to, to monitor their success -- to the party opposite, who have been caught bang to rights issuing dodgy crime statistics, or to the authoritative and independent british crime survey, which suggests that violent crime has fallen by 41% in the last 10 years? >> i think that we all have a duty in the debate about law and order to give out all the facts that are relevant. to misrepresent facts that have come from the police and the british crime survey is not to allow us to have a fair debate in this country. the police have said that the use of the figure of 71% by the opposition is "extremely misleading," and the bbc home affairs editor has said, "the story is of falling and then stable violence for over a decade." i think that there is a duty on everybody to report the facts accurately. >> mr. david cameron. >> thank you, mr. speaker. can i join the prime minister in paying tribute to corporal liam riley and lance corporal graham shaw, who were killed in helmand on monday? they were both very brave men. everyone should be proud of their service and we should all honor their memory. is it not becoming clear from the chilcot inquiry that the government in general, and the prime minister in particular, made a series of bad decisions that meant our armed forces were not equipped properly when they were sent into harm's way? >> i will welcome the opportunity to speak to the chilcot inquiry, but he must know that defense spending rose every year, with the fastest rises for 20 years, and that iraq and afghanistan received 14 billion pounds from the contingency reserve to enable the fighting there to take place. not only did we prepare the army, navy, and air force with proper funding, we also funded every urgent operational requirement that was made. i do not believe that it is in the interests of this house to tell people that when funding was provided, that they were not properly equipped. >> what the prime minister has just said is completely at odds with what witness after witness has said to the chilcot inquiry. let us listen to what they have said. the former defense secretary said that we now have fewer helicopters because of the decisions that he took as chancellor. the former chief of the defense staff, general walker, said that "money was taken out of the helicopter budget." soldier after soldier has complained about the lack of body armor, vehicles and equipment, and we now know that the service chiefs threatened to resign en masse. is it not time that the prime minister admitted to the mistakes that he made when he was chancellor? >> first, they do not even know what their policy is for 2010 on spending on anything. and the second thing, i have always taken seriously the need properly to fund our defense forces. in the 2002 spending review, which is the subject of discussion here, the defense estimate was the best for 20 years. the defense secretary at the time said it was an excellent settlement that allowed them to modernize the forces. in 2004, the defense management board made its own decisions. let me remind him that he stood on a platform at the last election to cut defense spending by 1.5 billion pounds. >> as ever, this prime minister is in complete denial of the facts. he just said now he always took defense seriously. this is what another former chief of the defense staff, general guthrie, said. this prime minister "was the most unsympathetic chancellor of the exchequer, as far as defense was concerned." that is what he said. just today, in front of the chilcot inquiry, the former permanent secretary at the ministry of defense, kevin tebbit, said that while troops were in iraq, and while that man was chancellor of the exchequer, his budget was subject to "arbitrary" cuts and a "guillotine." he said, and i quote, that he "was running a crisis budget rather than one with sufficient resources." is not the evidence mounting that the prime minister ignored the welfare of our armed forces right up until the moment it became politically convenient to do otherwise? >> i repeat -- the conservative party went into the last election wanting to cut defense expenditure by 1.5 billion pounds. we continued to increase the defense budget every year and we made every urgent operational requirement that was necessary for her majesty's forces in iraq and afghanistan. that has included 14 billion pounds of extra expenditure from the reserve. expenditure on afghanistan was 600 million pounds a few years ago. it will be 3.5 billion pounds this year. defense expenditure is rising this year, as it is rising in the next financial year as well. he cannot portray a picture of defense cuts when defense expenditure has been rising. the only government who cut defense expenditure recently was the last conservative government, that cut it by nearly 30%. >> jamie reed. order, order. i am sure government back benchers want to hear mr. jamie reed. >> it is true. thank you, mr. speaker. my right honorable friend the prime minister will be aware that he is the only leader of any political party to support nuclear new build in this country. what certainty can he give my constituents, businesses and the supply chain in my constituency that we will make the necessary changes to the planning system to enable them to invest with confidence and certainty? >> i hope that there is all- party support for the nuclear expenditure that is necessary to give us security in our power. it is eight minutes past 12 and i understand that the current conservative party policy is -- [laughter] nuclear power is a last resort. that is not the basis on which one can plan for the future. the conservatives can change their policies every day. we will remain consistent in support for the energy needs of our country. >> mr. nick clegg. >> i would like to add my own expressions of sympathy and condolence to the families and friends of corporal liam riley and lance corporal graham shaw from 3rd battalion the yorkshire regiment, who tragically lost their lives serving so bravely in afghanistan this week. i would just like to return to the issue of defense spending. the government are about to make a statement on the future defense needs of this country, yet the prime minister has already excluded the trident nuclear missile system from the strategic defense review. how can that review be taken seriously if the most expensive weapons system that we have is to be excluded from it? >> one can either take a unilateralist attitude to defense or a multilateralist attitude. we take a multilateralist attitude that we are prepared to work with other countries for nuclear disarmament. we do so on the basis of being prepared to discuss the future of trident as part of multilateral talks. we are prepared to discuss and look at the scientific evidence for reducing the number of submarines from four to three. the defense review paper will state all these things. i hope that he will agree that in a very unsafe and insecure world where countries are acquiring nuclear weapons, breaching the non-proliferation treaty, it would be better for us to be part of multilateral discussions to reduce nuclear weapons around the world. >> look at what we have got -- we have got troops in battle without proper equipment and guillotined defense budgets in a world that has changed out of all recognition since the cold war, yet he and he want to spend billions of pounds of taxpayers' money replacing and renewing a nuclear missile system designed to flatten moscow at the touch of a button. how are we to face the threats the country faces if government thinking is so stuck in the past? >> i give him the credit of being consistent in his policies, something that i cannot say about the opposition. i do say to him that it is important for us to maintain the resources we are spending in afghanistan and it is important to understand in our strategic defense review that we are dealing with the problem of global terrorism, which is quite different from what we have experienced before. i want to assure him that we will look carefully at all the uses of equipment for the future. but it is important to recognize that we want to be part of multilateral discussions for the future. i would add, in this house, that it is not fair to our troops in afghanistan to give the impression that they are not properly equipped for the job they are doing. we have spent 3.5 billion pounds from the reserve this year and it will be more next year. the average expenditure per member of our forces is nearly 500,000 pounds to ensure that they are properly equipped. more helicopters have gone into afghanistan in the last few months -- more vehicles as well. special attention is being given to counter-terrorism and dealing with the threat of the ied threat. it is completely wrong to say that our troops are not properly equipped. we are proud of them, they are professional, and they are properly equipped for the job they are doing. >> mark lazarowicz. >> before christmas, this government confirmed in the pre-budget review that funding for front-line schools, hospitals and police would be protected and increased in real terms. neither the tory opposition here nor the snp government in scotland have given a similar pledge. meanwhile, in my constituency, schools are facing savage budget cuts at the hands of a lib-dem-led council. does this not show that only labour can be trusted to protect front-line services? >> the scottish administration have had a record increase in public expenditure as a result of the previous public expenditure review. it is sad that they have not made a priority of education for the young people of scotland. they will pay a price at the ballot box for that failure. some of the cuts having to be announced by the scottish administration are the result of the wrong and misleading decisions that they have made. >> david cameron. >> thirteen years into government and 90 days before a general election, can the prime minister tell us what first attracted him to changing the voting system? >> if nobody on the other side understands -- if nobody on the other side understands -- the politics of the last year has changed forever the way the public view the house of commons and our parliamentary institutions or that the status quo cannot last and has to be changed. if the conservatives want to defend the hereditary principle in the house of lords, if they want to postpone reform of the house of lords for more than 10 years, and if they want to refuse the people a referendum on the alternative vote, then they are making a mistake about what the british people are thinking. my message today is to the british people, that we are prepared to change our constitution and to change it for the better. we are for the alternative vote. they are for the hereditary vote. >> it is back to the bunker time with that one. i do not know whether he pulled the secretary out of the chair before he typed that one, but it was a lot of old rubbish. [laughter] he talks about the hereditary principle, but there is only one leader in this house who inherited his title. what a lot of rubbish! it is good of the chancellor to have a laugh. what a lot of rubbish! the reason why the prime minister is in favor of the alternative vote is that it is election time. this is the man who ducked the leadership election and bottled the general election, and now he is trying to fiddle with the electoral system. he must think that the whole country is stupid. have another go! why are you doing it? >> mr. speaker, this is the man who promised us at christmas a policy-a-day blitz to show us the substance of the conservative party if it were in government. we have had confusion over the married couples allowance, we have had chaos over public spending, we have had exaggerations about crime, and we have had them retreating on the hereditary principle and now supporting it for the house of lords. this is a conservative party that is in complete muddle and has no manifesto. they do not have the substance to be able to govern the country. they are a shambles. >> david cameron. >> why do we not go over some of the history? the last liberal leader who got suckered into this was, of course, paddy ashdown. he wrote this in his diary. "time after time after time, tony blair'd say 'yeah paddy, i agree, but i can't get it past gordon.'" it goes on. "gordon was the 'primary block.'" does not real improvement mean cutting the size of the house of commons, cutting ministers' pay, and complete transparency on expenses, but is not the one thing that we should not change the ability, at a general election in britain, to get rid of a tired, incompetent, useless and divided government? >> no change under the conservatives -- no change at all. he is supporting the hereditary principle in the house of lords. he is supporting the -- >> order. i apologize for interrupting the prime minister, but we must have some quiet. i want to hear the answer, and i hope that others want to hear the answer as well. mr. prime minister. >> his answer is about no change. it is the politics of no change at all. he supports the hereditary principle in the house of lords. he supports no reform of the house of lords for a decade. he supports no referendum to allow the electorate to have a chance. this is a party that has fundamentally not changed at all. they are the same as they always were. we will vote for the alternative vote. they are still voting for the hereditary vote. >> sir stuart bell. >> building on the response of the prime minister to the parliamentary institution, is he aware that tomorrow sir thomas legg will publish his full review of mp's' allowances? building on the creation of the ipsa and the kelly recommendations -- all of them the initiatives of the prime minister -- can we put the sad and sorry saga of mp's' expenses behind us, and rebuild this institution called the house of commons? >> my honorable friend is absolutely right. we have to reform the system of expenses, and we have to follow through with the kelly and, now, the kennedy reforms under ipsa. but i have to say to the house that we must do more than that. if i have a message for the whole country it is that it is not enough simply to change the expenses system. we must change the way we govern ourselves in this house of commons and house of lords. i come back to the essential questions. if they are not prepared to face up to major change in the constitution, then the public will see that the conservative party has not changed one bit. >> edward garnier. >> if what the prime minister told us a moment ago about defense spending is correct, why on earth did defense chiefs threaten to resign because of his proposed defense cuts, as general walker told chilcot this week? >> i have to report to the house that defense spending was rising every year during that period. it was rising in real terms, and nobody has doubted that every aspect of iraq and afghanistan was funded. i repeat that it was the conservative party that went into the last election wanting to cut defense expenditure. >> robert flello. >> i am sure that members throughout the house will applaud the care and support given by the royal british legion to those who are serving and have served in our armed forces. the royal british legion is asking members of parliament and those wishing to be elected to this house to do our bit and keep the faith with our brave heroes. may i invite the prime minister, my right honorable friend, to sign the royal british legion pledge in support of our armed forces family? >> i would be delighted to, and the defense secretary has already done so. i pay tribute to the outstanding work of the royal british legion and welcome their continued support to our armed forces and veterans. the government supports our service personnel and their families, and our services command paper was an attempt to show how we did so right across the services. the green paper published today by the secretary of state for defense reiterates our commitment to do this. >> john hemming. >> at the weekend, national express group cancelled without consultation the number 41 bus in birmingham, causing major problems to people in the city. this is symptomatic of a national problem. when will the rest of the country be allowed to use the same system for bus management as exists in london? >> i am sure i should call an emergency cabinet to look into the situation of the 41 bus. i shall look into what he has said, and write to him. >> ian davidson. >> does the prime minister agree that anyone who wishes to be taken seriously on defense has got to be prepared to unequivocally and without reservations commit to the aircraft carriers? does he also agree that there is a party difference here, in that the aircraft carriers and the royal navy are safe with labour and sunk with the conservatives? >> there is no stronger defender of the case for the aircraft carriers than the member for the constituency in which some of them are to be built. we are committed to the aircraft carriers. the future policy of the navy is being organized around them, and i hope all parties will support the aircraft carriers. >> john hayes. >> all governments make mistakes, and all prime ministers have regrets. which does the prime minister regret most? the collapse in adult learning, with 1.4 million places lost, "a," -- b, the fact that the latest figures show that fewer young people are starting apprenticeships, or c, the growing gulf between the number of university applications and the number of places? for the brevity you seek, mr. speaker, as well as for clarity for the house and the convenience of the prime minister, perhaps he can restrict his answer to "a," b, or c. >> what i regret most is the conservatives' failure to support us as we were trying to take this country through recession with more apprenticeships, more people going to university and college, and every school leaver guaranteed the chance of a job or training. all these things were resisted by the conservative party. >> david borrow. >> does my right honorable friend agree that investing in apprenticeships is an important way of investing in recovery? does he therefore share my despair at the action of tory south ribble council in abandoning their apprenticeships scheme, and will he urge them to reconsider that and thereby show for once that the tories are interested in young people and their futures? >> it is difficult to know what the tory party policy is on anything at the moment, and that certainly for 2010 i could not guarantee that any apprenticeships that he wishes to support would be supported by the tory party, such is the lack of clarity. we have trebled the number of apprenticeships. there are 250,000 of them now. we want to give every young person the chance to get an apprenticeship, if they have the qualifications to do so. throughout the recession, we have been trying to maintain apprenticeships so that young people have the qualifications for the jobs of the future. there is only one party opposing that and opposing the expenditure on education, training, and employment, and that is the conservative party. >> crispin blunt. >> all those involved in the 1998 defense review know that his only interest was to get a 1 billion pound cut from the conservative expenditure plans, which was reduced to 500 million pounds a year only by the intervention of the chief of the defense staff. why is it that all the distinguished servicemen and civil servants who have given evidence to chilcot on the chaos surrounding the financing and provision of equipment in the run-up to iraq are wrong, that he invites us to believe that they are wrong and he is right? >> the figures show that defense expenditure was rising every year in real terms, and that they were the biggest rises for 20 years. the figures also show that every single urgent operational requirement that the ministry of defense asked of us for iraq and afghanistan has been met. i am afraid it is the opposition who are having difficulty with figures at the moment. >> clive efford. >> my right honorable friend has come under severe attack for not cutting the deficit fast enough or hard enough, but those who made those calls in this house seem to agree with him now. does he think that that is what is meant by "it's a year for change" on the airbrushed conservative poster? >> it is a year for the conservatives changing their mind every week about every single policy that they put forward. two weeks ago, the leader of the opposition said that it would be "moral cowardice" not to tear up the budget for 2010. then the shadow business secretary said that there would be "calamitous consequences" if that were to happen. now we have the shadow chief secretary to the treasury boasting that he does "not have a detailed plan." in other words, the people do not know where the conservative party stands, and the conservative party don't know where it stands. >> lembit opik. >> thanks to the assistance of finance wales, the staff of the secretary of state for business skills and the rbs, we have secured up to 100 new jobs at regal fayre in montgomery. however, those are more than outweighed by 180 potential redundancies in shop direct's newtown call center. could the prime minister arrange a meeting with the relevant minister, once i have met shop direct's senior management tomorrow morning, to discuss this possible closure, which could cause a localized new recession in montgomeryshire? >> well, i understand the concern when any jobs are lost. it is a personal tragedy for those people who have given their lives in many cases to one company, which is unable to continue to employ them. i shall arrange for these meetings that the honorable gentleman asks for to take place. i can assure him that every teenager who has been unemployed for six months now has the guarantee that they will get work or training, and that the services available to those who are unemployed are better than they have ever been. the result of that is that 300,000 people are leaving the unemployment register every month, and that employment is at a higher level and unemployment a lower level than people expected months ago. >> andrew miller. >> even though the claimant count is 48% down in my constituency, it is nevertheless a great disappointment to hear of bowater going into administration. will my right honorable friend do what he can to ensure that the parent company's actions are investigated -- they seem to be playing fast and loose with the british work force -- and that the work force affected and the supply chain are given every possible support? >> i know that the regional development agency stands ready to help his constituents and the company that is in difficulty. this is clearly a difficult time for the work force. the administrators have said that in this case they will keep the business trading while they explore all options, which include looking for a buyer for the business. but i can assure him that all the local agencies, including the rapid response teams at the jobcenter, will be available to help those workers in his constituency who are affected. >> sir paul beresford. >> i am sure that the prime minister is aware that in percentage terms the population of the united kingdom and ireland are the biggest reservoir of the prion that causes the fatal and incurable human brain disease variant vcjd. one of the means of transmission is blood transfusion. in october last year, the government's scientific committee that is examining this issue recommended the use of a filter for blood for transfusion for children initially. when is the government going to react to that recommendation? >> this is a very serious matter that he raises in great detail. that recommendation is obviously very important for the future of the blood transfusion service. i shall look at it very carefully and get back to him. >> tony lloyd. >> can the prime minister confirm that inheritance tax cuts of 200,000 pounds for the richest 3,000 families could be achieved only at the expense of spending on schools and hospitals throughout the nation? if he rejects that policy, can he guarantee that there will be no cameronian wobble on this side of the house? >> the one thing that the conservatives have stuck to through this month of muddle and division is their policy for inheritance tax. like their policy for hereditary peers, it will give the richest people in our society the greatest amount of additional wealth. that could be at the expense of schools, it could be at the expense of the health service and it could also be at the expense of defense. i think people should know that the conservative party's first priority, above all others, is to reduce inheritance tax for those who are perfectly able to take care of themselves. we are for the many, they are for the few. >> mr. graham stuart. >> health funding is skewed to younger, urban, labour-voting areas, rather than towards older, rural areas such as my constituency. that is why hull receives more than 1,800 pounds per head while the east riding receives just 1,200 pounds per head. the prime minister knows that age, not deprivation, is the key driver of health need, so why does he put the electoral interests of the labour party ahead of the needs of the sick? >> i have to say to him that the evidence is that in his region there are 12 new hospitals and 37,000 more nhs staff. we have doubled expenditure on the national health service so that everyone in our country will benefit and we are giving personal guarantees to every citizen of this country that they will receive cancer treatment within two weeks, that they will be in a position to