Green Party Leader Can't Say How Much They'd Spend On Defence
8 May 2019, 08:07
Iain Dale said the Green Party was not a serious candidate for government after the leader couldn't say how much the party would spend on defence.
After a caller asked Sian Berry why the Green Party wanted to leave NATO at a time when Russia were increasing their actions against the UK, Iain asked what percentage of GDP they would allocate for defence.
Ms Berry responded: "I couldn't give you a number on that. It's definitely got to be less than that [2%]."
Iain then said: "You're the leader of a political party. If you can't tell the leader of the country how much you think we should be spending on defence, you're not serious candidates for government, are you?"
Ms Berry said she could go and find out, but Iain insisted: "No, you should know."
The Green Party leader then said: "As a general principle, we need to be reducing the amount we spend on arms, we need to be cancelling nuclear weapon procurement, the replacement for Trident, and we need to be spending more money on troops, on people skills and people power, the things we are actually reducing at the moment.
"The Army is very stretched at the moment. Soldiers who have been sent into battle are being sent back into battle too soon, which is really harming their mental health.
"We need to be building up the army in terms of its skills and its ability to promote peace around the world and do things like disaster relief and rebuilding communities.
"It's quite labour-intensive and I can't tell you in terms of budgets which is more expensive. I think we'd come out on a positive as Trident is ludicrously expensive."
