Foreign Aid Expenditure — [Phil Wilson in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 4:30 pm on 13 June 2016.

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Photo of Steve Double Steve Double Conservative, St Austell and Newquay 4:30, 13 June 2016

I would like to make a little more progress, and then I will accept further interventions.

The issue can be emotive and controversial for some. It is far too easy to get caught up in the attention-grabbing headlines or misled by the wildly exaggerated information out there in the public domain. People want to know how the money is spent and whether it is being spent in our interest, and rightly so. That was clearly demonstrated in the Twitter discussion held this afternoon, in which the Chair of the Select Committee on International Development, Stephen Twigg, and I participated. We had about 3,000 contributions in just an hour. In fact, it was impossible to keep up with the number of people posting, let alone respond to them all, but it was clear from that discussion that there are strong feelings on both sides of the debate.