The 2019 Conservative Manifesto stated very clearly as shown here that they would “proudly maintain their commitment to spend 0.7% of our Gross National Income on development and do more to help countries receiving aid become self-sufficient” They never focused on the fact that Germany donated 0.73% of their GNI. Sadly as the Government set out many months ago that they were going to reduce it to 0.5% so below Germany and France. We should however be very pleased that several Conservatives did oppose the Government partly because they knew they were elected based on their manifesto. These are the Conservatives who voted to oppose the Government. That said the Labour and SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, DUP and a range of small parties all voted to oppose the Government. Sadly although there were 25 Conservative MPs who voted to oppose the decision there were 34 more MPs who voted to destroy the manifesto promise. In terms of the 25 MPs who rejected their own party decisions Theresa May was the highest profile person. Other well known ones were David Davis, Damian Green, Jeremy Hunt and Caroline Nokes. In addition there were thankfully two Sussex MPs who were Tim Loughton and Peter Bottomley. We need to thank these two people and also the others. Along with the votes against the appalling decision there was one Sussex MP who did not vote which was Nusrat Ghani. It will be fascinating to find out why she did not vote in either case.