Good evening. The British are by some distance the most generous major nation on earth to foreigners,

or at least our government is on our behalf. Our overseas aid budget has been set by law at 0.7% of national income.

We spend more on it than on long-term social care at home. Now, though, it's being cut.

With national debt skyrocketing because of the pandemic, we can't afford it, it seems. Something the cut will prove permanent. We can afford a major increase in defence spending, though, to counter new threats, cyber warfare, drones, that kind of thing. Here are two competing moral visions of Britain's place in the world.

To some, the contrast is between belligerence and benevolence.

To others, the first duty of any government is to protect its citizens,

and charity should begin, and maybe even end, at home.

Both plead pragmatic justification, increasing Britain's influence,

as well as an ethical imperative.

Both have been accused of waste and ineffectiveness. Both claim to live by moral codes that have not always been maintained. Is spending taxpayers' money on defence morally better

or worse than spending it on foreign aid? That's our moral maze tonight, the panel.

Melanie Phillips, social commentator at the Times,

Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist,

Ash Sarkar, another senior editor,

in her case at the left-wing Navarra Media Group,

and the chief executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor.

Melody, these are, I think, two sides of the same coin, aren't they, morally as well as politically?

I don't think so. I think that the first duty of a nation is to its people and to defend its people.

Overseas aid, which is fine in theory and some of it in practice, but much of it fails to achieve its objectives, and so it's largely, in my view,

hypocritical chest beating for Western virtue.

Matthew Taylor.

The intuitive sense that giving aid is morally benign, while defence spending is morally ambiguous,

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