Nick Clegg hits back at Philip Hammond in new foreign aid row I think what is a little bizarre - to put it as diplomatically as I can - is that the Foreign Secretary, a Conservative, should go to Sierra Leone to tear up his own manifesto. It was a Conservative party manifesto commitment to legislate on this commitment of devoting 0.7% of our national income," he said Mr Clegg said the Foreign Secretary's distancing of himself from the vow was "a measure of quite what's happened to the Conservative party over the last several years." Four and a half years later, they used to believe in the environment, they used to believe in helping people on the other side of the world and now they're claiming it's bizarre. It was their own idea. He was responding to comments Mr Hammond made while visiting a series of British-led projects assisting in the battle against Ebola, which has claimed almost 5,000 lives in west Africa. Any new law would commit the Government to spending more than £12 billion annually.