Stuart Anderson

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher). I do not think that I have heard anyone call for 20% of spending on defence, but I like it. I am not sure how we would maintain the reversal of the two-child cap if 20% of spending went to defence, but he made a very good speech. I will set out a few key points on what we are looking at, where the world is today, where we have been, and what we must do to deal with the threat. As I have said many times—colleagues are probably getting sick of me saying it—there is a challenge to the world order as we know it. I do not believe that anybody alive has experienced such a significant change. We face the ultimate volatility, like the fall of the Berlin wall or 9/11. Given the current position of the US Government—on Venezuela, in what they said about Greenland, and in the attack on Iran—everything has been thrown in the air. Many people expect life to fall back to where it was and to continue, but there is a challenge to the world order between China and the US, and there is a commodities race over oil and rare earth metals. How do we get global supply chains working and moving forward? Rare earth metals are not actually rare, but it can take 15 to 17 years to get them out of the ground once they have been found. Most of the electronics that we have on us, including wearables, require such metals. At the moment, about 90% of those resources are controlled and processed by China, and there is a huge push to change that. The US is moving to change it, and our policy seeks to shift around that. When AI and quantum come together, defence technologies—including drone and autonomous warfare—will take a huge leap forward. If we do not get this stage right, we will be so far behind. The second world war was about who could produce the most tanks, planes and troops at scale, with the right strategy. Now, technology can shift the dial exceptionally quickly. I know that the Minister has spoken about the drone passion, autonomy and things like that. That is the right direction. It is not either/or; there is a whole plethora of things that we need to. The defence investment plan unlocks the next phase of where we can go.