Stuart Anderson

I definitely do. I have had the reserves deployed with me when I have been on operations, and they were a great asset. Scaling up the reserves is vital. We have the article 3 NATO commitment, and we need to ensure that we can fulfil that. It is not just about the reserves staying here and the regulars flying overseas. Integration is key, and I would be keen to see that. Let us look at how the rearming of the world has changed. After the illegal invasion of Russia into Ukraine, the world sat up. At that stage, defence spending was at 2.1%. I will be clear: as soon as I was elected, with hon. Members from across the House, I called for 3%. I felt that even 3% was not enough during the previous Government, and I said that all the way through. The Defence Committee was united. We did procurement reports right the way through 20 or 30 years of procurement failings. I am not just saying this to make a point now. I still believe that if defence spending is not at least 3% of GDP today, we do not have the ability to put the plan in place on the scale we need. From 2021 to now, we have gone from 2.1% to 2.4%, but the problem is that the NATO average is currently 2.76%. In that short space of time, we have gone from being roughly the third highest defence spender according to percentage of GDP to being the ninth or 12th, depending on which table we look at. It is good that, as the Government say, we have made the biggest increase since the cold war, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said, we need to look at what it was like post war. We are not moving as fast as all the other peer nations. We had a great start, but that has now started to deplete over decades of a peace dividend. We need to take this seriously as an urgent priority and invest on the necessary scale. The delay on the DIP is having an impact. I know that if Ministers had a choice, they would have the DIP here today. We have to get this right. It has gone past the time when we expected the DIP to be produced. I have spoken to so many in the industry and so many serving personnel who are screaming out for it. I have struggled to find anybody who thinks we have the time for this. I hope the Minister will take away the importance of the DIP being produced—I am positive that he wants it today—to unlock the next phase. There are many areas where there is consensus in this House on how we should move forward and prepare this country for war. We are losing standing on the world stage because of our current capability, which has seen getting on for 30 years of under-investment. We do not have the ability today to project power on the scale that we did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.