James Cartlidge is Shadow Defence Secretary and has been MP for South Suffolk since 2015
That our country faces strategic threats not seen for generations is now surely beyond doubt.
As US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed this week, a large contingent of the 10,000 North Korean troops sent to Russia have been 'injected' into battle against Ukrainian forces in Kursk.
The strategic implications are clear - our adversaries are strengthening their support for one another, undeterred by vast casualty rates, just like dictatorships in past conflicts. As before, democratic nations have no choice but to up their game on Defence spending and do all we can to deter aggressors, whilst aiding our ally in Ukraine. Any other course implies dangerous complacency.
But whilst it was incredibly frustrating having been granted an Urgent Question on 2.5% on Monday, only for Defence Secretary John Healey to offer not a shred of a timeline as to when we might reach that spending goal in practice, I am clear that more spending is not an end in itself.
So, why exactly do we need to go to 2.5%, and do so with a multi-year funding plan?
Put simply, it's all about 'R&R' - replenishment and rearmament. That is, replenishing the vast array of munitions and hardware that we have rightly gifted to Ukraine; and rearming both in volume terms, so that we restore our stocks of ordnance to warfighting levels, and technologically, so that we are competitive against the latest threats. This is why when the previous Prime Minister announced our plan to increase spending to 2.5% by 2030 back in April, he said the first priority of that policy was to 'fire up' the British defence industry, spurring levels of production only possible with a properly funded, multi-year demand signal.
Of course, to have a multi-year settlement you need a multi-year plan to fund it and we would have reduced civil service headcount back to its pre-pandemic size, whilst increasing the proportion of total Government R&D spend for the MoD - cross-Government solutions in both cases, underlying our total prioritisation of Defence.
At Monday's UQ John Healey suggested our plan to 2.5% was 'unfunded' because the way to pay for it was somehow not credible - frankly, a headcount reduction back to pre-pandemic size, when we no longer face such an extraordinary situation, should easily be achievable for any half-competent Government. The fact is Labour have ruled out such a cost reduction plan because their Union paymasters would never approve it - they are prioritising a larger state over strengthening our armed forces.
Specifically, the plan would have seen significant year on year funding increases, including an extra £10bn for munitions - which we would have had to fund through damaging cuts and deferments without the extra cash. I know this because I was Defence Procurement Minister at the time, and I have always accepted that Putin's invasion drove up inflation and ushered in an era of surging demand for munitions, ultimately sending the future MOD equipment plan northwards in cost terms - and further necessitating our multi-year approach.
Labour call this cost pressure a 'black' hole. But this inflationary impact on the MoD was a matter of public pressure months before the election and is one of the reasons we committed to the 2.5% plan.
It's worth stressing the certainty over the cash timeline is almost as important as the volume - the fact is you need both. Why? Because this enables procurement not just at scale, but at pace.
The more certainty over spending in the longer-term, the easier it is for the MoD to place the orders it needs, as quickly as possible; the more powerful the demand signal, the more potent the spur to defence industrial investment, innovation and output.
For example, with multi-year certainty, spending can be 'reprofiled' - i.e. reprioritised - across years, according to the threat. As Procurement Minister, and as recently set out in my response to Lord Robertson's Strategic Defence Review, I wanted to see the single services moving to a far greater focus on near term lethality - still pursuing our most important and inevitably longer-term programmes like nuclear submarine production, but being prepared to move with greater pace to boost the fighting capability of the forces we have today.
Back in February, I announced a new Integrated Procurement Model to streamline our acquisition approach. People will always say 'we've heard that kind of thing before', but I do believe it was starting to have an impact in practice.
Seeing the drone threat we faced in the Red Sea, and confronted with a post-2030 in service date for our cutting edge DragonFire anti-drone laser, I did everything possible to cut out bureaucratic hurdles and move to a faster 'Minimum Deployable Capability' by 2027 - such is the urgency of being able to respond to drones in the maritime domain without relying on expensive missiles.
Just as John Healey can point to us last spending 2.5% in 2010, I could as easily say the last time we spent 3% was in 1996. The point being that these are two coincidentally convenient points on a broadly downward spending trend in Defence spending ever since the end of the Cold War, through successive Governments, amid the belief that the world was becoming more peaceful.
We now need to move to 2.5% as soon as possible and have to show leadership in European NATO so that other nations do the same. As Procurement Minister I wanted us to drive ahead with 'multi-national procurement initiatives', i.e. clubbing together with allies to buy new kit at scale. I'm pleased Labour are continuing this approach, confirming to me in a recent written answer that they are involved in jointly procuring ASRAAM and LMM missiles.
To win the next war, we need to deter it from happening in the first place.
It would be one of the most significant boosts possible to our overall deterrence posture if NATO as a whole were to embark on a shared drive to replenish and rearm - but Labour must show the urgency necessary on 2.5%, in order for us to lead the way.