Sir Julian Lewis: May I offer some advice to Defence Ministers in their bare-knuckle fight with the Treasury for adequate defence funding? They really should move away from this glib spin doctor’s line about defence expenditure rising faster now than at any time since the end of the cold war. The situation we are in now is as dangerous as any that took place not at the end of the cold war, when defence expenditure was declining, but at its height, when Conservative Governments – with, I think, Opposition approval – regularly spent between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence. Please, Minister, do not parrot a line that goes way below what we need in the circumstances that we face today.

[The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry (Luke Pollard): I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, with whom I have spent many hours discussing defence spending. I am certainly very aware of the danger we now face – it is one of the reasons why the Government have decided to declassify a number of the threats facing the United Kingdom. When the Defence Secretary declassified the activities of the Russian spy ship Yantar over our undersea cables, for example, it was both to explain the threats that we are now facing as a nation and to send a clear signal to Putin that we see what he is doing. Deterrence takes a number of forms; there are certainly our capabilities, but the ability to call out and, in doing so, to restrict the ability of Russia to threaten the UK and our allies is also important. I understand what he says, however, and take it seriously.]