After months of waiting, and the resignation of two defence ministers, the Defence Investment Plan finally appeared this week.
Defence is the first responsibility of any government. In Parliament it is overwhelmingly a matter that is dealt with on a bipartisan basis - while still requiring scrutiny and challenge.
In East Hampshire, defence is also personal to many. We have strong ties to all of the Services, including through proximity to Portsmouth and RAF Odiham and until recently the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at Bordon. Many serving personnel, regular and reserve, live here and we have an above-average number of veterans, and active cadet groups.
The plans and funds for defence matter very much to the whole country; they have a particular extra significance in our area.
This Defence Investment Plan is an important step, and has been hard to reach agreement on within government. But it is only the first - and, relatively speaking, most straightforward - step on a journey we must commit to.
Since around 1990, after the Wall came down, not just the UK but many Western nations sought to bank a 'peace dividend' from the end of the Cold War, with money diverted to domestic spending. 9/11 prompted increases again, especially in the US, but by the early 2020s, most western nations were spending a significantly lower proportion of GDP on defence than they had been in the 1980s.
But now the world has become a more dangerous place with a belligerent Russia and war in Europe, and multiple threats and sources of instability throughout the world. The risk register is also more varied - alongside ‘traditional’ defence there is much more to be done against cyber threats, sabotage, and more. And the weaponry - such as drones and autonomous kit - is so much more complex and sophisticated. The truth is, any peace dividend has vanished: we - and those other allied nations - need to find a lot more funding to defend ourselves.
The content of the Investment Plan is broad and varied. Ministers have promised an additional £15 billion over the next four years to fund warships, aircraft, nuclear submarines, better protection for undersea infrastructure and significant investment in artificial intelligence and cyber capability. It is good to see the investment intent for Portsmouth Naval Base, alongside a drone procurement approach informed by experiences from Ukraine.
Some other aspects are disappointing. For many years, we have not done enough on standards of accommodation for services personnel and their families. Although there is in the plan a promise of much-needed works to housing, it appears that the schedule is to be put further put back.
To make the numbers work, there are some heroic assumptions about 'efficiencies' that can be found elsewhere in the budget, and a reduction in fraud and error in procurement (always important to pursue, but harder to bank). Moreover, almost £5bn of it is still to be found - in the tenure of the incoming Prime Minister. And even what is confirmed relies on capital cuts being made elsewhere, some of which may be hard to achieve part-way through programmes.
But these challenges will soon look small in contrast to what is to come. To reach 3.5% of the economy going to defence by 2035 requires additional spending many multiples of what has just been found.
This sort of increase will certainly not be found from efficiencies or trimming road upgrade budgets. With tax already at a historic high there will have to be difficult debate about how we prioritise what we as a country spend.