As it stands, the Defence Investment Plan is a chronic missed opportunity and lacks ambition. Defence bonds would be a powerful way to increase R&D, address our national security needs and raise economic growth. I challenged the government on this and have written to the former Defence Secretary and Labour leadership contenders, alongside other Lib Dem MPs, urging them to commit to this.

It is not surprising that the Defence Secretary has resigned today blaming the Treasury. Yesterday I challenged Lucy Rigby, the Chancellor’s deputy, about the alarming lack of ambition in the Defence Investment Plan. As it stands the Defence Investment Plan is a chronic missed opportunity both to address our national security needs and use defence R&D as an engine for growth. Draghi has called for the EU countries to borrow jointly for defence R&D to drive defence and growth, if it is good enough for the EU, why isn’t it good enough for us?

I challenged Lucia Retter from RAND on whether defence procurement was completely broken and should be stripped from the MOD and started again.

Leading academic, John Van Reenen, has highlighted the growth in UK productivity to an annualised rate of 1.6% and the productivity measures the government has taken, including investment in research and development (R&D). I’ve been calling on the government to invest more in R&D since my election and this is encouraging to see. I asked the Bank of England Deputy Governor if the recent productivity figures are true and sustainable.

The OBR penalises the government for the upfront costs of long term policy making without showing the benefits because their forecast horizon is five years. I bought the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Professor Doug Elmendorf, the US equivalent, to the Treasury Committee to testify how US economic policy making has benefited from a ten year forecast horizon to help improve UK policymaking. Policies to boost productivity and innovation, such as R&D, infrastructure or education, can take over five years to fully materialise.

As we left my grandmother’s funeral, they played Fred Astaire’s “The way you look tonight”, a song she loved and danced to with British soldiers. I was so proud that she was decorated as a nurse after D-Day. Today Europe is threatened by a dictator again with too many turning to fear. There is still enough time to set a new national mission: we must dramatically increase defence research and development to power economic growth and defend liberal democracy.