SOUTH DORSET MP Richard Drax calls on the government to increase its defence spending.

Yesterday, Mr Drax urged Defence Secretary Michael Fallon to spend more than the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) agreed two percent of the UK’s Gross Domestic Product on security.

Speaking during a debate on Britain and international security, Mr Drax said: “The Secretary of State has already said that we face many potential major threats.

"Surely we need to spend a lot more than two percent on defence to meet that awful inevitability.”

He was responding to the Defence Secretary’s speech, in which Mr Fallon said that defence spending reached 2.2 per cent of GDP last year and would reach 2 per cent this year. The NATO agreed minimum is 2 per cent of GDP.

The Defence Secretary listed a wide range of British military commitments and discussed other threats and gave an insight into the government’s thinking behind the next strategic defence and security review, which is anticipated this autumn.

David Cameron has warned that Islamic State (IS) must be destroyed in its Syrian heartland as Labour signalled it was ready to back further military action in the wake of Tunisia beach attack.

In the Commons, Mr Fallon began laying out the case for extending RAF air strikes into Syria, telling MPs that was where IS - or Isil as it is also referred to - organised and directed its operations.

He made clear however that the Government would not stage a new vote of MPs unless it was clear there was "some consensus" across the House for widening the existing RAF operations against IS in Iraq.

with a leadership contest ongoing, the signs are that Mr Cameron will wait until September when a successor to Mr Miliband is in place before going back to the Commons with a new motion.

The Prime Minister is determined to avoid a repeat of the 2013 vote on military action against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad when he suffered a damaging Commons defeat at the hands of Labour and rebel Conservative MPs.

Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman said there was a need for "more thought, more deliberation, more time" before any decision was taken, although she stressed that he still believed that ultimately IS had to be dealt with in Syria.

But Mr Drax, who had a career in the military, said he fears Britain does not have the capacity to deal with a major threat.

Mr Drax added: “He [Fallon] is talking about planes and ships, and about men and women doing various good things all around the world, as no doubt they are.

“As an ex-member of the armed forces, I am fully aware of the top quality of our men and women, and I cannot praise them enough. However, in my day, those would have been called out-of-area operations, and we do not have the volume to meet a major threat.”

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