The Advertiser has invited General Election candidates standing to represent Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber to share their views on key topics to the area.

This week, Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate Alan Reid writes about defence.

We would maintain the UK’s membership of NATO, and increase defence spending in every year of the Parliament, with an ambition to spend at least 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence.

All the Navy’s submarines should continue to be based at Faslane. We would maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent with four submarines providing continuous at-sea deterrence, while pursuing multilateral global disarmament talks.

The current government's cuts to the Army should be reversed, with a longer term ambition to increase regular troop numbers back to over 100,000.

The UK must support democracies around the world, especially those threatened by aggression such as Ukraine and Taiwan.

We must stand up to states like China and Russia, resisting their attempts to undermine our democratic values We stand with the people of Ukraine and provide them with the support they need in the face of Putin’s illegal invasion.

We would support and promote the development of international treaties on the principles and limits of the use of technology in modern warfare.

Service personnel and veterans deserve a fair deal. We would improve recruitment, retention and resettlement by strengthening the Armed Forces Covenant.

We would place a legal duty on the Defence Secretary and Government departments to give due regard to the Covenant. We would allocate resources to improve the standard of Ministry of Defence housing.

There should be a ‘presumption of denial’ for arms exports to governments listed as having human rights concerns in the Foreign Office’s annual human rights report.