I was invited by the French President, Francois Hollande, to Sword Beach in Normandy for the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day landings. He invited me because I am the President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Before I left I spoke with Ken Smith, the Chairman of the York Branch of the Normandy Veterans Association, who attended the events with six other veterans from York.

It was a humbling and moving day. Seventy years ago Ken Smith risked his life to secure the freedom - too often taken for granted these days - to speak our mind, choose our government and chuck them out when we want change. These are precious freedoms, not available everywhere in the world, but I have had the privilege to use them every time I stand for election, or speak in the House of Commons, thanks to people like Ken Smith, and my father who also fought in in the second world war in France, Germany and Holland with the 6th Airborne Division.

I sat on the Presidential podium, just a few rows behind President Hollande and our Queen, who received the biggest standing ovation of all the world leaders, outdoing even President Obama, and rightly so as she is the only remaining Head of State who served in uniform in the second world war - in the ATS, the women's branch of the Army.

I sat beside Mr Remi Dreyfus, now aged 95, one of the few French citizens to land on D-Day. He escaped to Britain in 1942, joined the free French Army, and parachuted back with the British 6th Airborne Division on D-Day as an interpreter.

I also met many British veterans, including John Langdon from Ripon, but sadly none of the York contingent, although I hope to go soon to one of their meetings in York.

The enormous loss of life on D-Day, and over the following year until the war ended, should remind us of the very high price that is paid by service personnel and civilians - on both sides - when the politics of defence and deterrence fail. We disarmed in the 1930s, when Hitler was rearming and threatening other countries, and over the past five years we and other NATO countries have cut our defence spending by 10 percent.

Over the same period Russia has increased its defence spending by more than 50 percent. Why do they want stronger military forces? What do they fear? Over the past 25 years, since communism came to an end, NATO has invited Russia to observe all our military exercises. They even have an Ambassador at NATO Headquarters. They know we have no plans to threaten them.

I don't think Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is like Hitler. He is not. Nor is he trying to restart the Cold War. But he has watched us disarm, and I believe it is one of the reasons why he felt bold enough to annex Crimea, and destabilise eastern Ukraine. He has also occupied territory from Georgia - Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He is testing us out, to see how far he can go before we react.

I tackled David Cameron about this in the House of Commons after the D-Day ceremony, and I spoke about it at greater length in Parliament last week.

We do not need to cut defence. Labour spent more on our Armed Forces than David Cameron, even after the banking crisis, and Margaret Thatcher spent twice as we do now, at a time when the country faced even greater economic problems and unemployment stood at three million.

The first responsibility of any government is to defend the country, to provide security for the British public. I believe the coalition government has cut defence too much. They should stop cutting, and as growth comes back into the economy start spending more to rebuild our Armed Forces, to make sure they have the resources to do the difficult and often dangerous jobs we ask of them - from civil defence when rivers flood, to their main job defending Britain and deterring aggression by other countries.