Another interesting day. It began with my morning jaunt under grey skies. Into the office and a quick catch-up on matters, before heading to the Thatcher Room in PCH for another session of our Defence Committee. Today was day one of our look at what is known as the 'grey zone'. What is that. Well, in the words of our committee specialist, Nigel Vinson, it is: "Grey zone conflict occurs when a hostile power exploits a mix of diplomatic, information, military and economic levers to try to bring about desired strategic outcomes without triggering a full-blown armed response from the target state(s)". We had two most interesting witnesses, Elisabeth Braw, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Centre for Strategy and Security, and Andrew Mumford, Professor of War Studies University of Nottingham. You can see this two hour session on Parliament TV. A quick sandwich lunch and then across to Room U in PCH to meet up with Miriam Cates, a friend and colleague, and other MPs, who had organised a meeting with representatives from the FA to talk about transgender football players. We sat for an hour talking this tricky issue through. Miriam had called for the meeting after a woman was seriously hurt on the pitch by a transgender player. To make it clear, we were not talking about the upper tiers of football, but amateur football for 18 year olds and over. My view on this topic, for what it's worth, is that transgender men should not be allowed to play in women's teams. Quite apart from the obvious problems, the question of changing rooms then arises and transgender men should not be allowed into women's spaces. The debate was frank and it ended with MPs feeling that many of our concerns had been taken on board. There was also a disagreement over what the law said, not least the Equality Act. A virtual session with a constituent was then cancelled due to illness on their part. At 1700, I was in CR18 to join members of the ERG talk through a number of issues. These meetings are held in private. Government business rolled through to 1900, after which I headed home. Towards the end of the day, I got wind of a most welcome announcement by the Prime Minister to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP. I have called for increased defence spending for years. The Defence Secretary was due to expand on this in a Statement tomorrow. In other news, three men, a child and a woman died attempting to cross the Channel from France. This trajey only underlines the need to deter them from risking their lives in the first place and one of the Government's tools to do just that is the Rwanda Bill. Abroad, the UN's human rights' chief said he was "horrified" by reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies in Gaza. And Manhattan prosecutors were seeking to have Donald Trump held in contempt of court and be sanctioned for allegedly violating a gag order issued by trial judge Juan Merchan.