Up early and into the office. A mass to do as always on a Monday morning and then to London. A catch-up in my office, with casework and correspondence predominating, before attending some delegated legislation in the afternoon. At about 1900 a defence debate began, based on a report by the Defence Select Committee. It was opened by a top-class speech by the committee's chairman Rory Stewart. I remained for over an hour, intervening once to make the point that you cannot cut our armed forces and then expect them to meet all the many commitments the future no doubt holds. We have committed to spend 2% of our GDP of defence and we are not. Worse we told other to do likewise. I listened to several excellent speeches, including two from the Opposition benches. We all felt that the 2% commitment MUST be met and even that was probably not enough. I was one of several MPs who won a debate on defence next Thursday and will be making a speech then. We live in dangerous and unstable times and not to be prepared for a worse case scenario is very unwise.