Isabel Hardman

How can the government really promise to clear the NHS backlog when it isn't investing in the necessary staff to carry out the treatments? That's the question many in the health service are asking after this week's Spending Review. Sure, the Chancellor announced a £5.9 billion commitment on capital spending, which will increase bed capacity, set up more diagnostic centres and improve technology and data systems, but these don't make sense unless you have the people working in them. The government had led the health world to believe that it would offer some kind of financial clarity on workforce in the Spending Review.

Given Rishi Sunak spent so much of his Budget pointing out how high spending was – and given he announced some very Labour-friendly measures, such as a surprisingly big cut in the taper rate of Universal Credit from 63 per cent to 55 per cent – whoever responded on behalf of the Opposition was going to have a tricky job. Sir Keir Starmer should have been performing this thankless task, but thanks to his sudden self-isolation after a positive Covid test, it was the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves who had to do it instead. It's not clear how much of the speech was her own and how much of it was pre-written by Starmer.

Lindsay Hoyle is, to put it mildly, on the warpath. The Speaker is now giving almost daily statements in which he complains about the government's habit of making announcements to the media rather than in parliament. Last week he was furious that Health Secretary Sajid Javid had held a Downing Street press briefing on Covid instead of coming to the Commons. Yesterday he granted four urgent questions as punishment for the latest round of briefings. Today he was back fulminating again, telling the chamber that the government was breaking its own ministerial code by giving Budget announcements to the press first.

The Speaker was annoyed again today when the government only offered the Commons a Covid update after the Health Secretary's press briefing yesterday. Labour hauled vaccines minister Maggie Throup to the chamber for an urgent question. Before she had a chance to answer, Lindsay Hoyle scolded her superiors. 'This is not acceptable and, as I have warned the government, in those circumstances, I will allow the House the earliest opportunity to hear from a minister: in this case by an urgent question,' he said.

Why has the political debate following Sir David Amess's killing moved so swiftly to focus on civility in politics? It's a reasonable question that a lot of people – including my colleague Sam Leith – have been asking. The police are treating Amess's death as a terrorist attack, and yet other MPs have been talking about the need to stop online abuse and to encourage a more open political culture. The link between people shouting at their MPs about how they voted and the motives of Islamist terrorists is, to put it politely, somewhat unproven. Politicians are always high-value targets for terrorists in any country, regardless of how mean or otherwise the rest of society is to them.

Boris Johnson announced this afternoon that Southend will receive city status as a tribute to the campaigning work of Sir David Amess, who was killed. Sir David's best known Commons contributing was Inserting Southend's bid to become a city into any question, no matter how tenuous, and it seemed an inevitable way of the government marking his death. MPs paying their respects to the Southend West MP have all focused on his dedication to his constituency, but also on his kindness. Johnson told the chamber that 'he was... one of the nicest, kindest, and most gentle individuals ever to grace these benches'. Everyone mentioned his smile and his sense of humour.

Sir David Amess was killed in the line of duty. He was doing one of the most important – and vulnerable – parts of an MP’s job, and he was killed while doing it. Most of the week, MPs go to work in a palace under armed guard. They live in houses with CCTV, panic alarms and rapid police response mechanisms in case of trouble. These measures have gradually been added to their lives as the perceived threat has increased. But in just over a decade, three serious attacks against MPs have taken place in the one place where they lack such security: their constituency surgeries. Stephen Timms was stabbed at his surgery in 2010. Jo Cox was murdered leaving hers five years ago. Today, Amess was killed at his.