Isabel Hardman

Theresa May has just announced that she is going to, 'with regret', vote against the government today on aid spending. It will be the first time she has voted against a three-line whip (previously she has abstained on crunch votes). The former Prime Minister recalled with some force her own dealings with Conservative rebels when she was the first backbencher to speak in the debate on the cut from 0.7 per cent of gross national income to 0.5 per cent this afternoon. 'As Prime Minister, I suffered at the hands of rebels,' she said. But she was even more forceful on the way this government had broken its promise, on how this would mean, in her words, that 'more of the poorest people in the world will die' and that she didn't believe that the tests for restoring the spending commitment to 0.

How different will life be after 19 July? Not very, if the Prime Minister’s press conference this evening was anything to go by. As with Sajid Javid’s statement in the Commons earlier confirming the final step of the road map, Boris Johnson’s emphasis seemed muted. He said he expected people to continue wearing masks, working from home and generally not making the full use of the freedoms they are being given next week. Johnson warned that ‘this is not the end of Covid’, that he didn’t want the public to be ‘demob happy’ and that we ‘must be cautious’ as we take the next step out of the restrictions.

Is the government having a wobble over ‘Freedom Day’ on 19 July? Well, for one thing you won’t hear ministers talking about ‘Freedom Day’ over the next week. Instead, they are preferring to focus on the need for people to be very cautious, given the soaring numbers of cases and hospitalisations. When he appeared on Times Radio this morning, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi talked far more about what would still be ‘expected’ of people after 19 July than about how the roadmap was working and how nice it was for life to be returning to normal. For him, this date seems to be more ‘Be very careful day’.

Sajid Javid’s parallel statement in the Commons to Boris Johnson’s press conference on the government’s plan for unlocking drew the same criticisms about failing to protect the vulnerable and bowing to Tory backbench pressure. He did get a ‘hallelujah’ from one such backbencher as he spoke of the end of social distancing. But the health secretary faced anger from the opposition benches about the decision to leave mask wearing up to the public and businesses at a time when cases are rising. Green MP Caroline Lucas compared Covid restrictions to road safety laws, asking why a similar approach to the speed limit couldn’t be taken to mask-wearing.

Sajid Javid has his first Commons outing as Health Secretary today, not even 48 hours after he took over from Matt Hancock. As Katy outlines here, the focus will be on how he differs from his predecessor on the pace of easing Covid restrictions. But Javid will also quickly face questions on whether he plans to scrap some of Hancock's ambitious plans to reform the NHS too. As I reported last week, there is growing anxiety in the health service and in the Conservative party about the forthcoming Health and Social Care Bill, with one senior figure warning that it could end up being 'Lansley mark II'. That's a reference to the politically explosive row the last time the Tories tried to reform the NHS a decade ago with Andrew Lansley as Health Secretary.