Health News at Your Fingertips

The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she was frustrated by the delay in signing off the “living with Covid” plan.

In a tweet thread, she said:

The reality of UK finance flows means this decision determines the money devolved administrations (paid for by taxpayers in Sc, Wales & NI) have for testing.

Expressed frustration to Michael Gove this morning that we still don’t know & this delay deepens that.

Ian Watson of the BBC is speaking on BBC News now. He says there seems to be a disagreement over the timescale for withdrawing free testing.

Watson says sources have told him that “underlying tensions within the Department of Health and the Treasury of the £2bn monthly cost of free testing have not yet been resolved”.

The timescale of withdrawing free tests and who is eligible for continued free testing is also a source of tension, Watson says.

Boris Johnson’s statement in the Commons is still due to go ahead this afternoon but there will have to be a cabinet meeting before that takes place so it is unclear if it will have to be delayed.

Steven Swinford of The Times says the row holding up the cabinet meeting appears to have caught the prime minister “completely off guard”.

The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said the delayed cabinet meeting was a sign of “chaos and incompetence”.

He said:

The government is paralysed by its own chaos and incompetence and the British public are paying the price. This shambles cannot continue.

What confidence can the public have that the Conservatives are acting in the national interest when they can’t agree a plan for Covid?

Streeting said it was clear the prime minister was “trying to declare victory before the war is over”, simply to distract from the police knocking at the door of Number 10.

Several readers are pointing out that there has been a change on the government website where you can order free lateral flow tests, ahead of changes to Covid restrictions due to be announced today.

The system used to restrict people to one pack order per 24 hours. Now the LFT packs can only be ordered once every 72 hours. This change appears to have been introduced today. The Department of Health has been contacted for comment.

Experts have expressed particular concern about clinically extremely vulnerable people, for whom Covid still poses a more serious risk, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reported yesterday. The specialist guidance that has been in place for much of the pandemic is not expected to continue.

Gemma Peters, chief executive of Blood Cancer UK, said that the government had “deliberately abandoned” this group.

Removing free lateral flow tests would “create a massive health inequality” for clinically vulnerable people whose friends, family and colleagues could not afford to take tests before contact, Peters said, while removing the requirement to self-isolate would further ramp up “risk and anxiety”.

Read more on the prime minister’s Living with Covid plans:

The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine appears “highly likely” despite Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin tentatively agreeing to hold a crisis summit.

The US president agreed during last-ditch diplomatic efforts against the backdrop of heightening tensions to meet his Russian counterpart on the condition Moscow does not invade.

Truss, however, did not appear to be revising her concerns that the Kremlin would order an attack as she warned that the price of an invasion must be “intolerably high” for Russia.

After meeting the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, in Brussels, she tweeted:

Diplomacy must be pursued but a Russian invasion of Ukraine looks highly likely.

The UK and allies are stepping up preparations for the worst case scenario. We must make the cost for Russia intolerably high.

The prospect of talks also did little to dampen fears an attack was imminent in Washington, with the White House saying the Kremlin was continuing to prepare a “full-scale assault on Ukraine very soon”.

The reason the cabinet meeting to approve Boris Johnson’s new Covid plans has been delayed is down to an argument about money, several political journalists are reporting.

Harry Cole of the Sun predicts it’s going to be a long day.

Kevin Schofield of HuffPost UK says it sounds like a “proper barney” and has thrown the government’s plans for the day into chaos.

Some ministers had been photographed arriving in Downing Street ahead of the planned cabinet meeting to rubber stamp the ‘Living with Covid’ plan, which has been delayed.

It is understood it has not been cancelled and is still due to take place later today, after the prime minister has received further briefings, in order for the plans to be signed off.

However, there are rumours that the actual reason for the delay is that there is a row going on.

BBC News is reporting that sources in government have suggested it’s down to ongoing tensions between the Department of health and the Treasury.

Harry Cole of the Sun has heard the same:

One thing has been made clear, the reason for the delay has nothing to do with the Queen.

Boris Johnson’s statement to Commons on the plan was due to take place after 2:30pm. It’s not clear if that will now be delayed.

There is also due to be a press conference this evening, but the time is still to be confirmed. I’ll update you on these times as soon as I have them confirmed.

A business minister suggested the £2bn spent on providing free coronavirus tests every month could be better used elsewhere.

Amid reports that Boris Johnson was to scrap free Covid tests, Paul Scully told Sky News “we can’t continue forevermore spending 2 billion a month on tests”.

He said:

If you think what that £2bn might go towards, there’s a lot of other backlogs in the NHS, other illnesses in the NHS, that that money could otherwise go for.

So for every person that is worried about a test, there may be another person that’s worried about a cancer diagnosis, for instance.

Paul Scully denied Boris Johnson’s expected announcement on Covid rules has been brought forward to distract from the partygate saga.

Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, the business minister was asked whether the plan is a “smokescreen”, but said:

No, the restrictions are all peeling back on the 22nd of March anyway, so we need to be looking at these measures and we need to be looking at the data in the round.

Meanwhile, Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen told Good Morning Britain that while he welcomed the prime minister’s rolling back of measures, it did not change his decision to submit a letter of no confidence in the Tory leader.

He said there is “never a bad time to do the right thing”, and added:

The prime minister has done the right thing with regard to the Covid restrictions and that doesn’t change the status of my letter of no confidence.

There should be a “real high bar to get rid of any prime minister”, Paul Scully has said.

The business minister said he needed to “see the context” before he made any decision on Boris Johnson’s future over the partygate saga.

Asked about an alleged gathering for Johnson’s birthday, Scully said:

I understand this is one that’s not actually being investigated by the police… so in terms of lawbreaking, that’s not going to meet the reach the threshold of evidence.

But nonetheless, that’s what I mean about context, that’s why I want to see the Sue Gray report, see what the police find and then we can work through… have that conversation at that point.

I’m going to wait until I see context before I really make any more judgment on it.

Paul Scully said it would be down to employers and employees to make decisions over self-isolating.

The business minister told Sky News:

I would say that it’s like any illness, frankly, any transmissible illness that you would say stay at home.

He said if an employee had flu, they would be expected to stay at home, “but it’ll be down to themselves or down to their employer”.

Asked what action employees should take if their employers tried to force them in if they were ill with Covid, Scully said:

This is why we need to make sure that we’ve got really good guidance for employers.

But as I say, there will come a time when the pandemic moves to more of an endemic approach to Covid, in the same way that flu and other viruses are treated, and that’s what we’ve got to get back to.

But it’s a fine balance, clearly, and that’s why cabinet’s meeting this morning, to go through the science, to go through that balance and debate it and then, obviously, the prime minister (will) come before parliament to make his announcement.

The public should not “work and live under government diktat for a moment longer than is necessary”, a minister has said.

Business minister Paul Scully told Sky News it was important to make changes to coronavirus rules “to allow the economy to recover, to allow people to get back to a sense of normality, whilst keeping people safe, clearly”, as Boris Johnson prepared to launch his “living with Covid” plan.

Scully said:

Infections are coming down quite rapidly, the hospitalisations and deaths are following as well – they tend to lag behind, obviously, the case numbers – but nonetheless you can see the trend within that.

Scully said the prime minister will be “looking at the best advice possible but getting the balance right”.

The government’s “living with Covid” plan is due to be announced today, despite concerns from scientists, health experts and Labour that the move is premature.

Johnson said the proposal would be about “finally giving people back their freedom” after “one of the most difficult periods in our country’s history”.

The legal requirement for anyone with Covid to isolate will be ditched a month earlier than planned, while free PCR and lateral flow tests for everyone will be axed to rein in public spending and attempt to restore people’s confidence that life can return to normality. The tests will reportedly be kept for the over-80s.

The national contact tracing service is expected to be wound down and schoolchildren will no longer be told to get tested twice a week.

Fresh guidance is expected to be issued, similar to that already published about seasonal flu, designed to let individuals make their own judgments about the risk of catching or transmitting Covid, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports.

Following meetings over the weekend the cabinet will be assembled to rubber stamp the plans today before a Commons statement by the prime minister and a press conference in the evening, likely to feature the government’s two leading pandemic advisers, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance.

The changes will start to come into effect from later in the week, reportedly on Thursday which is being dubbed “Freedom Day” by some newspapers.

Welcome to today’s politics live blog. I’m Nicola Slawson and I’ll be taking the lead today. You can contact me on Twitter (@Nicola_Slawson) or via email (nicola.slawson@theguardian.com) if you have any questions or think I’m missing something.

You can also follow our dedicated Ukraine crisis blog here:

Meanwhile, our global coronavirus blog is here: