Former Health Secretary Sajid Javid is giving a resignation speech to a silent Commons chamber: 'I am instinctively a team player. But treading the tightrope between loyalty and integrity has become impossible in recent months and I will never risk losing my integrity... ...A team is as good as its team captain and a captain is as good as his or her team. So loyalty must go both ways. The events of recent months have made it increasingly difficult to be in that team...

Tory MP Tim Loughton asks the PM under which circumstances he'd resign. He replies he'd do so if 'I felt it was impossible for the Govt to go on and discharge the mandate we’ve been given or we were being frustrated in our desire to help the Ukrainian people or some major point.' The PM continues: 'The job of the Prime Minister in difficult circumstances, when you’ve been handed a colossal mandate, is to keep going and that’s what I’m going to do.'

'The Protocol isn’t set in stone,' Foreign Secretary Liz Truss tells the Commons as she opens the second reading of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. She adds: 'In the absence of the EU being willing to change the text, the only way to resolve this is for us to legislate.' Truss tells MPs: 'I know there are those across the House who want to give negotiation more time. We’ve been negotiating for 18 months. We have a negotiating partner who is refusing to change the text of the Protocol, meanwhile we have a worsening situation in Northern Ireland.’

EU Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen: 'We've closed our skies to Russian aircraft, including the private jets of oligarchs. And make no mistake, we will freeze their other assets as well. Be it yachts or fancy cars or luxury properties, we'll freeze that all together.' Ursula von der Leyen: 'More than 30 countries representing well over half of the world's economy have announced sanctions and export controls on Russia. If Putin was seeking to divide the EU, weaken NATO and break the international community he has achieved exactly the opposite.'

NATO's Stoltenberg: 'So far we haven't seen any deescalation, any signs of reduced Russian military presence on the borders with Ukraine'. Adds: 'The signs coming from Moscow about a willingness to continue to engage in diplomatic efforts gives some reason for cautious optimism.' Stoltenberg says only a 'significant and enduring withdrawal of troops and heavy equipment' from the Ukraine border would constitute genuine deescalation. He stresses troops can be moved around quite quickly, meaning they can be withdrawn then redeployed within a matter of days.

PM and NATO chief speaking here in Brussels. Jens Stoltenberg says it’s a ‘dangerous time for European security’. He says at the Ukraine border ‘the number of Russian forces is going up, the warning time for an attack is going down.’ He warns: ‘We must be prepared for the worst.’ Boris Johnson says: ‘The UK’s commitment to European security is unconditional and immovable. The stakes are very high and this is a very dangerous moment. At stake are the rules that protect every nation, big and small.’

1/ Fascinating grilling of Lord Frost on a Swiss-style governance compromise for the NI Protocol at the Commons European Scrutiny Committee. He tells them: 'We’re not interested in arrangements which keep the court in by some other name, at one removed, or in some other way.' 2/ He says this means 'no role for the court as the final arbiter of disputes, as the summit of the system that imposes EU law, no role for the direct settlement of disputes between us' and that this is a 'fundamental thing we need to remove from the arrangements going forward.'

Speaking in Lisbon, Lord Frost says the EU and UK have got into a 'low equilibrium, somewhat fractious relationship' and it will 'take two to fix it'. He adds: 'Fixing the very serious problem we have in the NI Protocol is a prerequisite to getting to that better place.' On border checks for goods, Lord Frost says: 'Even when our controls are fully in place we're never going to adopt the same levels of checks and controls that the EU imposes on itself, because we don't believe the levels of risk necessarily require them.'

Maros Sefcovic says the EU 'will not renegotiate' the NI Protocol 'as the UK is requesting' nor will it accept fixes that 'cut off' NI from the Single Market. He adds UK threats to trigger Article 16 are an unhelpful distraction that 'will not help us find solutions any quicker'. Sefcovic goes on to say the Article 16 threats are counterproductive. 'We have to move from the tough political rhetoric, from the threats. You are trying to do your most and what you hear from the other side is "it's not good enough"...these threats are definitely not helping.'

David Frost tells the Lords the NI Protocol has been 'the source of considerable and ongoing disruption to lives and livelihoods' and that 'the circumstances exist to justify the use of Article 16'. But he says 'it's not the time to do so' and talks with the EU will continue. Lord Frost says there should be an agreed 'standstill period' during which all grace periods stay in force and EU legal action over alleged breaches of the Protocol are frozen. He says this would 'ensure there is room to negotiate' and 'provide a genuine signal of good intent'.

Lord Frost says UK proposals on NI Protocol 'wouldn’t totally eliminate the problem' in terms of East-West checks but 'would make it a lot easier to work'. He adds the UK's 'minimum' ask is goods can move in a 'much more free-flowing, open way' and that 'time is running out'. Lord Frost says the EU's insistence on alignment with its SPS rules or accepting checks is 'a political position' and 'it isn’t a depiction of some sort of existential reality about the world'. He adds: 'They could change their rules in the context of NI if they wanted to.'

1/ There are two Brexit meetings in London today. First, the Joint Committee which will be dominated by the row over the NI Protocol. Second, the inaugural Partnership Council at which issues related to wider UK-EU relations will be discussed. A (sorry not so brief) rundown 👇 2/ The Joint Committee will be by far the most difficult of the two. There has been a lot of rhetoric flying around on both sides in the last few days about who is to blame for the problems arising from checks in the Irish Sea, and how they can be fixed.

At European Scrutiny Committee Lord Frost says UK has 'internalised EU law and EU ways of thinking over the last 50 years' and should use Brexit to get 'back to arrangements consistent with the lighter touch common law...the ability to experiment and develop things as we go on'. He adds: 'One of the advantages we will get from Brexit is the opportunity to do things differently. I don't think we should accept that we're in the EU's regulatory orbit...we do need to develop our own ways of doing things and our own philosophy behind it.'

1/ How time flies - there are now only two weeks left for the EU Parliament to ratify the Brexit trade deal before its provisional application runs out at the end of the month. There has long been an assumption in the end MEPs will put up and shut up, but is it quite that simple? 2/ So far the Parliament's main groupings have refused to set a date for the vote. But if it's going to happen, it's got to be at the April 26-29 plenary. In the meantime MEPs are carrying on laying the groundwork and the deal is set to clear its final committee hurdles today.

1/ Ex Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker says he's 'not a fan' of Ursula von der Leyen's export ban and 'I don't think this is the right way to do it'. He fears it will create 'major reputation damage' to the EU as a champion of free trade, in an interview with @BBCHARDtalk 2/ Juncker says: 'We have to pull back from a vaccine war. We have special relations with Britain, there's room for dialogue. Nobody understands why we're witnessing such a stupid vaccine war. This cannot be dealt with in a war atmosphere. We are not enemies, we are allies.'

1/ The principle of 'reciprocity' of supply is at the heart of finding a solution to the UK-EU vaccines stand-off. But it's not a simple case of counting jabs export numbers. It's also about weighing each party's overall contribution to the development and production of vaccines. 2/ This is not only about finished vaccines, but also about international supply chains and the raw materials that go into them. Croda International, based in Yorkshire, provides lipid components for the Pfizer jab which is made here in Belgium, for example.

EMA boss Emer Cooke on AstraZeneca vaccine: 'At present there is no indication vaccination has caused these conditions. We’re still firmly convinced the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risk of side-effects.' Its evaluation into the jab's safety will conclude on Thursday. EMA boss Emer Cooke: 'We are looking at adverse events associated with all vaccines. We have looked at the background rates for all the vaccines currently in circulation and it looks like there are similar numbers coming in across the world.'

1/ So, just two months into the new UK-EU relationship we've already reached the point where the two sides are arguing over what constitutes a breach of the NI Protocol. Britain says it's done nothing wrong. Brussels is fuming. What's up? thesun.co.uk/news/14224105/… 2/ The latest row is about the UK's announcement that it plans to unilaterally extend grace periods exempting goods going from GB to NI from EU checks. These were agreed in the NI Protocol and are due to expire at the end of the month. But the UK is prolonging them until Oct 1.

1/ Trade Secretary Liz Truss will travel to Brussels tomorrow for talks with EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis. She will urge the EU to join forces with Britain and the US to tackle China's 'appalling behaviour' on the world stage. thesun.co.uk/news/14089864/… 2/ The talks will centre on matters of global trade, not the EU-UK trading relationship which is Lord Frost's domain. On the world stage Ms Truss wants to 'work hand-in-glove' with both Europe and the US, 'particularly on challenging China to play fair and clean up its act'.

Liam Smyth, from the British Chambers of Commerce, tells a Commons International Trade Committee about the Brexit deal: 'We're becoming increasingly aware of businesses that are simply turning away from international trade. We worry the pace of this is going to accelerate.' Fergus McReynolds, from manufacturing industry representatives Make UK, says 'there's a lot we can do under the structures of the TCA to improve' the situation regarding barriers to trade. He adds: 'Our priority is making sure those supply chains thrive in the new relationship.'

1/ Some EU frustration at UK griping over trade problems and suggestions Brussels needs to improve its attitude to make the relationship work better. There's a feeling of déjà vu, that the UK never really accepted the practical reality of the deal it wanted and still doesn't. 2/ In particular there's exasperation that the UK is moaning about the deal not including arrangements that it ruled out itself to keep its own red lines intact. It's seen as a pattern of behaviour - first there was visa-free travel for musicians, now it's shellfish.