Boris Johnson will take to the floor of the House of Commons soon to give a statement to MPs on the new national lockdown in England.

The NHS department that administers health insurance cards for overseas travel has been overwhelmed since the end of the Brexit transition phase, our resident travel expert Simon Calder reports.

Since 1 January, the NHS has continued to issue the Ehic to European Union nationals resident in the UK.

The government has also promised a UK Global Health Insurance Card (Ghic) for UK citizens, providing free or reduced-rate medical treatment abroad and also obtainable free from the NHS in Newcastle.

But the volume of enquiries and applications to NHS Overseas Healthcare Services in Newcastle has reached such a level that the department has a “pinned tweet” that begins with two red exclamation marks.

It reads: “Due to the vast volumes of Ehic [European Health Insurance Card] applications we have received over the past few days, we are aware many of you may be receiving an undeliverable message when emailing your applications.

The Brexit trade deal is “very unstable” and could easily be brought crashing down, a legal expert has warned MPs.

Companies could be put off investing in the UK due to unanswered questions and huge gaps left in the deal, Professor Catherine Barnard said.

“If you are a car manufacturer and you’re thinking of investing in a new plant – a serious multi million, perhaps billion, pounds worth of investment – you don’t know whether tariffs are going to be imposed,” she told MPs.

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick has the full story:

Prominent DUP MP Ian Paisley has called for the removal of the Northern Ireland protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement, calling it “an unmitigated disaster”.

The Northern Ireland protocol is a provision in the Withdrawal Agreement that was included to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit. It led to the additional customs checks we are seeing for goods heading over the Irish sea from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

Mr Paisley told a meeting of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that the protocol has proved an “impediment to trade”. He said Article 16 of the protocol should be invoked, which would allow the UK to unilaterally take measures to safeguard trade.

The Home Office is pushing ahead with charter flights despite the UK’s new lockdown and soaring levels of coronavirus, in what campaigners say shows “contempt” for both deportees and the wider public, our social affairs correspondent May Bulman reports.

Two deportation flights, each carrying up to 30 individuals, are due to leave the UK next week – one to Romania on Wednesday and one to Poland on Thursday. The Home Office said it would “continue to progress operations with appropriate measures in place”.

Flights to Poland from the UK are currently banned and the Polish government has not confirmed to The Independent whether it will accept the charter flight. A travel ban in Romania was lifted on Monday.

MPs will soon debate England’s new national lockdown before a vote is held later on. Boris Johnson is set for a grilling from MPs, as is education secretary Gavin Williamson.

My colleague Chiara Giordano has prepared a guide to the day ahead in parliament:

England is set to gain 10 more MPs under a review of parliamentary constituency boundaries.

Wales will lose eight seats and Scotland two as the political map is redrawn based on latest voter registration figures.

Six of England’s new seats will be in the southeast and three in the southwest.

A grocer in Northern Ireland has suspended his business after discovering an “extra layer of red tape” that increases the cost of shipping goods across from Great Britain after Brexit.

Jonathan Owens, who runs grocery delivery company Causeway Organic, said his business may be forced to close permanently due to the cost of importing vegetables over the Irish Sea.

Mr Owens told the News Letter that the requirement for multiple phytosanitary certificates, for clearing vegetable imports, could potentially double the cost of every item he imports.

The small business owner was forced to email customers to say he would be suspending trading and would be offering refunds.

A mother of a nine-year-old boy in the UK with a severe form of epilepsy said she is frightened about her child’s health after access to life-saving medical cannabis from the Netherlands was cut because of Brexit, my colleague Shweta Sharma reports.

Alfie Dingley is one among around 40 severely epileptic children who face a threat to their life in the absence of cannabis medication which will no longer be available to them.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said in a letter dated 15 December: “Dispensing finished cannabis oil (Bedrocan products) in the Netherlands against prescriptions from UK prescribers is no longer an option from 1 January 2021”.  

Robert Hardy, one of the leading customs officials tasked with handling the new processes for goods flow between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has complained that, despite having 40 years experience in the field, dealing with the new Irish sea border is proving extremely complex.

Mr Hardy is operations director at Customs Clearance Consortium, one of four firms that make up the government-backed Trader Support Service, which assists businesses with new customs rules for goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The customs expert complained in an email to senior industry figures, first reported by Belfast-based News Letter, that “the new processes are cumbersome” and come with a “massively steep learning curve”.

Mr Hardy went on to warn “there is a huge shortage of customs agents” and said turn-around times for goods clearance are ”not as we would have liked”, blaming poor data.