The prime minister will make his first public appearance after details emerged of a drinks event in the Downing Street garden during the first lockdown - when large outdoor gatherings were banned in England. Boris Johnson will face MPs from his own party and the opposition during Prime Minister's Questions later as pressure mounts on him to disclose whether he attended the party. Witnesses claim he and his wife Carrie were among about 30 people from a 100-strong email invite list who did. Mr Johnson, meanwhile, has declined answer that question, instead highlighting an investigation that’s going on into alleged parties on government sites. Investigator Sue Gray, a senior civil servant, is now also looking at the "socially distanced drinks” held on 20 May 2020.
After details of the email emerged and questions over the prime minister’s attendance were raised, fellow MPs and political opponents are demanding answers. There was an emergency question in the Commons on Tuesday but Mr Johnson did not attend. He sent Paymaster General Michael Ellis to respond. No senior ministers appeared publicly to defend him, government backbenches were largely empty and now several Tory MPs say declining to comment is an unsustainable position. "He knows whether he was there or not. Just come out and say what happened," Tory backbencher Nigel Mills says. Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner - who has been standing in for leader Sir Keir Starmer after he contracted Covid - accused the prime minister of avoiding scrutiny and Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said Mr Johnson must quit if he is found to have broken Covid rules. This came as John Caudwell, a major Conservative donor told Mr Johnson to "sort it out, or step aside". The frustration burns because the problems seem to many MPs to be self-inflicted, says our political editor Laura Kuenssberg. There will rarely have been a moment when the strength of Mr Johnson’s answers at the weekly bout of Prime Minister's Questions will have mattered as much, she adds.

Smart motorways use the hard shoulder as a permanent lane for traffic, it increases capacity but also raises questions over safety. Their safety is now going to be assessed and new smart motorways have been put on hold while a five-year study, which will also look at economic data, is carried out. The government’s taken the step after MPs argued there was not enough information to justify this type of scheme on 70mph roads. Existing smart motorways, covering about 375 miles, will continue as they "do not always provide a safe place to stop", the Department for Transport says. But campaigner Claire Mercer, whose husband was killed on a stretch of one near Sheffield, says: "The only acceptable thing would be for all hard shoulders to be returned permanently, 24/7, on all motorways." Thirty-eight deaths have been recorded on smart motorways between 2014 and 2019.

We’ve all been warned that energy bills will be going up. Soaring costs have been worrying for many people and now the boss of the UK's biggest energy supplier warns this could last up to two years. Chris O'Shea, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica, says the "market suggests the high gas prices will be here for the next 18 months to two years". So it looks like bills rising by 50% to about £2,000 a year won’t be short lived as prices don’t appear to be coming down "any time soon". He suggested three ways the government, which has been looking at the issue, could help people including taking the 5% VAT off energy. Read more here.

The prime minister’s being urged to "come clean" by angry Conservative MPs over the Downing Street garden drinks party held during lockdown. That’s according to the Guardian, which like the other papers this morning, reports on the fallout after an email invitation to the gathering in May 2020 emerged. Boris Johnson’s "losing Tory support", the Daily Telegraph says. The story appears alongside a picture of the backbenches looking almost empty during an emergency question in the Commons about the matter. Grieving families have accused Mr Johnson of showing "contempt for the victims", the Metro says while the Times reports ministers are urging him to "say sorry or doom us all". The Daily Star wants a yes or no answer about whether he was at the event. Meanwhile the Daily Mail asks: "Is the party over for PM?" Read the newspaper review in full here.

It’s a popular Welsh word, there’s no literal English translation and finally it’s made its debut in Parliament. Cwtch, pronounced "kutch" to rhyme with "butch", was used for the first time by Brecon and Radnorshire MP Fay Jones while questioning the prime minister on 5 January. That makes it the only time the word, commonly meaning a hug or cuddle, has been recorded in Hansard, the verbatim report of all parliamentary debates. Read more here.
Let’s move from that written record to a sound recording. A DJ’s made techno and drum and bass music with help from an unlikely source - machinery. Ben Osborne recorded sounds from a 300-year-old flour mill, also filming the inside for visuals, in the hope that people see the building in a new light. Listen to the track in this video.
And as we’ve covered written and sound recordings, this final one could be described as a picture record. A photographer captured the UK's last tank regiment in Germany before they returned home. Tobias Wilkinson spent a year documenting their lives. Take a look.

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