the argentine navy says it believes there was an explosion in the ocean close to the last known location of a submarine which went missing off the coast of patagonia. the blast was detected around the time the submarine, with 44 crew on board, sent its last signal last week. myanmar and bangladesh have signed an agreement to return hundreds of thousands of rohingya muslims who fled a recent army crackdown. a statement from the bangladesh foreign ministry said displaced people could begin to return within two months. the two sides say they are working on the details. emmerson mnangagwa is to be sworn in as zimbabwe's president, following the dramatic departure of robert mugabe after 37 years of authoritarian rule. the former vice—president — who returned from exile on wednesday — will be inaugurated at harare‘s stadium. now on bbc news, thursday in parliament. hello, and welcome to our round—up

of the day at westminster. coming up in the next half hour: the government sets out the changes it's making to universal credit, but labour urges ministers to go further. this is a comprehensive package which response to concerns raised inside and outside the house. these measures are not enough. they must be brought forward amended and added to. the chancellor's accused of missing an opportunity to tackle air pollution. and the shadow chancellor says wednesday's budget shows the government's a shambles. but, first, the work and pensions secretary, david gauke has set out the details of the changes the government's making to its controversial welfare payment, universal credit. after weeks of pressure from mps

across the house the chancellor announced in his autumn budget that he'd be tweaking the system. universal credit combines six working age benefits into one and is meant to make the system simpler, whilst helping claimants move more easily into work. but critics said a six week wait for payments is leading to debt and rent arrears. we are now offering a balanced package of improvements which puts more money into claimants hands earlier ensuring support for those who need it most. so, housing benefit claimants would be able to have the benefit paid direct to the landlord and larger advances could be claimed and repaid more slowly. this is a comprehensive package which response to concerns raised inside and outside the house. we have a clear objective, to ensure that has many people as possible get the opportunity to work and to maximise their potential to better their circumstances. we will continue to roll—out universal credit in a steady and considered manner and in doing

so deliver a welfare reform that will positively transform lives. we welcome any steps to improve the programme, not least these small reduction in so—called long hello or those on lowest incomes waiting only five weeks for sport to arrive compared with the six under current design. before i addressed the detail of today's announcement, let's step back and look at the big action. the government introduced universal credit with three promises. to reduce child poverty by 350,000, to simplify the social security system, and to ensure work always pays. as the mounting evidence has shown, mr speaker, universal credit isn't living up to these ambitions. she argued many of the waiting times for payments were still too long. these measures are not enough. they must be brought forward, amended and added to. we stand ready to work with the government to make the necessary changes.

failing that, they should stand aside and let a labour government get on with the job. where to start? let's start first or forward this point about people having to wait five weeks. people do not have to wait five weeks. they can get a payment within five days. and this dismissal of an interest—free advance as being immaterial, i'm afraid it is just completely unreasonable. i thank the secretary of state to listening to colleagues across the house and this very welcome packet of changes to universal credit, and scrapping the seven working days and the packaging has introduced to improve the loans that are available, the advances up front and the changes to housing benefit. may i congratulate him also in applying the financial armlock that he loaned to the treasury to his boss to such good.

universal credit is supposed to be improving. will he respond to my concerns and those of the child poverty action group and others who claim the government is knowingly putting 200 thousand children into poverty as a result of the two child cap, and having a disproportionate impact on religious minorities as a result of that cap and it is stigmatising women putting them in danger? of course, we have transitional protection. she represented scottish constituency and of the scottish government wants to provide support for third, fourth and fifth children, they can provide exactly that. david gauke. mps have demanded answers about a potentially massive data breach by the taxi—hailing firm uber. the company concealed a hack that affected 57 million

customers and drivers. the incident happened in 2016, but was not revealed and the firm paid hackers $100,000, around £75,000, to delete the data. the minister told mps the first he'd known of the hack was on tuesday when he'd found out from the media. the breach appear dated back over a year and appears to have involved uber paying criminals money to try to prevent further data loss. we are told some uk citizens data is affected. we are verifying the extent and the amount of information, and when we have made the assessment we will publish the details of the impact on the uk citizens, and we plan to do this in a matter of days. he said the hack didn't seem to have come from the uk.

at this stage, our initial assessment is that for uber customers, the stolen information is not the sort of information that would allow direct financial crime but we are working urgently to verify this further and we rule nothing out. our advice to uber drivers and customers is to be vigilant, to monitor accounts, especially for fishing activities, and, if you think you are a victim, contact the actual fraud helpline. the mp who'd put down the question reckoned action should be taken against uber. uber apparently paid criminal hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep it quiet. what assurances do we have that the data of uber customers and drivers isn't in the hands of hackers or criminals today? uk authorities have acted swiftly since the security breach came to light. will the government therefore push for the toughest penalties to punish uber for this outrageous dereliction of their ethical and legal obligations to the public? isn't it time the government stopped

cosying up to this grubby and unethical company and started standing up for the public interest? replying the minister said legislation currently going through parliament would allow for higher fines, and mean that the authorities would have to be told about data breaches within 72 hours. delaying notification is not acceptable, unless there is a very good reason for it. as i said, it is an aggravating factor in how the information commissioner looks into this sort of case. when transport for london announced they would not be renewing buber's license and 22nd of september, uber e—mailed its customers to ask them to protest against this decision the very same day. does the minister agree that if any e—mail was sent them, it should e—mail them now and begin that communication with an apology? people across the uk will be shocked uber failed to give this

information to anyone. given the current climate, covering up this breach and paying hackers could actually stimulate the growth of cyber crime. drew hendry wanted to know what would be done to hold uber to account, the minister matt hancock said he ruled nothing out. you're watching thursday in parliament, with me alicia mccarthy. don't forget you can find more editions of this programme on the bbc iplayer. a leading clinical professor specialising in air pollution has condemned the chancellor for not targeting "white van man" in the budget. medical experts say air pollution can be a contributory factor in cases of heart attacks, lung cancer, asthma, pneumonia and stroke. there's also concern that pollution may affect the developing organs of babies in the womb and contribute towards conditions such as diabetes and dementia. four committees joined forces to take evidence on the issue. professor stephen holgate laid out

the scale of the problem. we are affecting people will who are at the extremes of life, we are affecting people who are disadvantaged with diseases that put them at increased risk, and we are affecting people who live in disadvantaged communities to a greater extent. so, there is an equality issue in all of this and it is preventable because we now have such strong evidence that we demonstrate not in this country is yet but in other countries that if you start reducing pollution, he will improve the health of the nation. it was interesting the figure you gave about the danger inside a car. it seemed quite counterintuitive that you breathe then around ten times more. up to ten times. if you are sitting in a car than if you are cycling behind or walking on the street.

explain how that works. this is research shown in other parts of the world now. what happens in all modern cars, we have these ventilators which draw in air and as your vehicle stops right in front of an exhaust pipe, you just venting the fumes, the fresh, most toxic pollutants coming right out of the tower back straight into your car into your child sitting in the back—seat. the same with buses and taxis, not ten times but 2—3 times higher than walking on the street. so, the parent who drives their child to school thinking they are protecting them with this nice, clean, enclosed environment is actually poisoning their child ten times worse than they would if they walked or cycled them to school? correct. one mp asked about wednesday's budget. the chancellor explicitly heralded the fact that he's not going to target white van man, white van woman as if it was a good

thing going forward. it is a lost opportunity, i'm afraid. mr white van, i'm afraid. if you look at our graaf, it is the one area that is increasing as people become... this is a big issue. environmental lawyers, client earth, took the government to court of over pollution levels. if brexit happens, how are we going to enforce all this stuff? you've hit on a very important point and one that keeps me awake at night. at the moment, the understanding is that the current standards under the air quality directive and the regulations will transfer across through the withdrawal bill. but it is a big but, we are very concerned that the enforceability of standards will decline post brexit. there are a few aspects to that. number one is we are unsure of the role of the european commission in the future. alongside this case,

they've also been a very important factor in this. later mps heard from the mayor of london, who called for a new clean air act. it's about nitrogen oxide. half of the noxious air comes from transport. the other half comes from construction, it comes from the river, it comes from builders. so, in terms of if there was new legislation of the type described, what are you asking for it to do? we hope it would give mayors and regions the powers and will resources powers to tackle the other half, in relation to emissions standards, in relation to who is in charge of it and how we can move forward with the clean air that we desperately need. sadiq khan. mps spent most of the afternoon on their second day of debate

on the budget. it's the first opportunity for the shadow chancellor to have his say in the chamber. john mcdonnell reckoned the government was a shambles. what this budget showed was just how out of touch and cut off from the real world and the economy and the real lives of people the chancellor and this government really is. no government in modern times has ever presented a set of growth forecasts where growth and every year is less than 2%. productivity growth is forecast to have ground to a halt this year and barely increase next year. he said labour would borrow to invest and grow the economy. i accept his point that he wants to borrow to invest, borrow more to invest. the problem is we are already paying interest more than we spend on defence and police just in paying the interest so what i want from him as i understand where he is coming

from but whatever spend it on the interest will still accrue so how will he deal with that? debt under his government has gone up and it is bit to pay for a failure. to pay for a failure rather than to pay for investment, because if you borrow to invest you grow the economy and on that basis you put more people to work with more skills, higher wages, they pay more taxes and it pays for itself. that is the lesson they still haven't learned. he attacked the budget‘s most eye catching announcement, the end of stamp duty for the majority of first time buyers, he quoted the office for budget responsibility. the main gainers from the policy are people who already own property. the problem is simple. maybe perhaps it needs explaining. you can't solve a problem of housing supplied by driving up housing demand. he argued not enough money had been

given to england's nhs, and attacked ministers approach to brexit. this was he said a government no longerfit for office. replying for the government was the housing minister, sajid javid. he defended the government's record on home building. last year, 217,000 net additions to the housing stock was the highest such figure in almost a decade but we are under no illusions that there is much more to be done. labour's answer to the housing crisis and in fact everything is simply to throw more of someone else's money at the problem and hope that it goes away. the last time they tried it, we ended up with a house—building at its lowest level since the 19205 and an economy that was on its knees. he said the country labour described was not one he recognised. we have one of the world's biggest

and most successful economies and we speak the language of global business and of the world wide web that we invented. we are home to more nobel prizewinners bar one. our legal system is the most respected in the world and we are unrivalled in art and culture in the creative industries. the nhs is the envy of countless nations. we have given the world everything from steam engines that shakespeare and even cricket. we may not be the biggest, we may not be that, but britain is without doubt the best country in the world to work, to play and learn and live. a country what an incredible history and an amazing history still yet to come. the snp called for a new approach. if the chancellor was conveyed yet, if you consulted on measures and approach this year like stamp

duty and small tanks duty and then contacts with the tension to review the whole system we would see much better policy decisions being made. we need more coherence from government and less drama from chancellors. they should not be trying to pull rabbits out of hats. they should be trying to create a system that works rather than a system that will give them a big headline. the former defence secretary made his first commons appearance since his resignation and focussed on trade. outside the single market, we are going to live or die by what we can sell to the world in goods and services. we now need to hard—wire exporting into every british business, exporting should be a condition of all our major government support schemes, our grants and loans. sir michael fallon.

a conservative mp intervened, and wanted to know... and he said it was the poorest who'd be worst off. the former head of the nuclear decommissioning authority, john clarke, has taken "full responsibility" for the handling of a botched contract to clean up 12 former nuclear sites in the uk. after a complex two—year bidding process, the contract for the "magnox" sites was won by cavendish fluor partnership. the task turned out to be much bigger and more expensive than anticipated. we are here today to look at the report on the botched magnox contract which had a value of £6.2 billion, one of the largest ever contracts let by government and the report shows a catalogue of failures which played the contract from the start. when you bid for a vessel process, how far was known what the state of the various sites were?

when you first started investigating, did you are nda know what the state of these sites were? the bid documentation was what we had to rely on. at the time of the bidding, that was the only information we had available to us. we had no other knowledge that he could bring to bear. knowing what you know now, wasn't it more or less set up to feel? not deliberately but wasn't it almost impossible for you at any body else to have actually really succeeded in little process? had the bed documentation been an accurate reflection of what was on the sites then the style of contract that was put in place would have worked. the companies that lost out to cfp successfully sued the nda over the bidding process last year.

the high court agreed that the process had been flawed. the mistakes cost the government more than £122 million in compensation and legal costs. the nda also terminated the contract with cfp, saying that a "material change" to the required work rendered the contract "illegal." how is the relationship and do you think they now have sufficient staff with sufficient skills in place to be able to manage this contract, the whole decommissioning contract going forward? i think it is a very professional relationship and we have been through a pretty torrid time together, on either side of the contractual boundary. it is a solid professional relationship. the new team under the new chief executive are looking to recruit and looking to recruit the right areas. next, the committee heard from the former boss at the nda. who do you think was responsible for the failure of this contract?

i am the chief executive of the nda for the duration of this contract and i accept full responsibility for the actions during that period. we set out with the intent to do the bestjob we could and we did work hard, but it is clear that didn't go according to plan. it is a shared responsibility and although john is the accounting officer, the principal accounting officer, i have ultimate responsibility. i have two except it was our responsibility to understand the state of the sites and we believe their level of understanding was somewhat better than it was. i accept your candour on this but isn't it extraordinary when you had lots of technical people working for you that you didn't at least have an idea, given the scale of what was discovered during the consolidation process, that he didn't have some idea of the difference between your understanding at the time and what actually proved to be the case? two factors.

first of all we have a small organisation with over 200 people, not an army. we are deliberately set up to be a small organisation and we rely on auditing performance of contractors. he said the nda had been aware of significant differences, but not how big they were. finally, what next for zimbabwe, following the resignation of its 93—year—old president robert mugabe? he had been in power since 1980. the zimbabwean army stepped in last week, saying people were angered by the way the country was being run and the possibility that mr mugabe's wife grace was being lined up as his successor. after the news that he had finally quit, zimbabweans took to the streets to celebrate. in the lords, peers wondered what would happen now and what the uk could do to support the country. my lords, the resignation of robert mugabe provides zimbabwe with an opportunity to form a new path, free from oppression and misrule.

the only wafers and bubbly to achieve a legitimate government is through free and fair elections. as the oldest friend we will do all we can to support a legitimate government to rebuild the country, working with international and regional partners, addressing economic, human rights and constitutional issues including free and fair elections. my lords, in thanking my noble friend for the answer, can now recognise that we should not intrude on an independent country but given that we have tens of thousands of zimbabweans resident in the uk, would it not be possible to bring together the expertise to help zimbabwe, particularly given the imf has identified the problems, the dramatic problem is that the country faces. examples of which include the issuance of $100 trillion notes, which were in general circulation. the government doesn't wish all intents to interfere in the affairs of zimbabwe but there are approximately 113,000 zimbabweans living in the uk.

the foreign and commonwealth office has a regular programme of positive engagement with the zimbabwean diaspora and we will meet with representatives diaspora tomorrow to discuss issues including the need for deep and lasting economic reform. effective election monitoring will be key to the holding of free and fair elections in zimbabwe. what support can the government gives to the churches and other civil society organisations in the work they do on the grounds of successfully in africa because that belongs to africa, is rooted in africa and can be owned by the whole community in africa. we are putting together the potential package of measures to support a credible election process and encourage economic recovery to be delivered alongside international partners. and fair elections in zimbabwe. what support can the government gives to the churches and other civil society organisations in the work they do on the grounds of successfully in africa because that belongs to africa, is rooted in africa and can be owned by the whole community in africa. we are putting together the potential package of measures

to support a credible election process and encourage economic recovery to be delivered alongside international partners. i emphasise in exchange for a meaningful political and economic reforms. and that's it from me for now, but dojoin me on bbc parliament on friday night at 11pm for the highlights of a busy westminster week. but for now, from me, goodbye. hello there. no sign of the mild air returning anytime soon. it is going to stay cold to end the the week into the weekend and the start of next week as well. now, overnight, there will be more cloud and rain across southern and south—eastern areas. so less cold to start friday here.

whereas the northern half of the uk, lengthy clear spells so it will be cold and frosty but wintry showers will affect northern and western scotland, in particular. where we get the showers there will be some ice patches to greet us first thing on friday morning. probably the best of the sunshine across sheltered eastern parts of scotland. north and west, though, plenty of showers around. wintry in nature, with significant snow falling over the higher ground. a few showers for northern ireland. a few into north—west england as well. but east of the pennines and southwards, a largely dry start to friday morning, with some sunshine around. quite chilly too but across southern britain there will be more cloud around. one or two showers so a little less cold here. temperatures around 7—8 degrees at about eight o'clock in the morning. that is how it is looking to start on friday. through the day, we lose the showers for many southern areas. actually a good portion of england and wales, a fine afternoon to come with lengthy sunny spells

and sunshine becoming more wisdespread across the south—east. for much of scotland, particularly northern and western scotland, northern ireland, the far north—west of england, further wintry showers and it's going to be windy, particularly in the far north, with gales and severe gales. temperatures of only 3—10 across the south—east. that leads into a pretty chilly weekend. overnight frost as well. further wintry showers, especially on saturday in the north and the west. but emphasis on dry and bright and sunny weather. this is saturday's picture. strong north—westerly winds. wintry in nature. the best of the sunshine in central and eastern parts. staying dry all day. four in glasgow. 7—8 across the south—east. wrap up if you are heading out. this is the area of low pressure bringing multiple winds. high pressure on sunday. that will kill off some of the showers. fewer showers on sunday. slightly lighter winds. a fairfeature. one or two showers in northern and western areas. another cold day again on the cards. a weather system pushing in off the atlantic on sunday night sweeping across the country bringing wet and windy weather.

eventually clearing from southern and eastern parts on monday. and then we are back into the cold run of north—westerly winds with some sunny spells and showers. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is gavin grey. our top stories: hopes dashed as an underwater explosion is detected close to the last known location of an argentine submarine missing since last week. hundreds of thousands of rohingya muslim refugees might be able to return home after a deal is signed by bangladesh and myanmar. zimbabwe prepares for a post—mugabe era —

the incoming president, emmerson mnangagwa, is to be sworn in on friday. and an exclusive look inside the saudi hotel where prominent figures continue to be held as part of a campaign against corruption.