to shore up her government, following widespread opposition to her brexit deal with the eu. mrs may has won the support of some of her key brexiteer ministers, but she has had to defend herself against further calls from critics to stand down. donald trump says he has personally finished writing his answers to questions posed by the mueller inquiry into russian interference in the last us presidential election. mr trump said he had not yet submitted the responses because he'd been very busy. he again described the investigation as a witch hunt. the white house has agreed temporarily to allow the cnn journalist, jim acosta, back into press briefings, after a court ordered it to do so. the journalist's pass was revoked last week after he argued with president trump during a news conference. now on bbc news, the week in parliament. hello and welcome to

the week in parliament. as theresa may faces opposition from all sides to her brexit plan. the government must now withdraw this half— baked deal. i plead with you to accept the political reality of the situation you now face. she clearly does not listen. but in a marathon commons session mrs may stands fast on her eu divorce plans. voting against a deal would take us all back to square one. it would mean more uncertainty, more division and a failure to deliver on the decision of the british people that we should leave you. also on this programme — we delve back into the history of parliamentary crises and ask — would changing the prime minister make a difference? changing the leader does not alter the problem. unless you change the policy. it was the week of a

breakthrough and a breakdown. the breakthrough — news on tuesday that uk and eu officials had agreed the draft text of a brexit withdrawal agreement — running to 500 pages — coupled with a much shorter document on the future relationship. the breakdown came on thursday with the collapse of a fragile cabinet consensus. theresa may had set out what was in the documents to her senior ministers in a five—hour meeting on wednesday— at the end of which she stepped out onto a darkened downing street to announce it had been agreed. but it was to turn out to be a brief and fragile calm. the next day the brexit secretary dominic raab, threw a spanner in the works by announcing his resignation. he was swiftly followed by the work and pensions secretary, esther mcvey — and a clutch ofjunior aides and ministers. the withdrawal agreement is all about how the uk leaves the european union — not the permanent future relationship. it covers things like the divorce bill, eu citizens rights and crucially —

the northern irish border during what's known as the transition period immediately after brexit. parliament had — one way or another — spent much of the week talking about brexit, but it was her three—hour statement to parliament on thursday that saw the tension peak — and the prime minster forced — again and again — to defend the agreement. i know it has been a frustrating process and forces to confront very difficult issues. but a good brexit, a brexit which is in the national interest is possible. we have persevered and have made decisive breakthrough. once the final deal is agreed i will bring it to parliament and i will ask mps to consider the national interest and give it their backing. voting against a deal would take us

all back to square one. the withdrawal agreement and outline political declaration represent a huge and damaging failure. after two years of bundled negotiations the government has produced a botched deal that breaches the prime minister's on red lines and does not meet our six tests. the prime minister come before us today to try to sell us a deal that is already dead in the water. not even her own brexit secretary could stand over it. i could today stand here and take the prime minister through the list of promises and pledges that she made to this house into us privately about the future of northern ireland and the future relationship with the eu. i fear it would be a waste of time since she clearly does not listen. the prime minister rightly asserts that there is alternatives to her plan, no deal and no brexit. the government is investing considerably in contingency planning. what contingency is she doing for no brexit?

we are making no plans. because this government is going to deliver on the vote of the british people. we risk chaos, job losses, environmental rules torn up and the nhs in crisis. that was never the will of the people. they did not vote for that. this is not a parlor game, it's real peoples real lives. will she at least undertake not to rule out taking us back to the british people and having... it's quite clear she cannot command the house of commons on these proposals. i'm almost tempted to ask if the honourable members opposite would put their hands up and actually do support the prime minister. not one. as my right honourable friend says and what my right honourable friend does no longer match should i not right to my honourable friend for sale west. that's graham brady —

the mp who chairs a backbench group of tory mps and who would tell the prime minster if 48 of them had called for her to go — triggering a leadership vote. in the chamber it took nearly an hour before an mp stood up to offer support. i want to pay tribute to the fact that the prime minister did get the agreement in cabinet and because she reassure us that regardless of resignations there are between now and the vote that the agreement will come to parliament and parliament will have its say and he she is clear that voting for that agreement is in the national interest. can i say to my right honourable friend i can give her the assurance that obviously we have the step of the european union and counsel in finalizing the deal but the deal was finalised would indeed be brought to parliament and as i suggested earlier it would be for every member of this house to determine their vote in the national interest. it is therefore mathematically impossible to get this deal through the house of commons.

the stark reality, prime minister, is that it was dead on arrival before you stood up. so i plead with you, i plead with you to accept the political reality of the situation that you now face. will she not accept that at this stage not only are we all being collectively sold out but the people of northern ireland are being sold out absolutely. and it was a similar story in the house of lords. what's most important is that the prime minister is failing the people of our country. this agreement document bares all the hallmarks of monty python. it is bereft of life. the prime minister in her statement speaks of bringing the country back together. does the minister

believes that this is a credible and achievable aim and how would it be brought about? i do believe it is a credible and achievable and something the prime minister has been focused on. delivering brexit and we have a deal. we will be bringing a deal to parliament and parliament we hope will support it and we will bring the country back together in a strong relationship with the eu going forward. now being pushed onto the ledge and into no man's land. this is hardly acceptable and not an acceptable way to protect the union. a former brexit minister spoke out. i fear my misgivings about what would happen in this process have been too true. a former brexit minsiter spoke out. happen is mehmedi political declaration is meaningless waffle. worse it's laced with the cyanide of the backstop. how can the government possibly contemplate this and the absolute opposite of what the people voted for rather than put it back to the people and let them decide? the views in the commons and the lords of theresa may's draft brexit agreement. it's all left those of us who've been around westminster for a while trying to think

of another time when parliament has been quite so divided. so i called in an expert — professor vernon bogdanor who's a professor of both politics and contemporary british history. i asked him if this was the most divided parliament he could ever think of. europe is a uniquely divisive issue in british politics because both parties right down the middle. when we first thought of the european engagement in 1915, labour's foreign secretary warned against once you open that box a lot of trojan horses will fly out. these trojan horses fly out from both parties in the the conservatives are very obviously divided but labour is not

so obviously that's covered division in the election campaign and they cover it in the six principles by saying we want managed migration but we also want all the benefits of the customs union and the internal market. now, the european union has never given those benefits unless you accept free movement and so labour is trying to finesse the issue to hold the party together in that way. and the conservative did that until recently but now of course they face the moment of truth. so europe, particularly, which divides parties within parliament you think? absolutely. divided one party. rees—mogg mentions the repeal in 1846 which divided the conservatives and kept them in opposition for 27 years. then you can look at the home rule crisis of 1886 which divided liberals and kept them in opposition for most of 20 years. europe divides both parties and the last comparable occasion was when we tried to enter the european community in 1972 with

the second reading of the bill was passed byjust eight votes. and that involved labour people voting with the conservative government and third reading was passed byjust i7 votes. so europe is as i said a moment ago a deeply divided issue in british politics for both parties. looking back then to the last time europe was in crisis in parliament how did parliament deal with it best time around? is there anything this government could learn? well in one sense, parliament is weaker now than it was when we had the debate in 1993. because thenjohn major lost a vote and he immediately returned the next day to make it a matter of confidence — he said if you don't support me i will dissolve parliament and there will be a general election. that of course brought the dissidents into line. you can't do that anymore because of the fixed term parliament act which means that a confidence vote can't be tacked onto some other motion.

it has to be a specific vote of no—confidence in the government. is that still an option for theresa may? could she pressed the nuclear button and say it's my deal or general election? no. because of the fixed term parliament act you could only have an election if two thirds of the commons vote for it. that's what happened in 2017. the conservatives are not going to vote for election again because when they did for election again because when they did last year they were 20% ahead in the polls and look what happened. they lost the majority they're not quite going to risk that again. they won't vote for an election the only other way you could get it is if there was a vote of no—confidence in the government which was passed and no alternative government could be formed in a short time.

that too is unlikely and the conservatives i believe would not allow that to happen. what about changing the leader? does that fix a problem or is that just a by—product of having to change the policy? changing the leader does not alter the problem. unless you change the policy. the problem is that those opposed to theresa may are a collection of incompatibles. some of the people oppose or because they want a much harder brexit. looser ties with the european union but more scope for an independent trade policy. 0thers oppose her because they want a much softer brexit or even a remain or even a people's vote. there's no way those two groups are going to agree on anything else and i suspect that neither of these two lines of policy have a majority for them in the house of commons. you may argue the only way out of it is a further referendum or a people's vote but as i said there may be no majority for that either in the house of commons. there are plenty of commons historians, is there anywhere in history where you

would point to them that might offer them a way out of this particular crisis? i think there is not, because of the fixed term parliament act that was founded on 2011, to lead to quite different circumstance, namely the problems involved ina hung parliament and coalition. we have a hung parliament but not a coalition, and this is a different sort of situation than that in 2011, but it does cause difficulties in that the prime minister can no longer threaten a general election if she does not get her way, giving her a much more difficult position than the prime ministers before 2011. professor vernon, thank you very much for coming onto the programme. now let's go to the house of lords, where peers voted against the immediate suspension of lord lester after an inquiry found he'd groped a woman and offered her a peerage in exchange for sex. lord lester said the allegations were completely untrue but the lords' privileges committee recommended

that the veteran human rights lawyer should be suspended for three—and—a—half years — which would have been the longest suspension in modern times. the deputy lords speaker defended the report by the conduct committee, and the work of the commissioner for standards: she appplied the process set down by the house over a code of conduct. she should not be criticised for doing exactly what the house asked her to do, and the criminality for, the house asked her to do, and the committee for conduct found, she had done properly. but the leading lawyer, lord pannick, proposed that the case be sent back and examined again — arguing the process had been unfair if you're going to assess the credibility of competing intentions over what happened 12 years ago, if you're going to apply a very serious sanction against someone, and if you're going to destroy

their hitherto unblemished reputation, you have to allow them through their counsel to cross—examine the person who is making those allegations. which turn on credibility. at the end of that debate, peers voted by 101 to 78 to support lord pannick‘s amendment, so lord lester's case will be reconsidered. lord mcfall, said he was "deeply disappointed" by that decision — lord lester meanwhile said he looked forward to restoring his reputation. now let's take a look at some news from around westminster in brief. the government's making clear it's got no immediate plans to change the rules on "stop and search". some police forces have been pressing for the scrapping of the requirement that "reasonable grounds" are needed before a person can be searched following the spate of recent fatal stabbings and the rise in knife crime. i was first stopped and searched at age 12 and i wet myself,

it was that scary. we have got to a place for the home officer did a review for found there was no discernible significant increase in crime using stop and search and the current prime minister reached a cross party consensus on the issue in this house. can i caution him against his party moving to a place where we break that consensus. outside stratford in january, one—week operation, 27 people arrested, ten highly offensive, dangerous, scary weapons seized. it has its place. a conservative has called for unauthorised traveller sites to be made illegal. andrew selous also wants councils to convert caravan sites into housing, to provide temporary stopping sites, and schooling for traveller children. he highlighted the fears of local residents, levels of crime and the travellers own living conditions. and the travellers‘

own living conditions. ina large number of traveller sites, there is no proper sewage system which human excrement flows into local ditches. not proper water supplies, and residents have lost the supply of water in some cases when it has been illegally tapped into. there was a call for supermarkets to offer customers packaging free — or eco friendly packaging — for all fruit and veg. the debate came after 125,000 people signed a petition on the subject. an mp called plastic pollution one of the great environmental challenges of our time. every piece of plastic can take decades or longer to degrade and will simplyjust break down into smaller and smaller particles. we then find plastic entering the ecosystem and it has the potential of killing, sea birds, fish, and mammals through ingestion and releasing their harmful toxins at the plastic breaks up. there was victory for campaigners who've been fighting to lower

the maximum stakes on high street gambling machines, known as fobts. the chancellor announced in his budget that the maximum bet would be reduced from £100 tojust £2 but not until october next year. that prompted the sports minister tracey crouch to resign and provoked the threat of a backbench rebellion. on wednesday ministers announced in a written statement that the change would come in earlier — in april next year. there was a call for recognition for the fastest man you've probably never heard of. steve jones was an raf aircraft technician from south wales who held the british marathon record for 33 years until sir mo farah beat it earlier this year. he won marathons in london, new york and chicago. we have got this great man who accomplished incredible things and inspired people to follow in his footsteps, but is simply nowhere near as widely recognised as he should be. nick smith on sporting

hero steve jones. now we all know names can be tricky — hard to pronounce, tough to remember and all too easy to get wrong! well there's a bit of row going on in cardiff over the new name for the welsh assembly. the ruckus is over whether it should be know as the seneth or the parliament. i asked bbc wales political correspondent eckew gwowr to explain. a consultation was held to see what the name should be. the assembly has powers now to change the name if they wish, the consultation decided it should be welsh parliament. however the presiding officer has recently said that she's decided it should be called a seneth. not that is colloquially what people call the assembly anyway, it's what the building is called, so in terms of simplicity, maybe they want to call it one name, but others say, maybe english speakers won't quite understand what it is and they'll still call it

the assembly, there's also been some concerns that if it were called the welsh parliament, they, members would be called members of the welsh parliament. mwps, which could be interpreted as the beginning of muppets, or sounds like a word which means stupid in welsh, so there are little complications involved there. but also, if it's assembly members will be called members of the seneth, mss, and there could be some confusion either way. so there is not a simple way out of this. but this is only part of a bigger bill, isn't it? someone is in this, so the votes for the assembly, whatever you want it.

as opposed that the big ticket item in that bill is lowering the voting age to 16 for assembly elections, something the government is really pushing for and this is a small part of that bill and if that bill is passed, the name will change and 16—year—olds and 17 year—olds will build a boat in the will be able to vote in elections. ——be able to vote. there is a pretty big majority for them to come in, so how do you think this will come through? what happens if it does not pass? a0 votes out of 60, a big proportion, and i think it is quite likely that this will happen, it has the backing of the labour party and plaid cymru as well. so it's quite likely that this will be pushed in eventually. we will wait to see for now, thank you for coming onto the programme.

now for a look at what's been going on in the wider world of politics, here's alex partridge with our countdown. at five, westminster marks parliament week with a visit from a life sized toy brick suffragette. the results of a public contest whose name our sister, actually did this month. at four, temperatures freight in the sri lankan parliament as mps veto the nomination of a new prime minister. ——tempers fray. at three, an awkward moment for angelo merkle in france as an admirer mistakes herfor madame macron. and two, a sign language interpreter on the bbc news channel reacts to the developing brexit story. notjust because his departure may embolden others to... and that one, w one a star, hugh bonneville on what brexit might —— and at one, w1a star, hugh bonneville on what brexit

might mean for bbc parliament. alex partridge. westminster hall is hosting an art installation as part of celebrations to mark the centenary of some women gaining the right to vote — and to stand for parliament. as simon vaughan reports, "house of doors" was partly inspired by the paving stones of the hall itself... when you put this in a space like this, what you have is people approaching it, unsure if they've got a real person there or not, but the softness of the cloak, until you get to about level with the threshold, you do not know if there is someone that were not. ——there or not. so there is a disconcerting element that engages people a little bit more as a result. one was this painting, the little girl in the door. it was painted in 1910, they're also at the issues

surrounding women's rights, access to public life, that is what really got me thinking about it. and other inspiration was the floor of westminster hall. as i started to take rubbings of the floor, you begin to see just how they are really quite mesmerizing, you got this incredible texture, you get indicators of where other people have won them down over time and those footprints on the steps that have gone through and up the steps leading onto playing different active roles in shaping society, but also the reality that 100 years ago, it was the very fabric of this institution that was preventing women from being able to move forward. so by placing this here in the hall, you have this incredible juxtaposition of what the reality was for women then, and how that has changed, so you get this amazing situation where the melt mps ——female mps are walking beyond this now and they have their active roles

here and i really think that it makes it much clearer in people's minds how much has changed in that time. and house of doors is in westminster hall until december the third. that's it from me for now, but dojoin us on bbc parliament here at westminster. and don't forget you can always find the programme by searching for parliament on the bbc iplayer. but for now from me, goodbye. hello. some of us got to see sunshine on friday but for many more the day was spent under cloud shrouded in mist and murk. but as we progress through the weekend, more and more of us

will see that sunshine. with that though, it will start to turn chilly. high pressure anchored across the heart of europe, winds moving high pressure around in a clockwise direction, that gives us a south—easterly wind which will bring us some dry air. watch the cloud, it starts to break up. we will see more and more sunshine. let's look at that in more detail. a lot of cloud, some mist and murk and fog to start the day, the odd spot of drizzle. east anglia and the south—east first to see brightness, northern scotland seeing some brightness, the cloud retreating westwards during the day, more and more of us see those blue skies overhead, so by lunchtime devon and cornwall and west wales might still have some cloud but for the midlands, east anglia and the south—east there should be some sunshine. similar story for north—west england. north—east england and eastern scotland, particularly around higher ground, may well keep more cloud. it will take awhile to brighten up across northern ireland, but western and northern scotland will see some sunshine.

temperatures around 11 or 12 degrees, but a noticeable easterly breeze particularly in the south, making it feel cooler than that. into early sunday with clear skies overhead, it is going to be a cool night, probably too much of a breeze to allow things to get really cold, but your towns and cities will get down to 11—5 degrees, maybe just a bit colder than that in the countryside. getting on into sunday it is a beautiful looking day for most of us, we will see plenty of sunshine, still perhaps some cloud at times feeding into some of the eastern slopes of the pennines, parts of eastern scotland, and those temperatures, 9—12, just subtly creeping downwards. a sign of what is to come, because going into the start of the new working week, high pressure will still be sitting here, those winds moving clockwise, but that will introduce some colder air from the east and that will also bring back the cloud. more cloud around on monday, perhaps the odd spot of drizzle, still a keen breeze particularly in the south, and the coldest feel will be in southern areas.

single digits here, we may get to 10 degrees for belfast and glasgow, but it does look decidedly chilly into the middle part of the week. there will be cloud and the odd spot of drizzle, and over high ground maybe just a flake or two of something wintry. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: the british prime minister tries to sell her brexit deal — but the bbc understands that five of her top ministers want her to make changes. written but not submitted. president trump says he's finished writing his answers to questions posed by the mueller inquiry into alleged russian election meddling. the white house reporter who clashed with president trump is to get his press pass returned by order of a judge. rescue workers intensify their search

in california's deadliest wildfire with many still missing in the devastating blaze. the death toll has risen to 71.