a process that the other party leaders had been through. but if the suggestion was that borisjohnson would have an easy time on the andrew marr show, that turned out to be far from the case. in a often acrimonious conversation, the presenter pressed the prime minister on the circumstances under which the london bridge attacker had been released from prison. there was no question. under the conservatives, he was let out. under the conservatives... this was a conservative decision. you have been in power for ten years! because of changes to the law that were brought in by the labour party. that i voted against. you have been in power for ten years and have done nothing about it! jeremy corbyn voted in favour of it. voted in favour of early automatic release. for ten years, you have done nothing about it. you cannot retrospectively change... for ten years, you have done nothing about it. dave mann was one of the thousands of viewers to reject the interview and recorded his reaction on video.

—— to object to the interview. i am a huge admirer of andrew marr and watch his programme most sundays, but i was appalled at the way he interviewed boris johnson last week. he kept posing questions and then, when boris was about to answer, would not let him answer and kept asking more questions and talking over his answers. in fact, he seemed more concerned about moving onto the next question than actually hearing what borisjohnson had to say. well, with me to discuss that, and other issues around the bbc‘s election campaign coverage, is the editorial director of bbc news, kamal ahmed. thank you for coming on newswatch. so the london bridge attack had already become politicised. so viewers are right, aren't they, to say that there wasn't a case for the prime minister to go on the andrew marr show? i think there was a very strong case. the prime minister had already made a statement about how law changes may have affected the treatment of the perpetrator of this crime. and i think audiences quite rightly would want to see the bbc interview

the prime minister. so there was a significant change in the political weather because of the events on london bridge. i think it was quite right for the bbc to say that the prime minister was available and that the bbc was the place where that interview should take place. 0k. it is pretty obvious, isn't it, that the bbc should have pinned down all the party leaders before running any of the andrew neil interviews? because now you didn't get the balance right on the andrew neil interviews. why didn't you? so, these are very complicated issues. i am involved in question time, for example, and when you are doing a whole series of programmes, to say that you need to nail all of them down before the campaign or before announcing any of them, that has two big problems. not before announcing them. first of all, giving the parties a veto over us doing anything. so it will be one party that said they are not doing it and that would mean we'd have to abandon everything we are doing.

and also, we also have to be practical, samira. diaries change, events change. we need to offer various different interview slots. i don't think people feel it is about a veto, they feel it is not a prime minister playing games and avoiding scrutiny. well. we offered many, many different opportunities for the prime minister to sit down, do the interview andrew neil, that option is still open. there is nothing we can do to compel them to appear, we can just do our best. too many interviews, viewers feel, end up in arguments without offering genuine insights for voters in an election. the andrew marr account with borisjohnson, when you couldn't even hear them talking over each other, it was painful, wasn't it? no, i don't think it was painful. i think he got some interesting information out of the prime minister. the fact that 7a other people who had been released from prison under possibly similar terms to the perpetrator of the crimes of london bridge attack

was a very important point. of course, sometimes politicians don't want to answer the questions that are put to them and i think it is quite right for andrew to say that it wasn't the answer to the question i was asking. i was asking a different question. we are going to move onto another issue now. allegations against the bbc of political bias are par for the course during election campaigns, but those who suspect the corporation of favouring the conservative party this time round point to two incidents which we have featured on newswatch. the replacement on breakfast of this year's pictures of borisjohnson laying a wreath on remembrance sunday, where he had been criticised for his appearance with what was considered more flattering footage of him from three years ago. and the cutting from a news report of audience laughter directed at the prime minister during a question time leaders special. the bbc has apologised for both mistakes, but questions are still being asked about how and why they came about. at the same time, there has been criticism of the airtime given

to photo opportunities and stunts, such as borisjohnson‘s spreading a scone last week. designed to show politicians in a good light, there is the suspicion here again that the conservatives have benefited more than other parties have, with tony padilla begging kamal ahmed is still with us. all of the political leaders do try these stage—managed stunts like the scone or in a boxing ring to make themselves look good. why is bbc news pandering to them? we are not. these are just pictures that audiences see all the time. they are well able to judge how important these things are. they have to be put up against the huge amount of information that is on our online site. the rest of the package, these are all tiny little bits. i think the point about these allegations around the bbc, these are things that are on air for a matter of seconds. we produce hundreds of hours of election campaign coverage — really serious, really in—depth, really holding our political leaders

up to account. of course, you can take tiny clips of a second here or a second there, but that doesn't reflect our overall election coverage. it is interesting you say that because viewers say that it adds up. it is a fact that the bbc hasn't had a good election. it has had to apologise for a couple of stories mentioned there. the explanation for the editing off of the question time audience laughter — it was concerning. it didn't actually save time and there was something editorially important that was lost in taking off that laughter. what is going on at bbc news? it did save some time. we admitted it was a mistake. it was a few seconds. we admitted it was a mistake. again, this is in the context of hundreds of hours of material. that piece came from a question time special done by the bbc the night before. it was run in full on all sorts of output. that was one outing where it was trimmed and a mistake was made.

you say we have had a bad election. we have had the question time special — all four of the main party leaders on air on prime—time bbc one. the seven—leader debate. andrew neil interviews withjeremy corbyn and jo swinson and nicola sturgeon and nigel farage were all fantastic pieces of work. all right, thank you very much. we have another issue. throughout the campaign, broadcasters have been showing a wide variety of programmes involving senior politicians and the questions of who is invited where and who actually turns up and takes part have been as fraught here as they have with those interviews with party leaders. we're recording before friday night's head—to—head leaders debate on bbc one betweenjeremy corbyn and boris johnson, but for weeks have been receiving complaints from viewers for weeks like this from alice.

let's talk about this, kamal. i mean at a time, you know, women mps are quitting parliament in significant numbers because of abuse and hostility, so the decision to exclude the only female national party leader, jo swinson — nick clegg was there with david cameron and gordon brown in 2010 — and it looks like very poor judgement by bbc news, doesn't it? so all of these leaders' debates that you have been referring to should be taken as a set of programmes. this is the leaders debate. six days before the election. on the question time special, you had jo swinson and nicola sturgeon, jeremy corbyn and borisjohnson in one programme. jo swinson has also been involved as well in special programmes to do with the election. when it comes to who appears

in the prime ministerial debate, we compare, or we test our output, against the result in 2017. in that election, 80% — more than 80% of the votes — went to the conservative party or the labour party. and that fashions the way we look at how we build our programmes. i hear what you say, but viewers will say, "look, it doesn't matter how many other programmes you have of other leaders, the bbc is promoting this as the big one, it is six days ahead of the election." we are not saying it is the big one. it is a very important moment. the prime ministerial debates? there are many, many different ways of engaging. one programme out of all of that set of programmes is defined by who could actually be prime minister on december 12, after december 12. and that is one — that is the prime ministerial debate betweenjeremy corbyn and boris johnson. kamal ahmed, thank you very much.

because of the general election, there is no newswatch next week, or until the new year. but please continue to get in touch with your opinions about what you see on bbc tv news, online or bbc social media. you can e—mail us and you can find us on twitter, you can call us as well. and do have a look at previous interviews on our website. we will be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage again from january 3. happy christmas. hello there. it does look like this weekend is going to be a fairly unsettled one, particularly for the second half of the weekend, as low pressure takes over, bringing strong winds — gale force winds for many of us — and also showers or long spells of rain, some of which will be heavy in places. however, i have got to stress the weekend doesn't start off on such a bad note, thanks to this ridge of high pressure.

winds will be lighter for a while. but we look to the west, this area of low pressure which will arrive late in the day across northern and western areas. so, indeed, for much of england and wales, it should be a dry start with some sunny spells around. the further north and west that you are, though, the clouds will increase through the day, as will the south—westerly wind. and the rain will begin to pepper, particularly across scotland. it will be heavy across some western areas. temperatures not bad for the time of year — highs of around 10 or 11 degrees. and then through saturday evening and saturday night, that wet and windy weather sweeps across the country. some heavy rain in places, followed by blustery showers across northern and western areas. because of the strength of the wind and also the rain and the showers, the temperatures should not really fall below six or seven degrees. so, for sunday, then, this is the pressure chart. you can see how many isobars there are on the charts. it's going to be a very windy day. a real squeeze in the isobars arriving across ireland later on — more on that in just a moment. but for sunday, then, it's a bright day. there will be sunny spells around, particularly across eastern areas. lots of showers in the north and west, some of them heavy,

maybe thundery, merging together to produce longer spells of rain in places. a bit of wintriness over the higher ground as temperatures will be in single figures in the north. 10—13 degrees, though, further south. and then later on sunday, we will see this area of low pressure which has actually been named by the irish meteorological service as storm atiyah, as it's going to bring a swathe of severe gales though sunday night into monday across the republic of ireland and into northern ireland, wales and the south—west. gusts of 70 miles an hour or more in exposure, but a very windy spell right across the country, so this could cause some disruption. stay tuned to your bbc local radio and to subsequent weather forecasts. so very windy on the start of monday as the storm clears off into the near continent. but you will notice another ridge of high pressure trying to build in behind from the west as the day wears on. but it will be a windy day start to monday. quite a bit of sunshine around. very windy down the east coast with further showers through the day. but as that ridge begins to topple in, then the winds should start to ease and we will see increasing amounts of sunshine. a fairly cool day in the north. just about making double

figures in the south. but it is a brief settled spell, because the next spell of wet and windy weather moves in for the tuesday, followed by blustery showers and sunny spells on wednesday, so the weather really is very up and down. thanks for watching, and we will see you soon.

this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. i'm maryam moshiri. our top stories: the us entrepreneur elon musk is cleared of defaming a british caver by calling him ‘paedo guy‘ on twitter. king salman of saudi arabia expresses his condolences over the killing of three people at a us miltary base by a saudi airforce trainee. in the last big debate before next week's uk election, boris johnson and jeremy corbyn clash over security, the economy and brexit. and a "mega fire" burning out of control poses a major threat to sydney — homeowners living just an hour outside the city have been