the latest headlines from bbc news. it's been confirmed the chinese doctor who was one of the first to raise concerns about the coronavirus outbreak has died of the illness. li wenliang has become a hero in china for his early warnings. he was summoned by police at first and told to stop spreading rumours. president trump has lashed out as the senate rejected moves to impeach him. he described impeachment is a terrible ordeal and lashed out the damp at the democrats, claiming they were corrupt people who are trying to hurt the nation. the white house is claimed that us forces have killed the leader of al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula. in a written statement, mr trump said qassim al—rimi, who has led to the group since 2015, was killed in a us military operation in yemen.

now on bbc news, it's time for the day in parliament. hello and welcome to thursday in parliament. coming up... the government confirms it wants new laws to stop convicted terrorists being released from prison early. this legislation will be introduced at the earliest opportunity and it is with that in mind that i may need to return to the house early next week to make a further business statement. labour wonders if there's another motive for the government's consultation on decriminalising non payment of the bbc licence fee. can he assure me this announcement is not part of a deliberate strategy by the government to undermine an organisation with which it has been at loggerheads? and with the restoration and repair of parliament still years away one

peer reveals the building is literally falling down. we still desperately need to see safety and security improved in this building, with an astonishing seven stone falls and 12 months. mps have been put on notice that they're to debate emergency legislation to end the automatic early release of convicted terrorists. it follows attacks in recent months by men convicted of terror offences. ministers are keen to prevent the early release of any more the next is due to be freed in three weeks' time. the government's emergency measures, which require backing from parliament, would postpone his release until the parole board has given its approval. the leader of the commons didn't say exactly when the bill would go before mps, but ministers are said to want it to clear the commons by the recess on the 20th of february. it is the responsibility of politicians from all political parties to play their part in keeping our constituents

and the general public safe. to that end, the government will bring forward the necessary legislation to stop the automatic early release of those prisoners convicted of terrorist offences. this legislation will be introduced at the earliest opportunity and it is with that in mind that i may need to return to the house early next week to make a further business statement. after the terrible events, we think of those who were injured and hope they have a full recovery both physically and mentally, and again thank our outstanding emergency services who responded so swiftly. we on this side say that terrorist prisoners should not be automatically released but should be subject to parole board assessment before release during their sentences. so the opposition will look carefully at what the government has to say and work with the government on a cross party basis in the national interest and to protect our citizens. i hope the leader of the house will convey that to the relevant minister. the leader says he will find time for the legislation to go through. i hope he will give the opposition time to look at that draft legislation.

labour has suggested that decriminalising tv licence fee evasion will actually lead to higher fines for vulnerable people and prove more expensive to adminster. the government has launched a consultation into whether or not it should still be a criminal offence to fail to pay the licence fee. but some mps questioned whether the licence fee should continue at all. the minister at the department for digital, culture, media and sport, explained why the government wanted to take the temperature on decriminalisation. globally, the bbc is seen as a beacon of british values, it is one of the most recognised and trusted brands reaching over 400 million people around the world every week however it is important to acknowledge mr speaker that the media landscape is changing, as is the content and how we consume it. set against that, there remain legitimate concerns that the criminal sanction for the invasion is unfair and disproportionate

and indeed an anachronism. labour's tracy brabin, who'd asked for the statement has recently felt the brunt of new media. she suffered what she's described as "vitriolic" attacks on social media after her dress revealed a bare shoulder when she was speaking in the commons on monday. at the risk of getting a cold shoulder i would like to ask the secretary of state if she will make a statement on the government's plans for the future of the bbc licence fee? and after hearing nigel adam's statement she wondered if decriminalisation was worthwhile. prisons are not overflowing with people locked up for nonpayment, courts are not overwhelmed for non—payers and last year only five people were imprisoned for nonpayment so my question mr speaker is by now when there are so many other pressing matters on government time, especially after the government's independent review carried out as recently as 2015 concluded the current system is the most effective and the fairest

way of funding the bbc. convicting people through the civil courts could mean higher fines for vulnerable people and greater evasion. the cost of transitioning to a new civil system could cost the bbc at least 25 million in lost revenue. does the minister think this is a value for money? can he assure me that this announcement is not part of a deliberate strategy by the government to undermined an organisation with which it had been at loggerheads? i can give the honourable lady the absolute assurance that has nothing to do with what she mentions. i would just remind her that this is a consultation

on whether it is proportionate and fair, we believe it is right to work again whether criminal sanction is the correct model. scotland has already implemented a system where no one faces a custodial sentence for failing to pay their tv licence but mr speaker there is a clear and unmistakable pattern when it comes to this government and their attitude towards the media. this is not netflix, the bbc is not netflix. banning lobbyjournalists from press briefings, failing to participate in media interviews and carefully cultivating a group of friendlyjournalists to pursue their narrow agenda is straight out of the trump playbook. many would be rightly concerned that the tories now intend use their majority to dismantle the scrutiny of public service broadcasting. if the bbc is as popular and as value for money as the lady opposite and others say it is, then surely there is nothing to fear at all by going to a subscription model, presumably everyone will be queuing up to pay their subscription because it is such a wonderful value for money. the fact that the bbc is great at undermining itself,

it tells us it cannot afford to spend £750 million on the licence fees for the over 75, yet it can afford to pay 493 of its employees above their grade pay. the minister said several times that the media landscape is changing. would the minister agree with me that the main driving force for decades and that developing media landscape has been the bbc? iplayer, free view. we are in a situation where having called for this consultation and say it is happening, does the minister appreciate for a lot of people it calls into question the commitment to the licence fee and the commitment to the bbc as it is today? and for many of us, that is a concern. that this changing media landscape is being used as an excuse. i do not agree on that point with the honourable lady. the broadcasting landscape is constantly changing

and she is absolutely right. it is only going to get faster and if i could refer to some research that 0fcom gave. it found that more children recognise the names netflix and youtube then they did the bbc. this should be an eye—opener for all of us. i don't think the government minister really believes in the licence fee at all but the truth of the matter is nothing in life is free, gavin and stacey does not come for a free. strictly does not come for free, sherlock, any of the great drama, comedy or documentaries, wildlife documentaries... none of that comes for free. comes free to air because everybody pays and and everybody gets something in return. it is a fundamental part of the way we do things in this country. problem is if you pull it a snag in a jumper, you end up unraveling the whole thing. and my worry is that is precisely what the government intends. i have an awful lot of respect for the honourable gentleman but i am afraid he is missing the point on what this consultation is about. at risk of repeating myself, it is whether criminal sanctions for licence fee invasion

is proportionate and fair. nigel adams. would a post brexit trade deal with the united states mean the uk accepts more us farming methods? the environment secretary has said that the government won't dilute food safety or animal welfare standards in order to get a deal. theresa villiers told mps that the import of chlorine washed chicken which was banned by the eu more than 20 years ago would not be allowed here. but opposition mps said the government should do more to guarantee food safety. as we set out in our manifesto, we are committed to upholding our highest standards of environmental protection, food safety and animal welfare. now we have left the european union, the high standards including import requirements continue to apply. we will not dilute our sandals nor put the uk's biosecurity at risk in the future trade negotiations.

she talks a good talk and reads a good brief that she will not put anything into law so will she now unequivocally condemn any government that trades away our high food, environmental and welfare standards? i can assure her that we are not going to trade away our high standards of environmental protection, animal welfare or food safety. we will make sure that our trade negotiations work for our whole country, including those farmers and i want to assure her i met farmers in northumberland only a few days ago and had these very conversations. on monday, the environment secretary heard not only from opposition mps but also mps on her own side that she has got to put the high environmental standards we have into law to prevent, prevent us agriculture undercutting them at any trade negotiations. a few days has passed since that debate, has the environment secretary reflected

on the fact that there is cross party support for putting those promises into law and will she be doing the right thing now and put it on the face of the agriculture bill? i want to reiterate what we said in the debate last week, our high environmental standards, animal welfare standards, food safety standards are already in law, including legislating to prevent the importation of chlorinated chicken or hormone treated beef. and our manifesto commits us to continuing to defend robustly those standards in future trade negotiations. thank you mr speaker, i am afraid that is not a good enough answer from the environmental secretary because unless it appears in the agriculture bill that there is a specific clause in there that guarantees there will be no undercutting of british farmers by imported us agriculture in particular, produce grown to lower environmental and animal welfare standards,

they simply will not believe the words the environment secretary has to say. the trade secretary today is publishing a document that will apparently lock the standards into law, so if it is good enough for the trade secretary, why is it not good enough for the environment secretary to put that same commitment into law? well, as i said, those commitments are already an law and the government will defend them in our trade negotiations. there is cross party consensus in this house that we value our high standards and will continue with these high standards. we will not compromise them in trade negotiations. will my right honourable friend confirm any trade agreement will have to be ratified under the constitutional reform and governments act of 2010 so this house will now have a full opportunity to scrutinise any effect or trade deals on our food standards. ican. this house will be involved in the scrutiny of the trade negotiations and i look forward to having those debates with the honourable members.

it is absolutely right that we focus on high quality standards in our trade deals with the rest of the world but of course the reality is that 90% of cumbrian farm exports are to the european single market. can she guarantee that my farmers next january will not be facing crippling taxes and tariffs on exports? as he will be aware the government is clear that it is seeking a free—trade agreement with the european union without tariffs. that is something that the prime minister and his team will be working on in the months ahead. theresa villiers. you're watching thursday in parliament, with me, alicia mccarthy. mps have called for more help for parents who are searching for the remains of stillborn babies. up until the late 1980s, hospitals took responsibility for the burial or cremation of stillborn children, but often parents were given no information about what happened to them. a labour mp, who lost her eight—year—old son 30 years ago, had called a debate in the hope of securing more help

for parents in what she called their "darkest hour". these little innocent bodies were either cremated, buried, in a communal plot sometimes, or placed in a coffin with a woman who had recently passed away. in some military cemetaries, babies were given their own plots, but marked simply with a number. never with a name. on january the 19th, 1958, my mother delivered a full—term baby girl. she was eight lbs in weight, but she never took a breath. and she carried her child for nine months. she prepared to be a mummy and then she left the hospital without a baby. with no support, and no idea of where her little girl's final resting place would be. and do you know, my mother really never grieved for my sister until the day i lost martin.

and then she grieved as a mother and as a grandmother. and my mother's life was destroyed the day that we lost martin. and carolyn harris said families needed help to find their childrens' final resting places. there must be a way of sharing information of where these babies are buried. whether it is council records or hospital maternity units, underta kers, crematoriums or cemeteries, there has got to be an easy way of finding out what happened to each of these babies. and i am hoping that the words from the chamber today will resonate more than any policy and that those who have that information that will allow us to see it and to share it. and for those families who want to know where their babies are buried or cremated will be able to find that easily. up until fairly recently, the parents of stillborn children were never told where or how their baby had been buried. and as today, this seems almost too cruel to be true.

and utterly beyond comprehension. now, i had a stillbirth at full—term and i cannot imagine the situation where my baby would have been removed from me with no information about how or where he was buried. and that must, for the parents, have made the grieving process much more difficult. much more traumatic. we know that some parents who have endured this decades ago can perhaps trace their baby's grave now. but it really is something they should never have to do. but yet it is probably worse if these parents who seek to trace their child's remains simply cannot find where they are. the minister accepted that until the mid 1980s bereaved parents had been kept in the dark by doctors and midwives. 0stensibly for their own protection, it was assumed that if a mother or father or were allowed to see the stillborn baby and establish any

kind of connection with it, it would only prolong and worsen the grief. and when i was preparing for this debate, i was reminded of my own experience as a nurse in 1976, on a ward, when i was asked to take receipt of a cot that was coming up from the labour ward. and in that cot was a baby which was still alive, which i was told was to be returned to rose cottage. and was to be put into the sluice room. and there that baby went until it died shortly after. the culture had changed, she said, but difficulties remained for those searching for their childrens' resting places. hospitals do not keep records indefinitely. however, some records may not contain enough detail to be helpful. the hospital where the baby will stillbirth may have closed. or the funeral director who was involved, as i said if one was, may no longer be in business. cemeteries and crematoriums are legally obliged to keep permanent records. if neither the hospital nor the funeral director has a record of which cemetary or crematorium

was used, parents can contact local cemeteries and crematoriums, starting with those nearest to the hospital where their baby was stillborn. nadine dorries. a labour mp is calling for the government to adopt a more joined up approach to dealing with people with acquired brain injuries. chris bryant said the term covered damage from a variety of causes everything from haemorrage to tumours to falls or punches. and the impact could be dramatic. who would've thought even five or ten years ago that when you actually analysed prisoners arriving in prison, whether male or female, that more than half would be people who sustained a brain injury, a significant brain injury sometime in their life? acquired brain injury could impact children's education, and leave adults struggling to cope. i want the cabinet office or downing street to set up a cross

departmental body, i'm not asking for a lot of money. but a cross departmental body that will really look at this in the rounds. so it is not each of the different silos. and at some point i would like the prime minister to chair it because i think there are real positive societal changes we can bring about if we got this right. the minister said the estimated cost of brain injury in the uk was one billion pounds a year. and she said she'd take chris bryant's idea on board. i certainly will take forward this idea of a real collaborative cross whitehall group to discuss this, even from the issues that have been raised today — health, work and pensions, dcms, transport, mad, education, cabinet office all need to be really involved in the conversation and i'm sure there will be others. caroline dinenage. this week it was reported that a twelve year old girl died in egypt after being subjected to female genital mutiliaton.

according to the world health organization 200 million women are living with the consequences of such practices, with as many as 100,000 victims in the uk. in 2018, the government pledged £50 million to try to end the practice, money which is still being spent. 0n the international day of zero tolerance for fgm, members of the house of lords wanted to know what was being done in the uk and abroad. there are some genuine concerns that a large proportion of this sum failed to reach women on the front lines, with the result that very little has actually changed. can my noble friend the minister assure the house that the £50 million to he referred that was promised in 2018, which is again very welcome, will actually reach the grassroots activists who have been risking their lives to end this appalling abuse of girls? the government denied that accusation. the first phase of our support built the girl generation, which is the largest ever global movement of over 900 grassroots organisations and our new programme

will continue to support organisations based in affected communities. many of which are led by women and young people working on the front line to end fgm, we will have a specific fund to support grassroots activists and new initiatives and small grants to lead change in their own communities and to hold on governments to account. the minister was later pressed on whether the government was doing enough to tackle fgm in the uk as well as overseas. her answer was that the two go hand in hand. i certainly agree we cannot end fgm in the uk without tackling it globally and that is why we are supporting the africa—led movement to end fgm but that is also why we are supporting activists and organisations here in the uk. we have made some good progress here in the uk, we have introduced several protection orders, mandatory reporting for girls, and that is all working to help break the cycle of fgm for good. but it was an answer that angered one fellow conservative peer. can i take odds with my noble friend the minister on the question about we can't do anything about fgm here until we have dealt with it internationally?

i don't think that is true at all. the number of convictions that have been in this country have been minimal if nonexistent, but if you start convicting both people who did the surgical operations and the parents who have authorised them, we might be able to stop it here. my lords, we need to tackle it here in the uk and globally in order to end fgm, which is what we are all trying to do. we have set our target of ending it by 2030, we are making good progress on that but there is still more to do. the noble lord is right that there have been minimal convictions here in the uk but we have issued a number of protection orders which is helping to address the issue. it was left to a labour peer to sum up the frustration felt by many campaigners. the noble lady mentions the efforts through health systems and legal systems to tackle this outrageous crime. but of course, as we have seen in egypt, only this week, where it is prohibited by law, these things still go on. can you tell us a bit more how we are actually addressing education and changing attitudes

to this horrendous crime? progress is being made, the minister said. but she agreed that changing attitudes on the ground is as important as changing laws. peers have been told that there are two dozen full—time firefighters on standby in the palace of westminster. the houses of parliament are in need of extensive repair, with crumbling stonework, outdated facilities and hazardous wiring. but work to put things right isn't due to start for several more years as both mps and peers will need to move out for the repairs to be done. at question time in the lords the senior deputy speaker, explained just how bad things had become. what tells all in terms of the safety of the building is that we have 2a full—time firefighters employed in this building. that is the full story. and there is an urgency to this project. there's been speculation in recent weeks that the government plans to move the house of lords to york —

an idea dismissed by a lib dem. i ask the deputy speaker to convey to number ten that however effective their red herring of york has been in taking us off the scent, and whether your lordships finish up in york or exeter or the police college, we still desperately need to see safety and security improved in this building with an astonishing seven stone falls in 12 months. can ijust emphasise the point that has been made that every weeks delay increases the cost, and increases the risk of a catastrophic failure in this building? it's estimated that the restoration and renewal programme will cost at least three and a half billion pounds. labour reckoned the sooner the project started the better. every member of the lordships house

will have a story of something that has gone badly wrong. i had the electrician in my office this morning. something that is badly wrong and damage that can be done. if this project is to proceed, it has to proceed so in terms of keeping mindful of the cost and not ensuring further delays which willjust increase the cost to the taxpayer. lord mcfall agreed and reminded peers that two years had already passed since they'd agreed to move out for the work to be done. the project isn't due to start until the mid 2020's. and that's it from me for now, but dojoin me on bbc parliament on friday night at 11 for the week in parliament, when we'll look back at the last few days here at westminster and take a look at plans to abolish the ancient art of hat doffing. but for now from me, alicia mccarthy, goodbye. hello there. we have got some very

windy weather on the way, and over the next few days, the wind will pick up day by day. on friday afternoon, we could see gusts reaching 50 or 60mph around western areas of scotland, but the winds become much more widespread on saturday for both scotland and northern ireland and the wind will get stronger as well. gusts reaching 60 or 70mph, potentially disruptive gusts of wind. worse is to come. on sunday, storm ciara arrives, bringing strong winds across all of the uk but the strongest reaching in excess of 80mph, damaging winds are on the way. for the time being, although there are pictures of frost around at the moment, as the breeze picks up across western areas that will increasingly lift the frost. you will notice sunshine on the charts but for northern ireland through the afternoon a cloud over with patches of rain getting in bed at the same time we will see the wind strength in western scotland, reaching 50 or 60 mile an hour glass as we head through the latter part of the afternoon. through friday

night a band of rain will push its way eastwards across the uk, becoming a windy night across the whole country. the rain will these two showers later on. even the strength of the wind, a relatively mild night temperatures no lower than ten in norwich and london. 0n saturday, a bright start to the day was sunshine but the wind starts to pick up as this band of rain blows into northern ireland and scotland. the gusts reaching 60 or 70 miles an hour, snow over the hills in scotla nd hour, snow over the hills in scotland with some disruption to transport in these areas. and with those winds it will feel a little colder. 0ysters to come on sunday. the storm arrives off the atlantic and it will bring multiple zones of strong wind across the country. the first, this band of rain, a cold front and ahead of this front we will see the wind peak and be squally indeed. another zone on the

southern flank of the area of low pressure. the wind will be nationwide, potentially disrupting just about anywhere but the wind could take in excess of 80 miles an hour and that is what we are really worried about because that will bring some transport disruption on sunday and we could also have some power cuts as trees are blown over onto power lines.

a very warm welcome to bbc news. my name is mike embley. our top stories: it's been confirmed that the chinese doctor who first reported the coronavirus in wuhan and tried to alerted the authorities has died from it. pesident trump celebrates his impeachment acquittal with a long attack on the democrats and one of his own senators. the white house claims american forces have killed qassim al—rimi, leader of the extremist group al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula. 0n the plight of the bumblebee. why extreme hot weather is causing a catastrophic decline