the headlines: a senior officialfrom the world health organization has warned countries around the globe to prepare immediately for the further spread of the coronavirus. there's particular concern about the number of cases in iran. several european countries have just announced their first coronavirus cases, with all appearing to be linked to the growing outbreak in italy. the outbreak has sparked sharp falls for the second day running on stock markets around the world. in new york, the dowjones index has slumped more than 6% since opening on monday and japan's nikkei has fallen by more than 3%, hitting the lowest in four months. delhi has seen its worst violence in decades as rioting between opponents and supporters of the controversial citizenship law has spread to new parts of india's capital. at least 13 people have been killed and hundreds injured, many of them police.

it is about 2:30am. you are up—to—date on the headlines. now on bbc news: tuesday in parliament. hello again, and welcome to tuesday in parliament, as thejustice secretary defends plans to make some terrorists serve longer injail... we are introducing emergency legislation is not a step that the government would ever take lightly but the law was not working and we had a responsibility to act. the dilemma facing some war widows... who's only course of action today, my lords, if they want their pension reinstated, is to divorce and remarry their present partners. how bonkers is that, my lords? and after the floods, wales calls for help from the prime minister.

this is not a time to walk on by on the other side when people are facing such hardship and distress or in the case of boris johnson, simply not to turn up at all, of course. all that to come and more, but first, an emergency bill to block the automatic early release of people convicted of terrorist offences is due to become law during the next few days. the bill was introduced after an attack in streatham, south london earlier this month. the attacker, sudesh amman, had recently been freed from prison. the bill means terrorists will have to serve two thirds of their sentence and only be released with parole board approval. on monday, the house of lords passed the bill without making any changes. thejustice secretary updated mps. the terror attack in streatham earlier this month sadly demonstrated that sentencing laws were not working as they should. people's lives were being put at risk for the automatic early release of terrorist offenders without scrutiny by the parole board.

and now that the terrorist offenders restriction of early release act bill has passed a late stages through both houses, convicted terrorists will serve at least two thirds of their sentence before being considered for release. introducing emergency legislation is not a step the government would ever take lightly but the law was not working and we had a responsibility to act. i am pleased that this house agree with that assessment and we were able to get the new law onto the statute book as a matter of urgency. the prisons minister tried to reassure those mps concerned that longer prison sentences could make it harder to deradicalise prisoners. experience shows that a path towards de—radicalisation is very complex. and interventions need to be provided over a significant period to have an impact on the rehabilitation. i'm grateful for that answer but certainly the purpose of putting someone into prison and who needs

to be de—radicalised and lengthening that sentence has to be to give a greater opportunity for the de—radicalisation. so can the minister say what resources are going to be made available for people who are going to be serving these longer sentences to actually make that de—radicalisation effective? welcome the member will know that we have in january announced a package of measures of £90 million in order to counter extremism. within that there's a £3 million package for specialist intervention, that's counterterrorism programmes and intervention centers to build an evidence base as to what works. we're also training our prison officers in order to assess when there are incidents, report them and challenge terrorist behaviour. the minister will know that the former prime minister david cameron asked me to do a review on disproportionality

in the justice system and in that review, there was a very worrying rise notjust in disproportionality for all ethnic minorities but in the muslim population in our prisons. will the minister ask the secretary of state if he will meet with me to discuss the department's progress on the review, a review that successive secretaries of state have taken very seriously? we were very happy to receive the honourable member's review in 2017 on ethnic minority individuals in the criminaljustice system and have acted on many of those recommendations. and we recently published an update on progress across the recommendations which demonstrate a range of work. i am very happy to meet with him. i don't make that offer on behalf of the secretary of state but i hear that he too is happy to meet with him to discuss the very important work on this area. labour also focused on what happened when prisoners are released. the free— market fundamentalists

in the conservative party sent reoffending up and made working—class communities less safe with their privatisation of probation despite acknowledging that this privatisation failed. under new plans, the tories are still insisting on handing hundreds of millions of pounds over to private companies. is that because they are ideologically wedded to the free market, or is it because the tory party is in the pocket of the billionaires and the private corporations? mr speaker, the only fundamentalist i see is sitting on the benches dead ahead. this government is committed to reforming and improving the probation service by creating a truly national framework. i make no apology at all for wanting to harness the ability of small organisations and charities who specialise in rehabilitation, working together with our national probation service. we're not ideological, he is! the justice secretary, robert buckland.

labour has accused the government of failing to do enough to tackle tax avoidance and evasion. the government has maintained ministers have done a lot to "squeeze the tax gap". opening a labour—led debate, the shadow chancellor said the gap between what should be paid in tax and what is actually is paid could be as high as £90 billion. and he pointed a finger at the international tech giants. who is not paying? it's the rich corporations and in particular it's the multinationals will solicit in the multinationals. successive conservative governments have been i have to say weak on multinationals. according to analysis by tax watch in the uk the top five tech companies alone avoided around £5 billion of uk tax of the last five years. that is enough. we need to recognise this is taking money that could be used by whatever government for useful purposes. so that's enough to reverse the cuts

to homelessness services. he said ministers could do more, but questioned the willingness of the new chancellor, rishi sunak, to take action. the former close business associate in two companies in which the chancellor held senior positions was ordered to pay, repay 8 million after engaging in unlawful tax avoidance schemes. two of the firms in which the chancellor held senior positions have made use of the notorious tax haven of the cayman islands. since 2010, we've introduced over 100 and measures to tackle tax avoidance, evasion and other forms of noncompliance which alongside hmrc's other compliance work has secured protected significant revenue that would otherwise have been lost. in 2018—19 brought in an additional 34.1 billion that would have otherwise gone unpaid. already this year we have seen the uk inching closer to the world's

top ten countries for secrecy, rolling back the progress made in previous years and increasing transparency. we have all heard talk of a singapore on the thames approach of the city of london is to be bad news globally but also for the people that live here. the tory government full of thatcherites have no interest in creating a level playing field in tax with the eu when there's a real risk of prime minister has at the uk at a race to the bottom on tax avoidance. people on the front bench have gone now muttering early and tell you what we have committed to, we have been in a tax cut and because of the compare the tax—cut in 2005 and six with 2015 have to come different somewhere close to 8% to somewhere under 6%. but it is still a big issue to be tackled and i'm pleased and proud of this british government is redoubling efforts and is leading internationally in that regard. the big five, the biggest fight global companies google, cisco, facebook, microsoft and apple. between them they paid in 2018

£214 million in corporation tax. they should have paid £1.3 billion on the calculations of tax watch undertook with the activity and the profits they made and therefore the corporation tax that they were liable here. attention must be focused on anti—money laundering regulations the proposed sessions of anti—money laundering bill. it gives ministers powers to scrap existing eu regulations and replacing losses. the liberal democrats are concerned that enthusiasm among some of the conservative benches for a bonfire of regulation, singapore—on—thames style and low tax and low regulation uk county will result in these new regulations being watered down to the benefit of those who prefer less intrusion into into their financial affairs. this government has done far more in terms of tax collection of avoiding taxes than the previous administration. that is a fact. you can choose your own opinions but you cannot choose

your own facts. and i think definitely we need to go further. this to me is notjust about the money as i said earlier, this is about creating that fair level playing field. kevin hollinrake. you're watching tuesday in parliament with me, david cornock. don't forget that if you miss our daily round—up of westminster life, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can catch up via the bbc iplayer. new figures show that life expectancy for older women living in deprived areas of england is decreasing. a lords committee is investigating how the wealth of information held by the nhs could be used to improve the lives of all older people. one leading scientist said medical research would uncover how to live a longer, healthier life, but it was being held back by the "enormous bureaucracy" involved in accessing nhs data. these extraordinary restrictions, the enormous bureaucracy that's involved in getting access to this data, i mean, it covers everything. we're even supposed to destroy the data after five years.

we heard in the last session that people on the whole are very happy to share their data. is that not partly because they know that there are bureaucratic safeguards in place, however tiresome? no, not at all. i mean, it's the opposite. when i go into the pub and tell people what i do, they're astonished to find that we don't have access to their records on the whole. a scientist conducting long—term research on ageing shared her experience of data restrictions. we have requested for the first time, the linkage in 2009, and we only received the dataset about three years ago. and at the moment, we are not allowed to share this dataset outside of our english longitudinal study team. obviously the value of link data increases enormously when it can be shared within the research community. but at present, there is not a model for onward sharing implemented

in nhs digital. so we do have the data, but we cannot share it with all the researchers. you've explained the barriers that you've talked about and how they could be changed. to what extent is this a worldwide problem, or could you do this research in different parts of the world that you cannot do in the uk? and can we see that research money being spent in other parts of the world as a result of these barriers? but nowhere in the world has a combination of a large population and the national health service and very good records. i mean, we're in an absolutely unique position to deliver the best research in the world in relation to the epidemiology and clinical trials. i mean, the first question to ask is... i mean, we don't know how to prevent dementia. you know, we don't know how make people live longer and healthier. and the way to discover that is by research. and we know how to do the research and we're enormously obstructed.

i think the answer is simple. i think we should stay at home. since we have the best data in the world, we may as well use it. with 8 million hospital or gp visits each week in england, the nhs holds a huge amount of information. the health service is trying to use that data to help design services and improve care. but the committee heard that the benefits of technology weren't being fully exploited because of fears among health professionals about sharing patient information and public concern over confidentiality. matthew gould is in charge of ensuring clinicians get the technology they need. one of the issues which has, i think, people have come across is there are a range of different codes, laws, common law and so forth, and a fear that unless you are a world expert in this stuff, navigating between them is difficult, and so the rational thing to do would be to take the path of least risk. and that comes at an enormous human cost when the result

of that is patient information which should be shared isn't. and i've seen some heartbreaking examples in the system of where concerns around information governance and the consequences of getting it wrong have gotten in the way of patient data being shared for the benefit of that patient. dame fiona caldicott, who oversees the use of nhs data, thought it was time for a public information campaign. our public, once they are given the information, sees the benefit there is for others in knowing more about the conditions that they have suffered from. but it's a process, you've got to take the public with you, i would say. they don't just know this. we find it very difficult when what they know is on the front page of one of the newspapers or like that. so they've got then a hierarchy of worry and when they read about data being shared with commercial companies, even pharma, because they know that

can lead to the benefit of new drugs, they... it's the word profit, i would say, that is the most difficult. dame fiona caldicott. to cardiff now, where the first minister of wales says the cost of the flood damage there could reach more than £100 million. mark drakeford has written to the chancellor, rishi sunak, to ask for help with the bill. last week, the prince of wales met flood victims and their rescuers during a visit to the south wales valleys, where storm dennis hit more than 1000 homes. more than a months worth of rain fell in 48 hours, with further heavy rain a few days later. during first minister's questions in the welsh assembly, there were questions about the welsh government's response and why borisjohnson has not visited the area. in light of the impact that the recent storms have had across wales, what lessons has your government learned about the way in which flooding is prioritised by your government? and will you also commit to providing a full breakdown of how

the welsh government will be allocating its resources on flood risk management so that communities right across wales can see the level of investment the welsh government is making in their areas? well, i thank the member for that. i agree that we will have to think differently about the future. i don't draw exactly the same conclusions as he draws, because i think that the figures will demonstrate when these events are over that there were 73,000 households across wales as a minimum who were protected from the effects of this extreme weather event because of the flood prevention schemes that have been implemented in wales over recent times. so, the idea that things had not been done, i don't think will bear scrutiny. where he is right, ithink, is that the plans that have been in place have been drawn up in order

to be able to resist the sort of weather events which we have experienced over the last 50 years. and it may well be what climate science is telling us that the sort of events that we saw over the last two weeks are likely to become more frequent and more intense in the future. this is not a time to walk on by on the other side when people are facing such hardship and distress, or in the case of boris johnson, simply not to turn up at all, of course. the repair bill, i've seen one estimate, is up to 180 million in my constituency alone. i know the welsh government has provided 10 million of immediate hardship relief. could the first minister say whether you have yet a figure for the amount that you're asking

for the uk government to provide? and in the event that they are not willing to make up the shortfall, does the welsh government itself have sufficient reserves for the scale of the challenge that we face? i will thank adam price for those questions. he is right to say that what the welsh government has done is to focus upon the immediate aftermath of the floods to make sure that we provide funding for individual householders directly affected, to pay for the clean—up costs of local authorities, to be able to begin to help businesses to get back on their feet. we can cover those costs. from within our own budgets by very careful management and drawing together of funds from different parts of government. but beyond the immediate impact, when local authorities have major infrastructure repairs to be carried

out, then that is not going to be £10 million, that's going to be tens and tens of millions of pounds. my colleague, rebecca evans, wrote to the treasury yesterday formally setting out the fact that we will be looking to the treasury for assistance with that bill. mark drakeford. there's been a call for more hong kong residents to be given the right to live and work here in the uk. a liberal democrat former cabinet minister, alistair carmichael, is calling for a change in the law. this follows the recent unrest in hong kong, when there were clashes between the police and protesters who were objecting to a proposed law that would have enabled criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland china. alistair carmichael wants british national overseas passport—holders to have the right to live or work indefinitely in the uk. reports of police brutality against protesters have arrived almost daily since the start

of protests against proposed extradition laws last summer. that the chinese state is reneging on the sino—british joint declaration is no longer a matter of debate, and if ever there were a time to act in support of hong kong, then this is it. for hong kongers themselves, this is one of the most important signals that we can send. it is a signal that we in the united kingdom have not forgotten the obligations that we have to them and that as it begins as some of their worst fears may be realised, then we in the uk shall do more than stand on the sidelines wringing our hands. alistair carmichael was putting forward a bill to change the rules but unless the government backs it, it won't become law. now, peers have described the government's policy towards war widows‘ pensions as "bonkers". last year, the ministry of defence ruled that from april 2015, those who "remarry, cohabit or form a civil partnership" would be

entitled to keep the pension for life. but this rule doesn't apply retrospectively. as a vice president of the war widows association, i'm extremely disappointed that the government is still dragging its feet after five years on reinstating these widows‘ pensions. we're talking about 200 to 300 war widows whose former partners served in the falklands, northern ireland, the first gulf war, among other theatres. and whose only course of action, my lords, today if they want their pension reinstated, is to divorce and remarry their present partners. how bonkers is that, my lords? the difficulty in respect of applying retrospective treatment to the provisions is it has been the policy of successive governments, not just this government but previous governments, and it has been the policy of governments across departments that such benefits cannot be

applied retrospectively. i want to make clear, my lords, that in no way does government seek to diminish or disregard the support and contribution made by the ladies to whom the noble lady refers. my problem is that i have got a very hard nut and i don't have a hammer to crack it. as president of the war widows association, may i say to my noble friend that the answer she has given will not wash with those ladies who feel naturally aggrieved by this decision? could i at least ask my noble friend if she would agree to a meeting where this could be discussed more thoroughly with the officers from the association and such honourary members as myself who are able to be present? while i thank my noble friend for her question,

i'm beginning to feel a formidable array of onslaught opening up before me. and she said she was anxious to keep discussions going, but that wasn't the end of the onslaught. i declare an interest as both a military widow and another vice president of the war widows association. service life means that families follow the flag and move, regularly relocating, we ourselves moved 2a times in 30 years. as such it's well impossible for wives and widows to have a career which would earn them a pension. so they are entirely dependent on their husbands pension entitlement. so was it not a real act of meanness that they lost that pension if they found happiness when they found a new relationship? surely it is time that the government can't keep hiding under this pretence of not being prepared to do retrospection. it surely must be time to remedy this, and the sum of money would be a pittance in the mod budget.

the difficulty i think the noble lady will be familiar with because i think at the time of the change she herself was a government minister in fact and it is the difficulty of which i personally have no control, but her voice is added to the chorus of voices that i hear very clearly this afternoon. lady goldie. back in the commons, two more of the mps first elected at the general election made their maiden speeches. nicola richards won the seat of west bromwich east for the conservatives. it had previously been held by labour's deputy leader tom watson, who stood down at the election. west bromwich east is one of the most diverse constituencies, and i say this with immense pride. we have mosques and churches, and we are a place that prides ourselves on our fantastic pubs. the owners of which started up their businesses when communities tensions were high. but through successful entrepreneurship and a love of the community, every single day they bring people together for a pint of beer and a curry. forthis, iam proud, never hungry and it's the reason

you'll find me on a saturday morning at samwell valley park taking part in the heart run. another conservative, suzanne webb, also followed the tradition of using her maiden speech to share the delights of her constituency. a constituency whose history is rich in glass—making, the beautiful mary stephens park, a market town of residential streets interspersed with green spaces and the stunning old swinford hospital, now a school. only my constituency could have a branch line that is a mere 0.8 miles long. not even a model railway can compete with that, nor it seems can a main line, as i'm reliably told that it is the most efficient on—time train service in the country. suzanne webb doing her bit for the stourbridge tourist board. that's it for tuesday in parliament. thank you for watching. i do hope you canjoin me at the same time tomorrow for wednesday in parliament. until then, bye for now.

hello there. we're stuck in this colder air stream through wednesday and thursday. and that means more showers, more wintry showers as well. and we've already seen snow falling to quite low levels. now, as those showers ease off across central and eastern parts of the uk, we'll see temperatures dropping away. many areas having a touch of frost, particularly cold though, again, in the north—east of scotland. and given those showers, some icy conditions, especially for northern and western parts of the uk where showers keep going into the morning. in general, fewer showers, perhaps, on wednesday. a few will get across to the midlands, eastern england, and eastern scotland, but most of them, certainly during the afternoon, towards northern ireland and western scotland. snow mainly over the hills. some heavier showers, mind you, and temperatures 5—9 degrees once again. chilly in the breeze, but it won't be as windy in the south—west of england. here, during the evening though, cloud is thickening up. we've got some rain moving in.

that's moving into the colder air. so there's the threat of snow overnight, in the brecon beacons, perhaps a centimetre or two of wet snow over the cotswolds and later into the chilterns as well. it is mostly rain. further north, the areas colder, of course, wintery showers keep going and there will be some icy patches around as well. now, it's this area of low pressure that brings the threat of some wet snow across more southern parts of england and wales. that then moves away into continental europe on thursday. but it could take much of the morning for that wetter weather to clear the south—east of england. once it does, we're all into that cold north—westerly airflow, sunnier skies, showers mainly for northern ireland, northern and western scotland, and the north—west of england. but many places in the afternoon, away from here, i think will be dry. still, temperatures struggling to 5—7 degrees. another frost, actually, on thursday night. and then we look in to the atlantic to see more weather systems moving further north across the uk. it'll be a cold start, cloud will increase. we'll see outbreaks of rain moving on from the south—west. you can see how the wind

direction changes. we pick up more of a south—westerly wind. we may well find some snow over the tops of the pennines, southern uplands, towards the latter part of the day. temperatures 6—7 degrees for most. but milder, perhaps double figures for southern parts of england and wales. but that rain may well get steadier and heavier, actually, on friday night, saturday morning, before pushing away. then a few more isobars in the chart as well. and we're back into that colder, showery airstream as saturday goes on. so remaining very unsettled over the weekend, a spell of rain and some showers, wintry over the hills, more rain on sunday and feeling chilly in the wind.

welcome to bbc news, i'm mike embley. our top stories: the coronavirus spreads across the globe as countries from iran to italy try to contain the cases and american officials are braced for the impact. global markets have tumbled for the second day in a row as fears of the economic fallout from covid—19 grows. it's been a heated showdown for the democratic presidential candidates as they went head to head in a live television debate ahead of next weeks south carolina primary. more than a dozen people are killed in the indian capital — it's the worst rioting between hindus and muslims for decades. and why shutting down the internet is the new weapon of choice for governments wanting to crack down