this is bbc news, the headlines: the british prime minister has defended his top advisor, dominic cummings, amid a row over the aide's travel during lockdown. boris johnson says mr cummings "followed the instincts of every parent" and "acted with integrity," in seeking childcare with family members, after his wife had developed symptoms of the virus. in hong kong, thousands of people have been taking part in protests against china's plans to impose a new security law on the territory. more than 100 people have been arrested. beijing says the legislation will improve people's lives, but campaigners warn fundamental freedoms are being eroded. brazil's coronavirus death toll continues to rise steadily, with more than 600 fatalities reported on sunday. meanwhile, the us has imposed travel restrictions on foreign nationals who have been there. now on bbc news, dateline london.

hello and welcome to dateline london. i'm carrie gracie. this week: for many countries, the emergency phase of the covid pandemic is coming to a close. so is this a moment for governments which failed the test of that first phase to redeem themselves? who has a smart plan for the long hard recovery that begins now? my guests — on socially distanced screens — stephanie baker of bloomberg news and iain martin of the times. welcome to both of you. and here in the studio, observing the two—metre rule, jo coburn, presenter of the bbc‘s politics live programme. let's start with the uk.

iain, i'm going to throw the first question to you. we've got lots going on. lots of rows over all kinds of things. we have four governments to assess individually. and in terms of their co—ordination, how are they doing? the picture is very mixed and it is fair to say that number 10 and borisjohnson had a very difficult start to the crisis and already people are getting in their excuses early for the public inquiry which is bound to come. what they are trying to do, i suppose, is a betterjob of coordinating things on a way out of the crisis. it's complex because, as you said, you have the devolved administrations in cardiff, belfast and scotland and the disease in the uk is moving at a different speed in different parts of the country, obviously.

scotland in particular seems to be a couple of weeks behind where london is and there is huge pressure in the south of england for relaxation but nervousness in other parts of the country where the disease is still more prevalent for things to be done more carefully and more slowly so it is really difficult for the uk—wide treasury, for example — which wants to get the economy moving again to try and coordinate all of that and it is fair to say it has been quite fractious in public. behind—the—scenes, the impression is of better coordination than was the case a couple of months ago. jo, what do you think? you're looking at this inside the westminster petri dish. at the beginning, borisjohnson‘s critics said the government was veering between complacency and panic. this past week we saw a very swift u—turn on foreign health workers and whether they would have to pay for nhs care.

is that the sign of a new opposition leader making a running? i think you can overstate the opposition's role in terms of actually triggering that u—turn. as you say, it was within 24 hours. keir starmer, the labour leader, did very much focus his mind around what he would say was a moral issue. how could it be right that some of the very people who were protecting the nhs, possibly helping borisjohnson himself when he was ill, cleaners, care workers from outside the economic area — were going to have to be charged to use the very service that they were working in and protecting? borisjohnson held his fire in response to keir starmer — i think what changed for the government, and for him personally, because he said he had thought about it a lot, which was revealing, was that a number of conservative mps said straight off they were not going to support it, and all of a sudden you are presented with this image of what is the right thing to do?

it's a hackneyed phrase. and the common—sense of keir starmer allowing some of those tory mps to be able to say we are not going to back it despite a thumping majority that borisjohnson has, they changed their minds, and as a final point it will be interesting to see what happens to the status of care workers particularly in a post—brexit immigration system, will they will be elevated out of this low skilled area of work, which would change where they would come on a points system. stephanie, it has been a difficult week of tough headlines for the treasury. we have record borrowing, terrible retail figures. do you get a sense at this point that the treasury has a plan for this new post—pandemic world? well, i think it's got a good short—term plan. i'm not convinced it has a good

long—term plan or if it does it has not shared it with us. the bank of england has said that the three—month lockdown could lead to a 14% drop in gdp, which would be the deepest recession since the 18th century. i think there had been hopes of recovery, that the economy —— but that is looking unlikely because consumer demand is expected to remain depressed for months if not longer. people are scared to go out, scared to spend on things like travel, and i think the service sector will take a hit for quite a while. rishi sunak the chancellor was very wise in pushing ahead and creating this job—retention scheme and that has helped quite a bit,

but for many companies they furloughed workers using the scheme and they have used it as kind of a life support. you know, the design and aim of it was to keep and retain jobs but i think once that programme starts to get unwound and companies are asked to contribute i think what we are going to see is the real scale of the job losses. longer term, i think we have to look at whether or not they try to use this as an opportunity to rebalance the economy away from the service sector perhaps for manufacturing, particularly in areas where we are seeing the supply chain leave the uk exposed, things like drugs and chemicals and medical supplies, but that's unlikely to make up for the loss ofjobs that are likely to happen in hospitality and tourism. layer on top of that the very real prospect of a no—deal brexit or a very minimal trade agreement that could have a further hit to the economy and i don't see

a real strategy in place to deal with all of that. iain, brexit, it is hurtling down the track at us by year end. do you see it going ahead on schedule at this point? i do, actually. i think, of course we should point out the key decision, the crunch, is coming not in december, the end of december, when britain leaves, the transition by which it continues following european rules, the crunch comes injune, where both sides, the eu and the uk, have to decide whether sufficient progress has been made to do a deal or whether itjust breaks down and you end up with something like a no—deal brexit. the calculation they make is perfectly reasonable as we just heard, worst

since the 18th century, it is not alone in that, but you are looking at a recession so deep that the uk government calculation is would you really notice the increased effects of a no—deal brexit and are you going to get a better deal by waiting six months or a year? isn't it better to just crack on with it and try to remodel the economy? that's the calculation they‘ re making now. it's possible, anything is possible, if there is a second wave for example, borisjohnson might change his mind, but those around him seem particularly determined not to extend the transition. the thing that shouldn't be forgotten, if borisjohnson tried to extend the transition, the politics would become impossible for him in terms of the house of commons, where i do not think the conservative party or his own mps would tolerate an extension. it would involve him, the person who delivered brexit and was elected to get it done, having to go back to the country and say, look, ijust don't think this can be done,

we have to go and ask the european union if we can sign a cheque to carry on following eu rules. politically it is not plausible so people need to adjust to the reality that an extension to the transition on either side is not going to happen. jo, is that how you read it? i agree, i don't see there being a delay at this particular point. we will find out in a few weeks but they have stuck to their line that there will be no transition. what is interesting is if you thought about it the other way, we just had priti patel setting out and confirming the quarantine rules for people, travellers, coming into the uk. i think there's quite a lot of disquiet in business, tourism, hospitality, industries who will say, ok, you are going to stick to your brexit deadline, you want to open up the economy, of course we've still got a pandemic going, but how do you square that circle? because if we're not going to even

think about having flights or people travelling from countries with low infection rates, that is going to kill off the recovery for now in those sectors and those particular areas and they are big areas for the uk. that is on the one hand. unemployment, a loss of consumer demand, these are going to make it very difficult to have this recovery. there are a couple of things we know because ministers have said then. rishi sunak the chancellor implied early on when he was setting up his support schemes that the self—employed would have to pay tax levels similar to paye. borisjohnson has said there will not be a return to austerity although we are not sure what that means when you think this is a conservative government that has allowed the biggest intervention, rightly as most people would say, by the state

into our lives and into the economy. how will they change that? how will that look when we get a vaccine hopefully in the next year or 18 months? and also, all of the ministers have said we need to value our nurses, doctors, our public sector workers. are they going to pay them more if the economy is still very, very depressed? these are all questions that apply to many other countries too. in the united states, scripts for the electoral race ripped up over the past few weeks. iain, i remember a couple of months, the last time we spoke to you on this programme i think, you were predicting the pandemic would spell the end for president trump's hopes of re—election. that was before a lot of things happened. what do you think now? well, as you say, a lot has changed in a couple of months, and it's pretty rash to make predictions, but it's difficult

to see how a sitting president can get re—elected with the scale of what is happening to the economy, the unemployment numbers and the us about to go into something equivalent to the great depression, but hopefully, their recovery will be quicker than that. recent polling, remembering there is a long way to go in this cycle, it is still very early in the election year, things could look very different by 0ctober—november, but the most recent polling in the last couple of days suggests that he has serious problems particularly with older voters. he is tanking compared tojoe biden, the democrat nominee. on some measures he's 17 points behind on seniors voters over the age of 65. if it's anything like that then he seems to be toast. now, that could all change, no doubt. he will pitch himself as the person who can deliver the economic recovery.

he is still marginally on the polling across all voters up about three points, fox polling, just ahead on the economy, as in who do you agree is best to handle the situation economically going forward, so that is a very narrow lead. biden is also a weak candidate in many respects and has made plenty of gaffes so it's not over, but trump has plenty of problems. and older voters who made him president last time, certainly not impressed at the moment. how do you read it? particularlyjoe biden. it is a rather odd campaign so far. he is hunkered down. working from home. how's he getting on pushing out a message from there? i think, if you look at the polls, the sort of bunker fireside

chat mode of campaigning has benefited him. he's gained in the polls during lockdown. i think people are scared to go to events they and are searching for a candidate that is empathetic and stable and experienced and he offers all of that. i would agree that the advantage with older voters who voted for trump in 2016 is huge. the national polling does not really mean much. you really need to look at how he's faring in the swing states and in many of those swing states joe biden remains ahead, in some places not by big margins, but it is looking good,

and biden has two main problems of a few months ago — of booming economy under trump and a split democratic party — and those have gone away. he has had a huge amount of support among women. the two caveats i would add is that it is rare for an incumbent president to lose. he has the resources, he has the free media airtime that comes with being president and trump of course has a very passionate base. the other caveat is that biden does have a tendency to make gaffes and stick his foot in his mouth like he did yesterday with a comment about african—americans who voted for trump, saying they aren't black. those sorts of things could derail his candidacy. at this point, assuming the pandemic is still going on and the economy does not bounce back, i think he stands a good chance of winning. i want to range a bit wider

with the three of you. i want to address the question of whether china is going to allow an investigation. we had the world health assembly this week and rather surprisingly it wasn't quite as fractious as some had predicted, and china said it would cooperate with some kind of investigation but it sounded like there was plenty of wriggle room in that. what's your assessment? it was. notice, though, on the back of that, china did impose tariffs on australia, who have been particularly robust in demanding an independent inquiry, and the approach from australia is it makes perfect sense, which is that we are going to have to, after the shock of the pandemic, have a regime of testing and international inquiry, there is going to have to be something close to a nuclear inspector—style regime, and that is something the chinese

government certainly is not open to. the bigger question is how the west deals with china. i think that's what underpins things at the moment, that democracy is trying to work out how to respond. there is a great danger in this us election year, where both candidates will compete to outdo the other on being anti—china or anti—chinese communist party, in that if it gets out of control you end up with all sorts of alarmist talk about a new cold war. i think democracies are figuring out how to effectively disengage with china. one of the most interesting pieces published this week, which i recommend, was in a magazine called american interest by the historian francis fukiyama, which essentially said you have to realise you are not dealing with the liberalising china of 20 years ago,

you are dealing with a totalitarian state, and you have to find ways, where you can delicately disengage your economy, which is incredibly difficult considering how much we rely on chinese imports in the uk, europe and elsewhere, but steadily you have to do that and accept that china has chosen this path under its current leadership and that involves extreme surveillance, it being expansionist, and you have to try, as fukiyama put it, to hold it off until china changes or it doesn't. that is a question for the europeans, and something they will be thinking of, but i wanted to tackle something slightly different, which is the big 500 billion euro plan that merkel and macron pulled out of a hat on monday. were you surprised? i was. there had been resistance and disagreements and 500 billion was also much more

than people were expecting. i think the other surprise here was that this will be distributed to countries in the form of grants rather than loans. historically, germany has been very reluctant to allow fiscal transfers between the wealthier countries and the poorer ones. i would stress that this is not necessarily a done deal. all 27 member states need to agree on the terms, the end package might look quite different, and i think you will see a split emerge between the harder—hit mediterranean countries that have really suffered from covid and the northern european countries, the so—called 'frugal four' — denmark, sweden, austria and the netherlands, who may balk at this plan, so i think it's a pivotal moment

for the eu that they've agreed on this, and i think there was a sense and concern by merkel that this could threaten the whole eu project and single market, and that they could not rely on the european central bank to do all the heavy lifting this time around like in 2008, they really had to step up. i think, looking at merkel's popularity and the fact she's widely admired for having handled the covid crisis in germany quite well, ithink she had political headroom to push ahead with this and the real question is does she have the leverage to make sure all member states back it in the end. joe, can i get a uk perspective on both of those very interesting discussions? i mean, because the uk is in an interestingly different position. we talk about the west disengaging from china but the uk doesn't have the protection of being in a large block to do that delicate operation.

and this 500 billion euros package, the uk is no longer in at that table. no. picking up particularly on the relationship going forward with china, we spoke before about a hardening of opinion, which is evident and actually seems to be growing to some extent, certainly on the conservative backbenches. it is partly driven by the involvement of huawei in the 5g network and it's also about the pandemic and whether the uk should be engaging as fully as they had been, and remember it was also the conservatives but generally across the board parties in the uk who wanted to embrace china. there is a word of warning about whether the uk can afford

to in some ways sort of step back from engaging fully with china because of the investment that they will be looking at. when it comes to what's going on in terms of bailouts in the eu, there will be a feeling that post—brexit relationships with europe and the eu countries are going to be paramount, but there will also be a sense of "we won't be part of some of the bailouts that are going to be needed to rebuild. . . " so we won't to put our hand in our pocket? that's what they may well be thinking. at the moment, though, the key for them is trying to get some sort of trade deal although it is looking extremely difficult and all the noises certainly coming out of brussels and london at the moment is london saying, "we're not getting what we want because of this level playing field" that london always talks about and the eu saying, "we're giving you what would be expected in any trade deal," so it's a little bit of deja vu

in terms of the deadlock that is persisting. before i let you all go, we're getting short of time, a quick word on the other stories that have been neglected due to a focus on the virus? ian, you first, what is the story we would have been talking about a lot of it was not for the virus? i'm not sure actually. i was posed this question earlier and it made me just reflect that i have not thought at all really about other news than coronavirus for weeks. it is partly related which is that, related to what we were talking about, which is the city of london, which onlyjust this weekjust got going again on its deal with china, and talking to people in the city in despair really about realising that the world has to start going again and that money matters, and the markets have to function, but beyond that i'm afraid i hadn't thought about anything.

that's a perfectly adequate answer. stephanie? what i think should be getting more attention, i mean, it got a bit of attention this week, is the whole issue of election infrastructure in the us as we go into the november presidential election, one of the most consequential elections with ramifications for the world. is us election infrastructure adequate given we could be in the middle of a second wave of the pandemic? yes or no — one word? at the moment, no. it will be a huge political fight between trump and the democrats as he tries to claim back absentee ballots. can i mention the parallel epidemic? it is to do with coronavirus and we are starting to talk about it, but about all the undiagnosed potentially, i know it is not

terribly uplifting, but undiagnosed cancer patients, people with diabetes, they must come back to hospitals, operations are going to start moving again, because i think that cost could be incalculable and may take many months and years to unravel. thank you all. hugely fascinating to have you on, as always, and i would add on that point about unvaccinated children and the indirect costs of the virus around the world. 0ne story from me i think we'd be talking about a lot this week if not the virus is the new national security legislation that beijing has said it intends to impose on hong kong. we'll try and do more on that in the weeks ahead. right now, i have to say goodbye. that is it for this week.

thank you to our guests. we're back next week, same place, same time. thank you for watching, goodbye. hello there. we saw a top temperature of 23 celsius in the london area on sunday afternoon. bank holiday monday today looks warmer still further south, we could make close to mid—20s celsius across parts of the south—east. but generally, much of the country will be dry and sunny thanks to the influence of this area of high pressure. but through the day, these weather fronts will start to play a part in the weather across the north—west of the uk to bring outbreaks of rain and stronger winds. a fairly fresh start to the day today. we had temperatures in single

figures in places, a little bit of early mist and fog across western areas, which will tend to burn away quickly through the morning. many places will be dry and sunny, england and wales, eastern scotland, but then western scotland, lots of northern ireland will stay windy and cloudy and wetter later in the day. the temperatures around the mid—teens in the north—west, closer to the low 20s and the mid—20s in the south—east. now, that band of cloud and rain across the north—west moves its way south—eastwards during monday night, tending to fizzle out, though, as it reaches parts of england and wales, just a few showers along it. but with more cloud cover generally, i think it should be a little less chilly with temperatures in double figures for most. now, as we move into tuesday, we've got high pressure with us once again. this area of cloud associated with that weather front will straddle central areas and push its way south—eastwards through the day, so i think england and wales could see more cloud around generally. a bit more sunshine, though, for scotland and northern ireland, but slightly fresher air mass here with temperatures into the low— to mid—teens. but again, despite the cloud across england and wales, the air is quite warm here, so still 20 to 25 or 26 degrees will be the high. high pressure still with us

on into wednesday, we've got this feature which will bring thicker cloud, perhaps some patchy rain to northern ireland and in towards central and western scotland. but to the north of it, dry, little bit cooler with some sunshine to the south of it, plenty of sunshine for england and wales and, again, another warm day, 25 or 26 will be the high, closer to the mid—teens in the north. but that fresher air in the north gets pushed away northwards as high pressure changes its position, moves to the east of the uk and starts to draw up this warm, southerly wind from the near continent. that will drive the warmth northwards into scotland and northern ireland as we reach the end of the week, and it'll be very warm for england and wales with plenty of sunshine.

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm aaron safir. our top stories: reporter: are you going to resign, mrcummings? did you go to barnard castle? did you leave the family home in durham while you...? the uk prime minister borisjohnson stands by his chief advisor, rejecting calls for him to resign over allegedly breaking coronavirus lockdown rules. i believe that in every respect, he has acted responsibly, and legally, and with integrity. in hong kong, more than 100 people are arrested in protests against beijing's new proposed security laws. brazil's president continues

to dismiss warnings over social distancing, despite the number of