the united nations has warned that its aid agencies don't have the resources they need to fight the looming threat of famine in yemen — ravaged by five years of conflict and disease, and now struggling with the coronavirus spreading virtually unchecked. coronavirus infections in the united states have now passed 3 million, significantly more than any other country in the world. there have been at least 133,000 american deaths from covid—19. but the trump administration is pushing hard to re—open schools. the president has threatened to withdraw funding from schools which do not. 5 million people in australia's second—largest city, melbourne, have been ordered to stay home for six weeks because of a major spike in infections. queensland is closing its borders to anyone resident in victoria.

it is about 2:30am. you are up—to—date on the headlines. now on bbc news: wednesday in parliament. hello there and welcome to the day in parliament. coming up in the next half hour: the chancellor unveils a wide ranging package of measures designed to help the uk recover from the coronavirus pandemic. if you're an employer and you bring someone back who was furloughed, we will pay you a £1,000 bonus per employee. how can he ensure that that money will not just go to those employers who were already planning to bring people back into work? labour keeps up the pressure on the prime minister over comments he made about care homes. the prime minister said, "too many care homes did not really

follow the procedures in the way that they could have." that has caused huge offence. the last thing i wanted to do is to blame care workers for what has happened or for any of them to think that i was blaming them. also on this programme: questions for the head of the met police after the stopping of an olympic sprinter and her partner in theircar. the outgoing cabinet secretary says he hasn't resigned from his post, but agreed an "amicable split" with the pm. and warnings about the latest plant disease on the march from europe. it'll have a devastating effect on the trees and shrubs if we fail to keep it out. but first, the chancellor has unveiled a multi—billion pound plan to try to keep workers in employment and create jobs for those who lose them. the package aims to encourage employers to take back staff currently on furlough, help younger people into work and give a leg—up to sectors such as hospitality, tourism, housing and

the green economy. rishi sunak acknowledged that coronavirus had had a devastating impact on the uk's finances. world economic activity has slowed, with the imf expecting the deepest global recession since records began. household consumption, the biggest component of our economy, has fallen steeply. businesses have stopped trading and stopped hiring. taken together in just two months our economy contracted by 25%. turning first to his furlough orjob retention scheme which has kept millions in theirjobs so far, he confirmed it would be wound down in the autumn. calling for endless extensions to the furlough is just as irresponsible as it would've been back injune to end the scheme overnight. we have to be honest. leaving the furlough scheme open forever gives people false hope that it will always be possible to return to the jobs they had before.

so instead there'd be a new incentive for employers to keep staff. if you are an employer and you bring someone back who was furloughed, and you continuously employ them through to january, we will pay you a £1,000 bonus per employee. a policy he said that could cost £9 billion. and there'd be help for 16—24 year olds with a scheme called kick—start. the kick—start scheme will directly pay employers to create newjobs for any 16 to 24—year—old at risk of long—term unemployment. these will be newjobs with the funding conditional on the firm proving these jobs are additional, these will be decentjobs, with a minimum of 25 hours per week paid at least the national minimum wage and they will be good—quality jobs with employers providing kick—starters with training and support to find a permanentjob.

he confirmed a well trailed green scheme. from september, homeowners and landlords will be able to apply for vouchers to make their homes more energy efficient and create local jobs. the grants will cover at least two thirds of the costs up to £5,000 per household. and there'd be a temporary cut in stamp duty. right now there is no stamp duty on transactions below £125,000. today, iam increasing the threshold to £500,000. meaning he said that nine in ten transactions would pay no tax. he unveiled a vat cut in the tourism and hospitality sectors to 5%, and there was one surprise item on the menu. for the month of august, we will give everyone in the country an "eat out to help out" discount. meals eaten at any participating business, monday to wednesday, will be 50% off up to a maximum discount of $10 per head for everyone.

but the shadow chancellor reckoned some big decisions had been ducked. it should have been the day when the millions of british people worried about theirjobs and their future prospects had a load taken off their shoulders. it should have been the day when we got the uk economy firing again. today, britain should've had a back to work budget. but instead, we got this summer statement with many of the big decisions put off until later as the benches opposite know full well. she welcomed the bonus for employers to take furloughed staff back but had reservations. how can he ensure that that money will not just go to those employers who were already planning to bring people back into work? and secondly, what will he do, for those firms that lack the cash

flow to be able to operate even with that bonus? he will be acutely aware that interest rates will not stay low forever. and eventually we will need to bring back our national debt under control in order to sustain a recovery and continue to create jobs and keep taxes low. 0ur young, bright, talented people are worth so much more than 25 hours a week on a minimum wage. a minimum wage rather than a real living wage with age discrimination baked in. for many of those young people, it will not be so much a kick—start as a kick in the teeth to go to work for so little money. a lib dem turned to the home insulation plan. surely, mr speaker, it should be three times as big. lasting five years to get the real investment in our homes to decarbonise and get the green jobs for our young people and for every community across our country. the green measures announced

today will cut just 0.4% of uk emissions. not only that but the government is still committed to spending £27 billion on new roads. so if he wants to have a green record he continually be proud of, will he start by cancelling that road scheme and put that many of the public transport and broadband and introduce a new law for uk economy to ensure that all spending and taxation is aligned with the paris agreement and restoring our natural world? a dup mp, put in a plea for help for the aerospace sector, vital to northern ireland's economy, but welcomed much of what had been announced. i am sure that the hospitality industry will welcome the measures which he has announced today. albeit they are quite time—limited, i think clothes shop might welcome this as well, because once we eat through half a month's half—price meals, we will all be visiting them. laughter rishi sunak said perhaps as well as what he'd called his "eat out to help out" scheme progress could be made on reopening gyms! now, prime minister's question time came just before that statement from the chancellor. the labour leader, sir keir starmer, focused on what he said

were the "huge mistakes" made by the government in dealing with coronavirus in care homes in england, and what's been seen by some as an attempt to shift the blame onto care homes themselves. keir starmer repeatedly called on borisjohnson to apologise for a recent comment he made. on monday, when asked why care home deaths had been so high, the prime minister said, "too many care homes did not really follow the procedures in the way that they could have." that has caused huge offence to front—line care workers. it has now been 48 hours. will the prime minister apologise to care workers? i am grateful to the right honourable gentleman. and the last thing i wanted to do is to blame care workers for what's happened or for any of them to think that i was blaming them. they have worked hard throughout this whole crisis looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our country and doing an outstanding job and as he knows tragically, 257 of them have lost their lives. when it comes to taking blame,

i take full responsibility for what has happened. but the one thing that nobody knew early on during this pandemic was that the virus was being passed asymptomatically from person—to—person in the way that it is. and that's why the guidance and the procedures changed and it's thanks to the hard work of care workers that we have now got incidents down in our care homes, outbreaks down in our care homes, to the lowest levels since the crisis began. that's thanks to our care workers and i pay tribute to them. he said that wasn't an apology. the prime minister must recognise that huge mistakes have been made. two months ago, at pmqs, i highlighted the early weaknesses of the guidance on care homes. the prime minister, typically flippant, simply said it is not true.

there were repeated warnings from the care sector. repeated delays in providing protective equipment. this was not hindsight. they were raised here. day in and day out, week in and week out. it was not hindsight, it was real time for the front line. the same on routine testing. and the decision to discharge 25,000 people to care homes without tests was clearly a mistake. will the prime minister simply accept that his government was just too slow to act on care homes? full stop! mr speaker, he knows very well, or he should know very well, that the understanding of the disease changed dramatically in the months that we had it and when he looks at the action plan that we brought in to help our care workers, i think he would appreciate the vast amount of work they have done, the ppe that they have been supplied with, the testing they have been supplied with, that has helped them to get the incidents of the disease down to record lows.

the labour leader turned to another health row. there are reports this morning that the government is to remove free hospital parking for nhs workers in england. the prime minister will know that this could cost hundreds of pounds a month for our nurses and doctors and carers and our support staff. we owe our nhs workers so much, we all clapped for them, we should be rewarding them, not making it more expensive to go to work. the prime minister must know this is wrong. will he reconsider and rule it out? mr speaker, the hospital car parks are free for nhs staff for this pandemic, they're free now, and we are going to get on with our manifesto commitment to make them free for patients who need them as well. and the house will know that was never the case under the labour government.

and neither for staff, nor for patients! may i suggest that he takes his latest bandwagon and park it free somewhere else. can i associate myself with the concerns about tory hospital parking charges? the snp government abolished them in scotland 12 years ago. i would urge the tory government to do the same so that nhs workers and patients will not be penalised. well, the department of health in england said that free parking will continue only for key patient groups and nhs staff in certain circumstances as the pandemic eases. the head of the metropolitan police has apologised to the olympic sprinter, bianca williams, after she and her partner were stopped in their car. the pair have accused the metropolitan police of racial profiling and acting violently towards them. bianca williams and portuguese a00m record holder ricardo dos santos

fear they were targeted because they are black and drive a mercedes. appearing before the home affairs committee, the head of the met, dame cressida dick was questioned about whether institutional racism remained a problem in herforce, and whether video of the incident showed the police were too ready to stop and search black people. it plays into a narrative that there is still differential policing going on. so, how do you respond to that? you might specifically want to respond to this latest case as to whether you saw anything that troubled you in the stopping of an olympic athlete and whether you are satisfied that if it had been an olympic athlete like sharon davis with her white partner, say, just to quote an example, the same treatment would be meted out to them. it was all reviewed by two separate teams. in terms of whether there was misconduct, the view of my team was that there is no misconduct apparent.

however, we have voluntarily referred to the iopc because of the level of public concern. the iopc is the independent 0ffice for police complaints. are you now apologising to bianca williams and to her partner for what happened to them? i think i was very clear... i thought i was clear. just wanted to clarify. we apologised yesterday to miss williams and i apologise again for the distress that this obviously caused her. i'm just interested in whether, not the grounds for referring to iopc, but whether you as senior officers had concerns about that incident when you viewed it. in respect of that particular incident, we have reviewed what happened before the stop and the reasons why the vehicle was stopped. and i think the complaints were... there were good grounds

for the officers to stop that vehicle and they didn't know who was in that vehicle at the time they stopped it. after that, they dealt with what was in front of them. but we do watch these videos and they do cause us concern. the overwhelming anxiety of communities, the feedback they give about how they present officers actions has of course caused us concern. i'm not even talking about young people. i'm talking about eminently respectable, middle—aged black men driving in their cars and finding themselves stopped just because of certain assumptions made about them. and that is one of the reasons this resonated with so many people. they say this has happened to me or could happen to me. most of the time, the officers are extremely professional and they deal with it extremely well and have on their body worn video cameras and explain themselves

and keep young people joking a lot of the time if that is appropriate and sending people on their way knowing why they have been stopped and searched and in the main understanding that and feeling as good as they could. people will be in different circumstances. some of the people you talk about upon whom nothing has been found are very violent, repeat offenders who happen not to have have it on them then. some of them have stashed it and given it to the other boy or whatever. that is a proportion of those people. because what i can tell you is that we are focused in the right areas and focusing usually on people that we know to be involved in violent crimes. some of them will also be teachers and ambulance workers, an olympic athletes. and they are saying very loudly that they feel that they are being repeatedly stopped and searched and being unfairly targeted.

cressida dick said she thought this was a moment when the police could take a giant step forward in relations with the bame community. you're watching wednesday in parliament, with me, alicia mccarthy. the uk's most senior civil servant sir mark sedwill has called being briefed against "a regrettable feature of modern politics". sir mark announced last month that he'll be stepping down as cabinet secretary and national security adviser in september. borisjohnson has announced that the security adviser will now be a separate role. we have begun an inquiry into bio—security as a national security issue. and for that reason and because, we have not seen you since the last election. 0r indeed for a little while. we decided to ask you to give evidence. since we issued that invitation you accepted it, you resigned. why?

i haven't resigned. the prime minister and i agreed i should step down by agreement and that was essentially because we had concluded that it was time to split the jobs again and have a separate national security adviser, a separate cabinet secretary. the combined model was right and for the period of my tenure, but it is time as war are moving to this next phase of dealing with recovery, and so on, we concluded that we need a separate national security adviser and those people should see the prime minister through the rest of this parliament and we agreed it was the right time for me to step down and my successors to take over and we will support and for the rest of his parliament. the prime minister has appointed his brexit negotiator, david frost, as national security adviser. there's been a lot of comment about the fact that the national security adviser may not have the degree of security experience that you had yourself.

do you yourself think that is likely to cause difficulty? can you recall occasions when it was particularly useful or valuable to you to have that security experience? i think i'm probably the worst person to ask because it sounds like i'm going to give myself a reference here. but i was the first national security adviser to run a big domestic apartment, the others had diplomatic experience, permanent secretary the foreign office and my senior ambassadors, they had not run the home office, they did not have the massive domestic security experience. that is what i was able to bring to the job, as well as my diplomatic career. of course, david frost himself is very experienced diplomat he was an ambassador, he led the strategy function in the foreign office before taking up a different career and then returning to government as a political adviser. there have been reports of tensions between sir mark sedwill and the prime minister's team. the issues of personalities is truly central here.

there was briefings and leaks. how many were those briefings and leaks against you? it is never pleasant to find yourself as an official, in the midst of stories of that kind. i don't think it's ever pleasant and government whether it is against ministers, between them, or particularly against officials we have briefings that you cannot really reply, particularly to those that are off the record and sniping away. it is a regrettable feature of modern politics. the first minister mark drakeford has told the welsh parliament that face masks are not a "magic bullet" for preventing coronavirus. he was responding to a call from a brexit party member for face masks to be made mandatory in public in wales. face masks aren't compulsory in wales but are recommended in certain places, like on public transport. however they must be used on public transport in england and scotland. the world health organisation says there is emerging evidence that

coronavirus can be spread by tiny particles suspended in the air. micro droplets are generated by breathing and talking. we also know that face coverings take catch micro droplets and prevent the spread of coronavirus. so, why then, is wales one of the only countries in the world that does not mandate the use of face coverings in some settings? wearing a face covering it's not by itself a magic bullet that prevents people from contracting or spreading coronavirus. our own chief medical officer has always had an anxiety, it's an anxiety that is shared in other parts of the world. that when people wear a face covering, they act in ways that they would not if they weren't wearing it and they act in more risky ways as well. plaid cymru's leader took up a promise that all care workers in wales would receive £500. waiting for westminster has never

served us well in wales and yes, the uk treasury needs to find its moral compass by making the payment tax free. but the welsh government could ensure workers receive the full amount of money they were promised and... he said that could be done by covering their tax bills. mark drakeford said he was still talking to thet westminster government and rejected the idea wales should promise to pay the tax bill now. to make that decision today, would simply be to allow the uk government off the hook. because any suggestion that we will pay it will guarantee that they will not do the right thing, as you say, rediscover their moral compass. elsewhere in the session a conservative raised the decision by ineos to suspend plans to move carjobs to wales. the firm said on tuesday plans to build a new 4x4 vehicle plant in bridgend had been put on hold. can you clarify exactly

what is going on with the proposal? as i understand it, you put a halt on consideration in advancing it at the moment, but they have not actually stopped the project? the welsh government and the contractors we have employed have worked tirelessly to ensure that the site was made ready in line with the tight timescales and the that will continue despite flooding earlier in the year and coronavirus. we have worked really hard to try to meet the requirements that the company had laid out. so the government was disappointed to hear the plans were being suspended pending a review. now, should we be prepared for a shortage of olives and lavender? in april, the uk introduced severe restrictions on the import of olive trees, lavender bushes and some shrubs in an effort to halt a deadly infection. xylella fastidiosa has wreaked havoc on olive plantations in parts of italy and has also been found in france and spain.

but injune the european commission revoked the restrictions. it is quite outrageous for the eu commissioner to bully us in this way, given the gravity of the situation. xylella is now present in france, italy, spain and portugal and has been traded on plants in germany and belgium. it will have a devastating effect under trees and shrubs if we fail to keep it out. will the minister pleased do all he can to reverse this decision and allow us, as an island, to protect our and shrubs? we think this is mistaken that the eu should be very concerned about the spread of xylella into other parts of the eu were determined to excluded from this part of the country and it is a priority of the lords. plants do feature regularly during question time in the lords. can the minister tell us how, when plants are important to this

country, how are they being checked? how does the government know, how does the country know whether this pathogen is being imported or not? is the problem importing plants which are affected by the bacteria? or does it have to have the insects accompanying them? the minister said imports of almond and olive trees could be checked and traced. for other plant species such as this, risk based visits are made, particularly focusing on recent imports. lord gardiner. bringing us to the end of this programme, but dojoin me at the same time tomorrow for our round up of the week here at westminster. but for now from me, alicia mccarthy, goodbye.

hello again. there were two very different types of weather across the uk during wednesday. it's a similar set up as we go into thursday. in the south, we've got lots of low cloud — this was cardigan bay during wednesday afternoon. to the north of that, we've got a showery regime with much more sunshine around. and the divider is this area of low pressure. so, keeping all parts unsettled, but it is bringing in heavy and persistent rain during the course of wednesday night. and that heaviest rain will be clearing out of the way, but it leaves a legacy of those weather fronts and misty clouds. it's pretty humid, as well, with that by the front across the southern half of the country a tad chillierfurther north. but lots of misty low cloud, hill and coastal fog to clear first thing, or certainly the rain clears, but that misty low cloud is likely to hang around for much of the day. so dull and overcast, damp and dreary, and very little changes. of course it won't be raining all day, there will be some drier slots as we had during the day on wednesday.

and it is still quite warm, 19—20 celsius generally speaking. you might see some of the brighter skies filter into the north of england later. just the odd shower for northern ireland with some sunny spells. sunny spells across scotland, but given the light winds, when the showers develop, they could become heavy and thundery and slow—moving. so a lot of rain falling in a short space of time for most. but equally on either side of them, plenty of sunshine. and those will translate into clearer skies as we go through thursday night, as those thunderstorms rumble out. and that clearer weather will gradually filter southwards. so not quite as humid through the night ahead. more comfortable for sleeping. more sunshine on offer, therefore, as we go into friday. but a brisker wind, and that wind comes down from the northwest, and it will make it feel cooler — notably so in the south, although there will be more sunshine to compensate. but equally as you can see, lots of showers, which will be heavy as well, running southwards on that northwesterly breeze. they do tend to dampen down any activity towards the west later. why? that's because we got the azores high moving in,

and that's with us for the weekend just with the risk of more rain coming into the northwest of the uk come sunday. so for many, we are lifting our temperatures a little, as well, with more sunshine and lighter winds across the south. in the north, still predominantly dry, but potentially some rain in the northwest later.

welcome to bbc news. my name is mike embley. our top stories: yemen's latest battle. after years of civil war and hunger, how does a country fight a pandemic with little medical care and almost no testing? the number of coronavirus infections in the us passes 3 million, with at least 133,000 deaths. but the white house is pushing hard to reopen schools. in australia, melbourne begins a second lockdown in response to a new spike in covid infections and queensland says it's going to close the border with victoria within 2a hours. serbian police clash with demonstrators in belgrade. a second night of protests against renewed coronavirus restrictions.