this is bbc news with the latest headlines. the ministry of defence says it's had a formal request to help the home office as it steps up efforts to reduce the number of migrants crossing the english channel. a big anti—government protest is underway in beirut as the death toll from tuesday's massive explosion rises to 158. clashes have already broken out with lebanese police firing tear gas to stop demonstrators getting to the parliament building. the use of face masks in england and scotland is expanded with coverings now compulsory at cinemas, museums and place of worship. stricter lockdown measures are reinforced in preston following a spike in cases in the city. and at half past three, the click team takes a special look at how the pandemic has hit

the fashion industry with top designers showcasing their newest creations on the virtual catwalk. good afternoon. the ministry of defence has been asked by the government to see what it can do to support the uk border force to intercept migrants crossing the english channel. the government also wants the authorities in france to do more. france said today that ten times as many migrants were intercepted last month compared with july last year. the crossings have been continuing today, as gavin lee reports from calais. the beach at gravelines by day — a tourist hotspot half—an—hour's drive from calais. this was the scene at first

light this morning. more than 20 migrants with a rubber boat and motor which they carried from the dunes to the shore. children at the back, holding hands, before they set off. these men, who appear to be in charge of the crossing attempt, start to leave the beach. but the boat is in trouble already. overloaded, they come back, leaving behind a woman and her child. they try again, finally getting out to sea. we've been on this beach for almost an hour. we've watched the migrants struggling with the boats and finally getting out to sea and people heading back towards the dunes, possibly smugglers. and in this vast beach, one of the areas we're told that migrants set off from each day, there is no sign of surveillance. we called the police half an hour ago. still, we've seen nothing. nearby, richard, a wild bird hunter shooting on the beach, witnessed the attempt. he says he's seen migrants three times this week.

translation: they leave from this beach all the time, every day. and if not here, they leave from higher up the beach orfrom dunkirk. it's unimaginable. on the other side of the channel, at least six migrant boats have been brought into dover by the uk border force already today. french authorities claim they're doing everything they can, regularly closing camps that pop up in calais, and they say they've intercepted ten times the number of boats at sea in the past month compared to the same period last year. but from the lack of surveillance we've witnessed on these shores today, there are questions about whether enough is being done to stop these dangerous and now daily crossings. gavin lee, bbc news, gravelines, northern france. jacqueline mckenzie is an immigration lawyer from mckenzie beute & pope solicitors. she told uds that the problem isn't excvlusively french or british. both countries are experiencing a

problem. we have a breakdown of the european asylum system. we don't have a system whereby all the member states in europe are taking responsibility for people who are seeking refuge. some countries are having a disproportionate problem in other countries are having none. people are seeking refuge, and they are coming from all over the world. we don't know how they got france so we just say it's france's problem because britain is relying on the dublin convention and that does not mean that the country that people should go back to s france, they might have come through a number of different countries to get to france, but what is really the problem here is that the uk and a number of other territories are not really providing people who are seeking refuge with safe routes, so for example the head of the programme you mentioned unaccompanied children. a number of

those children are coming to join families, and it's notoriously difficult to find a safe and legal way to do that, to have a family reunion. that is what is at the heart of the problem here, it's not necessarily the numbers. politicians are playing to the gallery. we saw with lebanon, they have got over 1.5 million refugees from syria and iraq ofa million refugees from syria and iraq of a population ofjust under seven million and similarly in bangladesh almost1 million refugees from the hinges so it's not about numbers, it's recognising that people are seeking refuge in the world working together to find a solution to this. we can now speak to the former first sea lord, admiral lord west. he also served as security minister in gordon brown's government.

what do you make of this suggestion of using the assets of the royal navy to discourage or prevent people trying to cross the channel?” navy to discourage or prevent people trying to cross the channel? i have no difficulty with using the royal navy to assist in actually surveying and securing the safety of the maritime waters around the united kingdom, whether it be the exclusive economic zone of 300,000 square miles or our coastline of 11,000 miles or our coastline of 11,000 miles because there are a disparate number of agencies or responsible for this so i have no difficulty in working with them that this is not a pa na cea to working with them that this is not a panacea to stop the problem in calais of illegals coming across the channel because we will be able to monitor and pick up more and we will be sure that none of them are actually getting to the shore unspotted which we are not sure of at the moment and i have no doubt whatsoever that some had died having been hit by large container ships and things like that at night and no

one ever knows about it. so it will help assist that but it won't stop them. because once they go on a ship u nless we them. because once they go on a ship unless we have an agreement with the french in the same way as the border force and we have to take them to the uk in the same issues than all arise, the only way to really stop the flow is if we get an agreement with the french whereby when ships in the channel pick them up, they are allowed to be taken straight back to ports like calais and pol on and things like that for the french to then go to all necessary procedures to check whether they are bone fide asylum seekers, whatever they are, and where they come from. we had this problem with what is called the dublin convention because it was agreed in dublin between eu member states that you were supposed to claim asylum which other european country you first arrive. a lot of people choose not to do that because if they are going to claim that they wa nt to

if they are going to claim that they want to claim in a country they think will be sympathetic to them and there are some countries not sympathetic to migrants. some have an ambition to come to the uk. as pa rt an ambition to come to the uk. as part of the problem here that the problem of migration is pushed from one country to another, nobody wants to ta ke one country to another, nobody wants to take responsibility for it because they are frightened and that voters are frightened they will end up voters are frightened they will end up with the whole problem? that is absolutely the case. there is no doubt that a lot of these migrants coming to eastern europe, across europe into france and some of them wa nt to europe into france and some of them want to come to the uk, but the french know they are there in france and they should be dealing with them, and that is why we have to come to some agreement with them. this is a problem for the whole of europe as well as the uk. europe has a real problem, to split the eu in many ways, but something has got to be sorted out finally because they are probably hundreds of millions of people in the world who would much rather live in europe than live in that dreadful countries. it's a fact

of life. europe cannot take hundreds of life. europe cannot take hundreds of millions of people, it can't take millions of people, this is a real problem that has got to be resolved, but the specific of calais relies on an agreement with france, but we do need a much better way of actually keeping the security of our waters around this country or else leaving the eu now that is the whole issue of fish protection, our exclusive economic zone which is a huge area, 1000 miles of coastline, the issue of terrace getting into the country, small ports not being monitored, this needs to be coordinated by one authority who will control all of the departments involved, and i don't believe his done. i raised six yea rs don't believe his done. i raised six years ago and every year since and we have no better out of it. just to pick up on the point you are making, we don't have a deal and it's looking increasingly like we will

have difficulty reaching a deal on fisheries so that is something we can see the navy being dragged into as it has in the past to resolve these kinds of disputes. you have had a persistent theme in your contribution to the house of lords about the size of the royal navy. we have the capacity to take on responsibilities like the migration crisis and fisheries protection with the size of fleet we have at the moment? we do fishery protection at the moment in the royal navy but thatis the moment in the royal navy but that is within an agreement within the eu so we will need more ships than that and of course the fishery protection squadron is the oldest squadron in the royal navy, but the a nswer squadron in the royal navy, but the answer is we do not have sufficient ships, but the navy could coordinate lots of these other departments, so we don't need a huge number of small ships to do this, we need better airborne surveillance, we already use satellite surveillance, and we would need to set number of ships, and i'm afraid this will mean an

uplift. you don't get any of these things free that someone will have to pay for it but the navy would not do this task on its own, it would coordinate other departments and it would need small craft and extra men, and these other departments, the border force has only got five cutters and at one stage i think three years ago i remember complaining about the fact that only one of them was operational, one was in the mediterranean and three were being repaired, so we have scant resources and if we are going to do this we need resources. admiral lord west, thank you for being with us this afternoon. thousands of lebanese people, furious with their political leaders, are taking to the streets in beirut again four days after a huge explosion at the port devastated parts of the city. some protesters have clashed with police near the parliament building with tear gas being fired at the crowds. it's about a kilometre away from the site where the huge blast happened. let's listen and because i can —— i

think we can hear and chanting from the protesters. it looks like the protesters are trying to get into the parliament building and the police used tear gas to force them back. we have various pockets of protesters and there was a much earlier in the afternoon to commemorate the number of people who have died. the casualty rate has risen to 158 people and more than 20 are still missing. hospitals were affected and some were rendered inoperative by the explosion itself. it's a big turnout. and they have been a lot of protest throughout beirut but the degree of anchor as a result of this explosion in which many people in lebanon think was com pletely

many people in lebanon think was completely unnecessary, procedures have been in place, if the nitrate had not been stored in such a large amount, apparently abandoned with the dispute with the people who brought it over fairing three when it was seized and taken into port of beirut, that situation they argue could have been prevented, assuming the explosion was accidental which most people think it was, it need never have happened and that has caused real anger and a sense of the political system being broken and that the corruption has seeped into the system where each community group and political faction the system where each community group and politicalfaction has the system where each community group and political faction has to have its rewards and people in certain jobs, have its rewards and people in certainjobs, and have its rewards and people in certain jobs, and all of that has created the circumstances in which this terrible event happened, so those are the scenes in beirut this afternoon. as the protests that continue. from beirut, tom bateman reports. lebanon is a place where hope is in short supply.

a new day in the recovery effort at zone one as they now call the trail of devastation left at the blast‘s epicentre. scores of people are still missing, caught in a shock wave powerful enough to pulverise buildings and overturn ships. more pictures have been emerging of the immediate aftermath. beirut is a city struggling to cope. like yusuf, who chokes back tears. he was blown across the room in the explosion. many share his despair in a city whose new epidemic is homelessness. translation: i saw everything was destroyed, nothing was like it was. the curtains were destroyed, television on the floor, chairs destroyed, everything destroyed. but there is resilience. people are clearing up for themselves as trust in lebanon's leaders plumbs new depths.

this is what you see over and over again, the brooms of beirut. people believe that, if their government won't act, then they will. in streets wracked by ruin, a big anti—government demonstration is taking place this afternoon. people here say they are not angry — they are livid. tom bateman, bbc news, beirut. medical regulators have recalled 750,000 coronavirus testing kits used in care homes and provided by the health care group randox. the test results from the kits are not affected. as our health correspondent, naomi grimley, explains, the government said last month that the tests should not be used because their swabs were not up to standard. matt hancock stood up in the house of commons and admitted that these tests were not fit for purpose and

really now what they are saying is they do not want care homes to have them in their stock cupboards and start using them again so to avoid confusion they are asking for them to be sent back to the regulator. they were originally 1.3 million sent out and as you mentioned 750,000 are thought to be still out there on used so the government wa nts there on used so the government wants those back so they do not get used incorrectly. so an attempt to make... last month they were saying don't use them now they are saying let's just get them out so people do not think they are ok but they are saying the swaps are unaffected so it's quite confusing isn't it? if the kits were a0 you would expect the kits were a0 you would expect the swap is not to work. that's right. it seems like there was some kind of problem with the swabs because the department of health has admitted they are now doing checks on the sterility of those swabs but also there was another problem because these test kits did not have

the kitemark that they should have done so there was a failure in the bureaucratic process to make sure it had been properly certified by the regulator so that's another reason why they have been record stop why does this matter? it matters because the government has already had to hit pause on its paws to regularly test both staff and residents of ca re test both staff and residents of care homes and the run talks to berkeley as part of that problem and also of course it brings into question whether the government was doing the right checks on procurement during the pandemic and we saw this week another big scandal, over 50 million facemasks that nhs england had started using that nhs england had started using that clearly were not fit for purpose also. hundreds of nhs nurses have gathered in central london for a demonstration about their pay. socially distanced protests are taking place after health care

workers were excluded from pay increases that apply to more than a million other public sector workers. ministers say they are working with trade unions to offer the best possible pay package for all health workers. the headlines on bbc news: the ministry of defence says it's had a formal request to help the home office as it steps up efforts to reduce the number of migrants crossing the english channel. a big anti—government protest is underway in beirut as the death toll from tuesday's massive explosion rises to 158. marchers are making their way from the devastated harbour area to martyrs' square in the centre of the city. the use of face masks in england and scotland is expanded with coverings now compulsory in cinemas, museums and places of worship. sport and for a full round up, from the bbc sport centre, here's gavin ra mjuan.

england have lost three wickets after lunch, at old trafford, as the momentum tips towards pakistan on day four of the first test. they're chasing 277 to win, with opener rory burns falling first in their second innings. out lbw, with a few words exchanged with the visiting side. england were 55—1 at lunch. then lost dom sibley, and captain joe root followed soon after. pakistan charging through england's order after lunch, ben stokes the latest to go. out for 9, to yasir shah, after initially being given not—out here. yasir with his second of the day. 116-a. a reminder coverage and commentary is on five live sports extra and the bbc sport website, where there's also in—play video highlights. on bbc two at seven o'clock

tonight you can also catch highlights of the day's play. valtteri bottas will start tomorrow's formula one 70th anniversary grand prix at silverstone from pole. the fin celebrated signing a new contract for mercedes this week by beating his team mate lewis hamilton byjust six hundredths of a second.