nasa has released remarkable images of its space rover perseverence landing on mars. it shows the final minutes of last week's tense descent with clouds of dust and grit being blown around, as the vehicle is lowered carefully on to the floor of one of the red planets craters. president biden has held a candle—lit ceremony at the white house to honour the half a million american lives lost to covid—19. the pandemic is still claiming 2000 americans every day and there has been widespread economic hardship. flags on federal buildings are to be flown at half mast as a mark of respect. donald trump has been ordered by the us supreme court to hand over his tax returns and other financial records to prosecutors in new york. the former us president has been refusing to release the documents for several years, despite a precedent that presidential candidates should do so.

now it's time for a look back at the day in parliament. hello and welcome to monday in parliament. coming up: borisjohnson sets out his plan to reopen england stressing a cautious easing between now and the end ofjune. a wretched year will give way to a spring and a summer that will be very different and incomparably better than the picture we see around us today. labour says this has to be the last lockdown and welcomes the data driven approach. i am glad the prime minister spoke today of caution, of this being irreversible. of assessing the data and following the evidence. those of the right

guiding principles. also on this programme: a call for more help for those living in homes with flammable cladding. and: a conservative peer reckons the govenrment�*s wrong to say a maternity bill can't talk about women. i respectfully say to my new friend the minister that this is garbage. but first... the prime minister has set out the steps to lifting england's coronavirus lockdown. in a commons statement he gave the earliest dates on which restrictions would be eased. as has been widely trailed schools will return on march the 8th. shops, hairdressers, gyms and outdoor hospitality, including beer gardens are set to reopen on april the 12th if strict conditions are met and indoor hopsitality such as cinemas, hotels, indoor pubs and restaurants from the 17th of may.

with the final restrictions going by the end ofjune. we are setting out on what i hope and believe is a one—way road to freedom. and this journey is made possible by the pace of the vaccination programme. he explained there'd be five weeks between each step to assess data on the impact of each loosening. with experts looking at four tests including, whether the infection rate risked a surge in hospitalisations and the threat of new variants. and while restrictions would be gradually eased he insisted government would continue to provide support. we will not pull the rug out. for the duration of the pandemic the government will continue to do whatever it takes to protect jobs and livelihoods across the uk. and my right honourable friend the chancellor will set out further details in the budget next wednesday. i know there will be many people who will be worried that we are being too ambitious and that it is arrogance to impose any kind of plan upon a virus. and i agree that we must always be humble in the face of nature.

and we must be cautious. but i really also believe that the vaccination programme has dramatically changed the odds in our favour, and it is on that basis that we can now proceed. and of course, mr speaker, that believe that we could go faster on the basis of the vaccination programme. and i understand theirfeelings come and i sympathise very much with the exhaustion and the stress that people are experiencing, and the businesses are experiencing after so long in lockdown. but to them and them all i say that today there really is, the end really is insight. and what he called a "wretched year" would give way to a spring and summer that was incomparably better. the labour leader, welcomed

the prime minister's cautious approach. but i know the prime minister will come under pressure from those in his own benches to go faster, and to throw caution to the wind. last week it was reported that around 60 of its own members of parliament called for the end of all restrictions by the end of april, i'm sure there's going to be similar calls this afternoon. hear, hear! i have the prime minister takes this opportunity to face this now, because if this road map is to work he needs to listen to the chief scientific officer and the chief medical officer. not the honourable members. a reference there to lockdown sceptic conservatives steve baker and mark harper. the labour leader urged the prime minister to stick to his careful approach. if the prime minister does, he will have our support and will secure a majority in the house. if he does not, we will waste all of the sacrifices of the last 12 months.

prime minister, your plan to end lockdown will be . worthless if your insufficient quantity measures allow - a new variant in the back door. people right across _ the united kingdom are making huge sacrifices, children are not yet physically at| school, families are isolating, there a loneliness epidemic. i people are really- struggling and this cannot be all for nothing. do not leave the backl door open, do not risk all of the hard work, all of the sacrifices i that have been made. the road map to recovery must put people hit hardest by this pandemic first. not least people with learning disabilities. they have died at rates within three and a half times the rest of the population. will the prime minister tell us when on his road map everyone with a learning disability will have been offered theirfirstjab? borisjohnson said those with

vulnerablilities did appear high up in the categories to be vaccinated. in his statement borisjohnson announced a series of reviews to look at areas such as social distancing, covid certification and international travel that one due to report by the 12th of april but his predecessor worried that was too late for the aviation industry. the industry needs three i months preparation from the point of certainty. so i asked my right honourable friend to look again at this - time table for that task force report come to bring - it forward so he can - open up our international travel and make sure that. britain is open for business. workers across the uk still face a hopeless choice. self isolating and suffering loss of earnings are going to work where they risk spreading the virus. head of the budget more the prime minister committed to raising and expanding statutory sick pay once and for all as a key long—term lesson to be learned from this pandemic? we've increased benefits to the payment of £500, mr speaker, and other payments that will make available and are undertaking to make sure we protect people whether they are self isolating

or they are forced not to be able to work throughout the duration of the pandemic and should be hearing more about that from the chancellor on march the 3rd. will he also take this i opportunity to respond with the seriousness it - deserves to the high court ruling on friday that - the secretary of state acted unlawfully by failing - to publish covid contracts. no one has suggested i the minister did not need to act fast to procure a ppe and other covid related - contracts but transparency matters even in a crisis. . so the government has nothing to hide will he now publish - details of who benefited - from the vip lane, who lifted the velvet ropes for those - favoured companies, well priced with a paid and why were they chosen? | parliament and the country have a right to know. - all of the details are on the record and of course it was right to work as fast as we possibly could to get

the ppe that this country so desperately needed. well, those weren't the only questions the prime minister faced, 94 others followed. a series of conservatives wondered why restrictions couldn't be lifted sooner once everyone over 50 and all vulnerable people had been inoculated. those groups account for 99% of deaths and around 80% of hospitalisations. so for what reason once they have been vaccinated and protected, from covid, by the end of april at the latest is there any need for restrictions to continue? there will be at least a significant minority who either have not taken up the vaccine in those vulnerable groups, for the reason the house has been discussing, or who having the vaccine and not given sufficient protection. we believe the protection is very substantial, but there will be a large minority who will not have sufficient protection.

and the risk is that if you let the brakes off, madame deputy speaker, then the disease could surge up in such a way as again to rip through a large number of, rip through those groups in a way that alas i don't think anybody in this country would want to see. i'm afraid it is pure mathematics. there still a substantial body of risk. if we believe in the vaccine, we believe in the programme, and we believe in the data, it's in the logic that if the data shows we can move to free up sectors of the economy sooner, should we not artificially hold them back, surely that is following the data? surely if we are following the data, that flexibility. has to work both ways. i think people would rather have certainty

rather than urgency. and we are going as fast as we reasonably and responsibly can but if it is a trade—off between haste and certainty i think people will prefer certainty. a string of labour mps rounded on the prime minister over the high court's ruling last week that the health secretary acted unlawfully over contracts signed during the pandemic. i wonder if the prime minister agrees with me and many people across newport west that believe that every single penny of public money must be accounted for. and if so what he is he going to say to his health secretary who according to the courts breached his legal obligation by not publishing details within 30 days of contracts being signed? i was really concerned - about the health secretary's tone on the media around | yesterday were he seemed to infer that he had done - nothing wrong and the judge was actually the one - who was making a mistake. this is not how a healthy democracy works. - will he also replace

the health secretary with somebody who will stand by and obey the law and publish, in advance, all contracts that are due to be led to the public can see how their money is being spent? i can see that there is a concerted attempts to make a point here today about this, but i must say that i do think that every effort was made by the government to secure ppe as fast as we possibly could, and i think that's what the people of this country wanted. most mps welcomed the road map, but several had points to make. professor mark will house told the science and technology committee last week that during the whole year, and i quote, there has been very, very little evidence of any transmission outdoors happening in the uk. so will my right honourable friend continue to look at the evidence and see whether it's possible to bring back outdoor activities like sports during the weeks ahead. i know with the spring weather

coming there will be a great boon to millions of people across the country. hospitality was covid sick - but they were imposed arbitrary curfew and close down. it's the lifeblood of coastall tourist towns like mine that people can be outside in a park and yet outdoor areas of safe, i regulated pubs, bars. and restaurants cannot open until april. he simply cannot see the logic behind this. j government scientists themselves of one that the big bank reopening of schools on march the 8th could leave the infection rate rising above one, tricking an exponential increase in cases. nine education unions have described the plans as reckless, so instead of repeating his mistakes will the prime minister listen to teachers and scientists and follow the defaulted ministrations with a phase returned to schools? perhaps she might direct her

fire at her own front bench. and the opposition, madame deputy speaker. he hasjust quite rightly supported those plans. i think she possibly has been failing to pay attention. he is withdrawing his support. i told you. there you go. we have barely been here two hours, madame deputy speaker and it is gone again. a few minutes later, after a whispered few words across the despatch box, borisjohnson clarified that keir starmer did support the reopening of schools on the 8th of march. you're watching monday in parliament, with me, alicia mccarthy. it's been announced that there will be a large expansion of the number of people being asked to shield in england to protect them from covid—19. an extra 1.7 million people are expected to be added to the 2.3 million already on the shielded patient list. the move comes after a new method of identifying vulnerable people was used

taking into account factors such as ethnicity and deprivation. the deputy chief medical officer was asked about the accurracy of the numbers when she faced the public accounts committee. the number itself represents about the right number of people that we will be contacting, so some of those letters would've gone last week and some of them are going this week to the auto population because they will have already received their vaccination. —— older population. they are protected because of lockdown. but what we will find because of that cautionary approach that over time some of those members will produce in our communication says very clearly that we may have overestimated the risk and that is intentional to make sure we capture anybody that we think is doing you rating increased risk. do you think the focus on clinical vulnerable factors in the beginning of this programme, do you think that led to the exclusion of these issues of ethnicity, morbidity, social economic factors which are now called english hello we have to learn from the evidence that we have as we go along and that

is what is happened. the original guidance was for clinically vulnerable. we knew age with a predominant risk factor in that is still true. we provided advice to the clinically vulnerable and those with underlying conditions. but this particular programme which we now call the shielding programme is actually the very high level, clinically identified level. quite specialist. she said the risks around ethnicity had been considered at length. but what we now know due to sage and other subgroups and watching the virus move across the country in the different communities that it affects, the predominant issues are our brown sociodemographic features, that its characteristic of infectious disease. they tend to go into more impoverished societies.

but there were concerns about the numbers being asked to shield. we saw some areas but 50% of people isolating less, which is understandable. my own area was at the lower end. best 50%. we saw 350% of people added to somebody's list and other areas. how can this anomaly and be accounted for from your head? we often think of the cb group as a group but they are not. they are made up of hugely different and varying conditions and varying members. you can have very minority diseases if you like and a handful of people and also it is a living list. the list continues to grow. we are adding people onto taking them off. different conditions in different treatments. at the end of the day we do have to rely local clinicians to make the decision about. we can only control so much of the national level. i do want to flag that gps for example work right over

the easter period to ensure the individuals were appropriately added a great speed to the list. northern ireland's deputy first minister michelle 0'neill has urged assembly members to work to find solutions to issues created by the northern ireland protocol and stop indulging in "silly games". since brexit, northern ireland has continued to follow many of the eu's rules to stop a hard border between the north and the republic. but it does mean some checks on goods moving between great britain and northern ireland. the dup says the protocol has ruptured the east west relationship with gb leading to delays for businesses and some shortages on shelves. does the deputy first minister accept that commerce between great britain and northern ireland has been impeded by the protocol whose rigorous implementation she demands? why therefore does she want to punish the economy for northern ireland? or is the simple truth that dislocation between northern ireland and gb

is a political gain that she prioritises above the damage to her economy? can i say that what we are experiencing right now is a direct consequence of brexit? a brexit which the member championed and helped to bring about. what we need to do now is find a solution to the issues that are outstanding. i want to see free trade across north, south, east and west. i don't want to see any disruption. it is in our economic benefit that we have that free flow. what we all need to be focused on right now is not playing silly games, but to be provide certainty to businesses, to traders, and vendors. these issues are not from i

brexit but a denial of brexit by protocol party opposite. some nine weeks into - the northern ireland protocol, can the deputy first minister point to any evidence both i antidotal or substantial. that this protocol has any advantages for northern ireland businesses? - or is it a case ofjust simply they do not exist and if so, | will she joined with mel and others in calling out the protocol for that it is destined for the dustbinl where it belongs? my own personal view is thank goodness for the protocol. what we are experiencing right now is the fact that the british government didn't prepare. they didn't work with businesses in terms of being ready for a post—brexit world. they ran the clock down to the 31st of december, no opportunity to transition into a new arrangement. what we're dealing with now is the new trading reality as a direct result of brexit. 0ne assembly member turned to the recent row over triggering part of the protocol

known as article 16 over covid vaccine exports. the triggering of article 16 by the european side, would the deputy first minister agree a hateful spiteful act by an incompetent, bungling european bureaucracy to disguise the fact that it has singularly failed to deliver a proper vaccine roll—out for the people of continental europe? article 16 has now been triggered. will she agree with me that in the future, the uk government should not be reticent about using it to defend our interests the way the european site did their own? firstly, i would disassociate myself with your language completely. secondly, i would say that what happened on the eu side, when they said they were going to trigger article 16, it was wrong. i said that publicly. it was wrong. but you don't fight fire with fire. you don't fight back and say let's do it too. let's find solutions. let's find a solution

to the brexit that has been hoisted upon us by the tories. michelle 0'neill. ministers have come under pressure to explain why people living in low rise flats will have to pay for unsafe cladding to be removed from their homes. the government announced earlier this month that it would provide a further 3.5 billion pounds to remove cladding from high rise blocks. meanwhile, leaseholders in buildings under 18 metres will be offered loans to pay for remedial work. i would like to remind the ministers that 17 times at the despatch box the government has made a commitment to these leaseholders they would not pgy- the housing secretary announced last week funding for cladding removal would not include buildings under 18 metres and that those that homes below 18 metres will be forced to into life changing that to pay for a problem they didn't cause. now, 18 metres is a crude height limit that doesn't reflect the complexity of the challenge at hand. not my words, but the secretary of state last year. what has changed?

the 18 metre threshold is well established as a reasonable threshold for assessing risk. it has featured in the statutory guidance since at least the 1970s. it is used by the national fire chief council operational guidance. it is used by the buildings research establishment, it was used by the independent expert panel... and he pointed to remarks by the chair of an independent review into building safety regulations. and dame judith haggis, who i would remind the honourable lady said only yesterday in the sunday telegraph that our proposals are sensible. i hope that she will read what dame judith had said and perhaps reflect on the question that she had asked. a tory peer has accused the government of "abandoning women". lady nokes dismissed as "garbage" front bench claims that the word women could not be used in legislation, which would allow ministers to take paid maternity leave.

the conservative backbencher put down an amendment expressing regret at its drafting. the legislation was rushed through the commons earlier this month to allow attorney general suella braverman to take six months maternity leave. current laws mean she'd have to resign her post to take time off. the minister said this was the beginning, not the end, of a journey of reform. the bill send out a vital message to encourage women from various walks of life to enter politics and seek promotion and government without the fear of having to later choose between career and family. he turned to the concerns about the language in the bill. the language used in this bill is in line with current drafting convention and guidance. it is legally accurate and achieves the aim of ensuring that female ministers can take paid maternity leave. the government has already responded to the concerns from both houses that this

drafting could be misinterpreted and have already updated the notes of the bill which now details how the bill is intended to support women and explains the drafting practice. it will continue to be the policy of this government to refer to pregnant women and government publications. but the conservative who'd put down an amendment to the bill was not impressed. there is an increasing use of language which eliminates women, such as the ludicrous use of "people who menstruate" by the world health organization. only two weeks ago, the brighton university hospital nhs trust declared that breast—feeding was to be replaced with "chest feeding". and mother was to be replaced with "a birthing parent." that might go down well in brighton, my lords, but it will apall many women in mainstream britain.

she said she was not prepared to be erased as a woman and objected to the bill saying "a person" had given birth. my lords, when the bill was considered in the other place, the minister inserted a column and it is not the case that we could legally and correctly use the word woman. i respectfully say to my noble friend minister that this is garbage. there is nothing illegal or incorrect about using the word woman in relation to pregnancy. but at the end of that debate, lady noakes, decided not to force a vote on her amendment for now at least. and that's it from me for now, but do join me at the same time tomorrow for another round up of the day in parliament. but for now, from me, alicia mccarthy, goodbye. hello, northern and western parts of the uk saw some of the

best of the sunshine on monday. have a look at this picture from one of our weather watchers in cumbria. beautiful blue skies overhead but i think on tuesday it will look very different because this slice of sunshine is being replaced by a bank of cloud pushing in from the west in the cloud is going to bring a lot of rain across parts of northern ireland, wales, north—west england, some rain may be into the path south—west of england but the wettest weather is likely to be found across scotland where there is a met office and the warning in force across parts of the southern uplands and the southern grampians. we could see up to 120 millimetres of rain in the wettest places falling on already sodden ground, so a risk of flooding and disruption and it will be a windy day where ever you are, particularly gusty for western areas with gusts up to 50 or 70 mph for exposed parts of northern ireland or scotland.

very mild, ten or 1a degrees, may be 15 in the south—east but we should say dry with a bit of sunshine. through tuesday night and into sunday, the stripe of cloud and rain keeps coming, moving very slowly south—east and it is going to be a very, very mild night indeed and those are the minimum temperatures with cardiff and plymouth may be no lower than 12 degrees. we head on into wednesday and the winds are a little bit lighter, still fairly blustery out there and the frontal system will still be bringing rain across and western areas but to the south—east of the weather front we will be tapping into some very mild air indeed and given any lengthy spells of sunshine temperatures will shoot up to around 16 or 17 degrees across parts of east anglia and the south—east. the band of cloud and rain still affecting south—west, into southern scotland with sunshine and showers to the north—west of that but as i mentioned, the temperature is 17 degrees possible in london but it is another mild day where ever you are. as we move out of wednesday into thursday, the frontal system will clear east and high pressure will start to

building from the south and we may see weather fronts grazing the far north—west bringing a little bit of rain but for most of us it will be dried to end the week and there will be some sales of sunshine and still mild by day, but rather chilly at night.

welcome to bbc news. i'm mike embley. our top stories. images of a land far, far away. the moment perversance touches down on mars. the intrepid rover sends back previously unseen footage from the red planet. bells toll washington cathedral bells toll and president biden holds a candle—lit ceremony at the white house to honour the half a million american lives lost to covid—19. new data shows a single dose of pfizer's covid jab cuts deaths and serious illness in the uk by more than 75 per cent among over 805. and the us imposes sanctions on two more members of myanmar�*s militaryjunta as protestors take to the streets in unprecedented numbers.