service broadcaster rte and here with me in the studio is celia hatton, the bbc�*s pacific asia editor. a warm welcome to all of you, thanks for being with us and thank you as well for being with us at home. now, 80 years ago in what is now canada's atlantic coast, in the midst of war, winston churchill and franklin roosevelt signed the atlantic charter. tack due east and fast forward eight decades and on england's atlantic coast, their modern day successors, boris johnson and joe biden, have signed anew. what the g7 leaders who convened on friday may not know is that cornwall in england's far south—west is a county of changeable weather. atlantic squalls can blow up without warning and through the surf is slight, the water may be turning underneath. henry, in terms of the relationship between the uk and the united states, first of all, since they were the signatories of the original atlantic charter, boris johnson described it as being like a breath of fresh air dealing with the biden administration, but i wonder if the air is blowing

hot or cold at the moment between london and washington? well, i think this reminds me a little bit of when obama became president and all of europe gave a sigh of relief, basically because he was not george w bush. the same dynamic is happening here, where leaders are smiling and feeling there is a spring in their step because it is no longer donald trump. so i think already that has created for some better atmospherics across the atlantic. it does always amuse or bemuse me a little bit whenever these summits come around and this taking of the temperature of the anglo—american relationship is really a preoccupation here in london and in the uk, but i am sorry to say it is not really of much significance in the larger sense in the us. there is not the same kind of anxiety or a constant taking of this temperature and that is of course because britain is thejunior partner in this relationship, but that said, i would like to point out that the broad contours of the anglo—american relationship have been fairly steady throughout the decades, from the time of that first atlantic charter being signed. you have shared intelligence, a shared history, a shared language that

some say divides us. right now britain is still the us's largest investment partner and its fourth largest trading partner, so there might be some hiccups and some disagreements between the occupants of the white house and 10 downing street, but on the whole i think the footing is still solid. now, borisjohnson of course clung fairly tightly to trump and you had biden calling johnson during the campaign a clone of trump, so there might be a little bit of personal issues to work out, but so far so good, i think. celia, the united states is, as well as an atlantic nation, increasingly a pacific one. japan is also present at the g7. how does this g7 format work for those other countries, particularly in a region where it is not overly represented in this particular framework of international diplomacy? that's right. well, countries in the asia—pacific

are watching to see what is going on in cornwall. they are looking for the scale of commitments made to things like vaccine distribution and climate change. of course, they are also looking to see how firm an alliance the g7 countries will pose to china and how firmly they will try to counter china's rise. some countries will be watching with some trepidation talk about this global corporate tax agreement that is in the works. countries or regions like hong kong, the chinese territory of hong kong, but also singapore, that like to offer corporations quite generous perks, might be starting to be concerned as we edge closer to a global tax agreement, that they won't be so lucrative in the future. brian, that is a challenge for ireland, isn't it? we heard paschal donohoe, the irish treasury minister, has been doing interviews around the fringes of the g7 about his government's perspective on this. how worried are the irish? because ireland has got quite a good reputation in the last couple of

years in terms of its international diplomacy and being able to influence the united states, not least over brexit. we'll talk about that in a minute, but in terms of this tax proposal how big a potential threat is it for the irish? it is a big issue. it is definitely a big issue for the irish i and the irish corporation tax - is about 12.5% at the moment, but through the oecd and particularly - the french, what the french are more concerned about is they talk about taxjustice. _ the irish talk about tax - competition and it is not so much that the irish have a rate i which is less than half of what the french corporate tax rate is. it is simply that if. ireland were to stick to that rate, that would be fine. it is the rate, so if it is 12.5%, it'512.5%,| not under 1%, for example.

that has always been the problem, the sweetheart deals with the - googles and the apples and the big tech companies that has happened i over the years and that there i is still an outstanding issue of 13 billion in back tax - which is due to the irish government, which hasn't actually been sent back i to the irish government yet via the eu, so... i that is still to be worked through. it is going to take some time, - but paschal donohoe, as you say, has been doing the rounds, and his. argument is that he is not worried about getting foreign direct - investment into ireland, but it does feel — and this is the majority, how the coalition irish - government feel — that ireland doesn'tl have heavy industry. france does, germany has. ireland has... it was an agrarian economy

after the foundation of the | state and has become a service - economy and now it lives off funding foreign direct investment. and that other countries have - a different shaped economy and that ireland should be allowed to - maintain its tax advantage of some kind, along with some other... excuse me, some other similar sized i countries within the eu and within i the oecd. henry, it is an issue in the united states as well, isn't it? because presumably, joe biden wants to protect silicon valley and those new industries as far as he can. is there room for compromise here, given the eu is divided internally on this issue anyway? is there some kind of compromise that can be worked through, do you think, this weekend? i think there is. often with these kinds of agreements, of course there will be loopholes that will be baked in to benefit certain industries. this is all part of the give—and—take of these kinds of negotiations. if you remember, the biden administration actually proposed this global corporate tax of i think it was 21%,

which might be lower than what the french had wanted and is certainly far higher than what ireland would want to see come out of this, so i think there is some wiggle room. you are right that biden does want to make sure that silicon valley is not overly penalised, not through the corporate tax, but through these digital services taxes that are beginning to be imposed in various european countries. the uk included. in fact, that is one of the hiccups between britain and the us right now in terms of threatened tariffs against the uk because of this digital services tax, but i think there is going to be some bargaining back and forth. there probably will be some kind of announcement that can paper over some of these differences and people won't get everything they want, but that is the nature of negotiation. there was some frustration expressed by boris johnson's predecessor in an interview she gave to a british newspaper on friday about the fact that travel and therefore international trade is still held up because of the pandemic. vaccination is the big theme,

you have mentioned it already, celia. joe biden talking about the united states being the arsenal of the world in terms of providing all these jabs to poorer or less developed countries. other people in cornwall this weekend are saying, "yes, it is fine, "but is nowhere near enough." and people in your region are already starting to see a further expansion, a further threat from further waves, additional waves of infection. what is happening in the asia—pacific? it is really interesting to hear the words ofjoe biden. when you are looking at the asia—pacific region, actually the countries that are doing the best in rolling out their vaccination drives are the ones who made the decision early on that they were going to accept chinese vaccines. let's forget whatjoe biden has to offer. so countries like indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, they are surging ahead in vaccinating their populations. the countries that are not doing so well, maybe they are not doing so well for a variety of reasons. north korea, for example... mysteriously we haven't heard anything about whether they are getting chinese vaccines.

let's assume they are not. they were supposed to get 2 million vaccines through the covax scheme. that has been held up because north korea will not reveal how they are going to distribute their vaccines, which is part of that programme. a country like japan, they have really just been very, very slow to approve any vaccines, they have bungled the distribution, they are trying to sort that out now, but really it is _ only over 65s maybe by the end of the summer. and a country like vietnam really wanted to distribute its own vaccine. that is going very slowly, so they this week made the reluctant decision to accept chinese vaccines, so still not much mention ofjoe biden. henry, the imf has done a calculation, it reckons about 70% of the world can be vaccinated for $50 billion us. but the increased global output if the world did that could be something like 9 trillion within four years. it looks like a no—brainer. if you want the global economy to recover, you vaccinate the world. and yet, the leaders

around the g7 table still seem to be haggling and hesitating over how much money they want to spend on this. that's right. i think some of them of course are preoccupied with getting their own populations vaccinated, but we're already seeing that countries like the us and the uk have vast surpluses of vaccine doses that could indeed be exported before they expire, hopefully, obviously, to other parts of the world. and we certainly have heard from scientists on the epidemiological score, that we are not safe until everyone is safe and, although some of us in countries where the vaccine roll—out has gone well, we might be thinking that we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, that the pandemic might be almost over for us. that is not true in these other parts of the world, where for example in africa you have countries that are called vaccine deserts. there is not a single vaccine getting injected into anyone�*s arm in those countries and that is going to pose a great threat to overall global prosperity and certainly that continent and other places like it.

so whenjoe biden and borisjohnson talk about having a kind of special group that's going to look at reopening transatlantic travel, you're not expecting brits on broadway anytime soon? well, right now travel is prohibited between the two countries. i think with the vaccinations proceeding well on both sides of the atlantic, there might be some headway made in terms of travel for those who have been fully inoculated at this point. that might present an easier prospect for americans who want to come over to britain because right now in the us all the vaccinations, the vaccines that have been approved and authorised for use are accepted here. going the other way, what is interesting right now is astrazeneca has not yet been authorised by the us. anthony fauci has even said that it might not be necessary for the us and if that is the case all of the people who have been vaccinated with astrazeneca here, myself included, might be wondering how can we get over to the us, even though we have been inoculated with

a very good vaccine? brian, let's talk about something that you could almost describe as the elephant in the room. they tried to deal with it and get it out of the way before the g7, but it is far from being resolved and this is the issue of the northern ireland protocol, the trading arrangement that was agreed as part of the brexit deal by borisjohnson and the european union. how serious a problem is this? we have heard the rhetoric, but how really serious a problem is it, brian? it is serious. there is no doubt about that. and it will need to be resolved in pretty short order, - i think, one way or another. it is not... g75, as you know, are not places where disagreements very - often become public, _ except for president trump in canada in 2018, when he walked out, but they don't _ like to air... to wash their dirty linen in public, i suppose. - the row did happen,

reportedly, between lord frost and the american charge i d'affaires, when she went to lordl frost and issued a diplomatic- telling off, i suppose, and was left in no doubt of america's concern over this. - it is certainly noti going to go away. you know, there has been a lot of comment on why the eu, - why the americans have got involved in this, but actually under— the good friday agreement, - they are part of two international facilitators and safeguarders of that agreement — - america and the eu — - so there are ways around it, i suppose, but it isj very difficult to... ..let diplomats and negotiators do this, when there is - so much public spatting going on,

if i can put it that way. _ for example, the eu did ask if britain - could align itself in terms - of the sps checks — these are the checks on sausages and other chilled meats — l that has caused this latest row. and they won't do that, obviously, because they feel we took- back control in the brexit _ referendum and we are not going to nowjust accept and copy and paste eu regulations into the _ british system. so... and there are a few other things, but it is going to. take time. the thing about it is that - if boris johnson suspends this, it is going to make matters a lot- worse and there is some talk of him actually suspending these checks and so on and suspending the protocol.

before the loyalist marching season. but i think that would cause an awful lot - of damage to relations and _ that if he doesn't do that, there is a chance, i think, j that there can be temporary fixes, patches and so on, _ until, you know, they can actually get it put - back together again, but _ certainly at the moment it is not looking good i and we are not going to see a big row at the g7 over this, but you will have noted _ president macron's remarks before he left france to _ come to cornwall, where he said i that, "we are not going to sit down "and renegotiate something - that we signed up to and the british "signed up to just at the end of last yeah" _ henry? well, i think when it comes to the us, woe betide anyone who would underestimatejoe biden�*s commitment to making the good friday agreement work. you know, he's incredibly proud of his irish

heritage and you might even remember back in november after he won the election, a viral clip went around showing him saying to a bbc reporter who wanted a word, he said, "bbc, iam irish." so he certainly has that connection with his ancestral homeland, plus when he was in the senate on the foreign relations committee, during the clinton administration, he pushed the administration to really help... to make an effort to resolve the troubles and so he has a lot invested in that personally, both from an emotional point of view and a political point of view. i think even during the campaign, he warned borisjohnson that brexit could not threaten and jeopardise the security of northern ireland and ireland and the peace process. and so, i think, although there won't be anything too public in cornwall in terms of disagreements just blooming in the public sphere, i think plenty is

going on behind the scenes with the biden administration. yeah, and at least you have pretty much got all the international players and the guarantors of the good friday agreement in the same room this weekend. let's talk about the other big issue. we will park russia for now because we know that president biden is going on to meet vladimir putin and we will probably be talking about that on next week's programme. we know there is the nato summit that borisjohnson, president macron and joe biden will also be at. what about china, though? because china is critical tojoe biden and boris johnson's ambitions for climate change. we had a very dramatic intervention by president xijinping last year when he basically said, we are going to do our bit. and yet they are all now starting to talk a similar language, at least in the g7 nations, about china and uighurs, china and hong kong and china and taiwan. is the relationship going to sour

further, do you think? and is there a sense that the g7 nations are on the same page when it comes to china now? i think that the relations will probably stay the same as they are. i think china has really accepted the g7 criticism overthe uighurs, over hong kong, and i think they are reallyjust going to stay on course with what they have been doing, frankly. we had some conciliatory words from xi jinping earlier this week, when he said that he thought china needed to use warmer words when addressing the outside world, but we haven't really seen... that is one speech, you know? so this kind of diplomacy, as we have been getting from chinese diplomats over the past few years, that has got quite a long track record and i think it would _ take more than one speech from xi jinping to really change the course on it. there is a different kind of structure that exists, isn't there, in this? there is the quad, which has been mentioned a couple of times during the course of the weekend. so we have got japan

and the us, who are also part of this arrangement, and then india and australia, they have been invited to attend the g7 as observers. is the quad turning into something more meaningful, do you think, in terms of being a security pact or defence against china? 0h, absolutely. i think the quad really has not tried to hide its ambitions to really counter china's rise. i think they have really made it very clear what their intentions are. you know, itjust comes down even to the us government's language, continually calling it the indo pacific. china does not like that language! you know, sometimes itjust comes down to the words that you use and the names you use for things and i think yes, the quad is really quite powerful. i think it means a lot that they have also been invited to this very important g7 meeting. henry, does it mean a lot tojoe biden? because president obama talked about a tilt towards the pacific in his presidency. biden was his vice president. do you think that is still

there, this instinct that actually, it is fine to talk about the atlantic charter and be nice to the brits, but really long term our focus needs to be on that part of the globe? absolutely. it was a pivot under obama and biden, having been his vice president, is continuing that. you can see that already in some of the appointments that he has made, that he has appointed some very high level officials to look at asia, but we don't have ambassadors in some of these european capitals yet, including here in london, so the priorities are fairly plain that, in terms of what he is turning his attention to. in china, it is interesting, it is not mentioned at all in this new atlantic charter 2.0 anywhere, but it is obviously a looming presence in the fact that you have the quad present, you have biden talking about dangers when it comes to cyber attacks and, you know, that is pointed at both russia and china, so i think this is quite on biden�*s mind and that he wants the democracies of the world to come together to show their durability and show that they still offer the best way.

not necessarily to spread democracy, but to shore it up and counter the rise of what he sees as autocracies in the asia—pacific region. well, we might have an idea by the end of this weekend whether america is indeed back and whether the rest of the world is prepared to accept its leadership in some of these issues. for now, thanks very much for going through all of that here. we've got a few minutes, let's just give each of you a chance to mark our cards, mark the audience's cards, for any other stories that maybe haven't been getting the attention they should. brian, do you want to kick off first? yes, ithink... well, we were talking about brexit and northern ireland a moment. ago and the big problem with that, i suppose, is trust. _ there is a lack of trust - between the eu and the uk, and you get the feeling that borisjohnson- isn't actually trusted by brussels at the moment. one example of that, j if you actually want to

know about boris johnson look at the story earlier this week, i when there was a bit of a row in the house of _ commons about a reduction in i britain's foreign aid contribution from 7% of gross - national income to 5%. now, that represents. something in the region of about £4 billion a year. it actually makes a huge difference to what they are doing _ and vaccine roll—outj that they are talking about now and donations of vaccines are not going to make up for that huge loss. - but borisjohnson, - in doing that, and then not allowing a vote of mps in the commons on it, - which his government would probably lose, tells you that _ he is prepared to abandon the . legislation that he passed in the house of commons in 2015 and that... that is bound by international treaty, which is now broken. i and he has no respect and he doesn't heed l parliament at all.

so... that is not a great look when you are going toi be global britain, goingj round the world looking for new trade deals. no, and that might explain why brussels is nervous about whether he might walk away from the protocol. yes. henry? we were talking about democracies a moment ago and one of the most robust democracies in latin america is in peru, where we had an election and that is now on a knife edge between keiko fujimori, the daughter of former president alberto fujimori, who is in prison on corruption charges, and a left—wing populist and novice, a schoolteacher, pedro castillo, who is now in a slight lead over keiko fujimori. we need to keep our eye on this because the keiko fujimori camp is now beginning to put out claims of election fraud a la trump, as we saw back in november in the us, there's the potential now for political violence in a nation that has been relatively stable when it comes to democratic practice. so i would keep my eye on the ball there in peru.

henry, thank you very much. celia? i have been watching the us senate and this week they passed the _ biggest industrial bill in us history - $250 billion, which will be aimed at trying to improve us competitiveness against china in fields of science and technology, so it is the biggest investment in scientific research in decades and it is going to pour tonnes of money into things like artificial intelligence, robotics, semiconductors, all of that kind of stuff, so it is a really big deal. 0k. last final word, then, to take us back to the g7. just each of you briefly in turn. henry, what will be the thing you are looking out for at the end of the g7, to know it has been successful or not? i think this global tax agreement really is something that is what... i don't want to say revolutionary, that might sound a bit too heavy,

but it is something that if they can actually come to an agreement, that could at least go some measure towards correcting some of the inequalities we have in this world. brian? i think we need a bit more detail on vaccines and not just - vaccine donations. because if you listen - to people like former british prime minister gordon brown, he says you'rej going to need billions, about— 15 or 11 or 12 billion, _ something in that order of vaccines, and you're going to have to deal with the — copyright and intellectual property issues, so that vaccines can be - manufactured at a reasonable cost in the developing world, _ where they do have the facilities. india is a good example of that. celia? and i will be looking to see if countries like canada and japan give in to pressure to boost their climate change commitments. celia hatton, henry chu and brian o'connell, thank you all very much. thank you as well forjoining us on dateline london.

we are back at the same time next week, goodbye. hello. blue skies today will bring some pretty hot weather, but elsewhere, even if the cloud is with you, it will still be a warm and humid day. cloud across northern england and wales will break up to allow sunny spells. the cloud remains thickest across the highlands and islands, and here into orkney and shetland later today outbreaks of rain could become more extensive. keeping pollen levels at bay. but we could see very high

levels across much of england, not helped by the sun, humid conditions and heat. 29 celsius possible in some spots. 26 degrees in the east of scotland. 1a in stornoway. 29 degrees in wembley for england's opening match against croatia. very humid conditions, so remember your water. a humid and muggy night tonight. things turning fresher across scotland and northern ireland as a weather front pushes southwards, but south of it 15 or 16 will be the low into tomorrow morning with a few spots still warmer than that. to the south and east of this weather line, the humid air is gradually getting squeezed out through monday. something a bit fresher across the north, but breezy with sunshine and showers in scotland and later into northern ireland. this is a weather front which starts with some patchy rain and drizzle, pushing south and by the end of monday it is to the south and east where the humid air will last the longest. maybe even 30 degrees in the south—east corner.

mid or high teens across the northern half of the country. a big not as stark on tuesday. high—pressure moves out of the way ahead of another wave of tropical air heading from the west later. that comes with cloud and rain into the west of northern ireland, the west of scotland later in the day. a dry and bright day for most with the best of the sunshine across england and wales. not as hot or humid as sunday or monday, but still pretty warm. what will follow will be a very humid night on tuesday. rain in parts of scotland and northern ireland. even more humid air drawing up from the south, and by the end of the day temperatures could reach 29, 30 in the south—east corner, and we could see some storms.

this is bbc news. i'm ben brown live in cornwall. it is a fabulously sunny day here — but threatening to overshadow this summit are tensions between the uk and france over brexit which have resurfaced. emmanuel macron is accused of undermining the status of northern ireland as part of the uk. it is extremely offensive. again, we wouldn't dream of talking about the northern region of italy, the german... or other provinces. particularly ones where there are these nationalist pressures. we wouldn't dream of talking about those areas in those terms. today the leaders focus on climate change. sir david attenborough will tell them the choices they make will be some of the most

important in human history.