you're watching bbc news. we'll have the headlines at the top of the hour, after this feature programme. hello, it's adam in the studio. it's victoria in the studio. for some reason they've turned the temperature up really high. it's baking in here. let's raise the news temperature by talking about what's been happening... oh, that was so lame, wasn't it? anyway, keir starmer, labour leader, went to manchester, did a big speech, it was billed as a big speech, and he unveiled these five missions. how do you understand what a mission is? i looked it up on

dictionary.com, because it's not a promise, it's not a pledge, it is a... let me get my notes... it's an important goal or purpose. 0k. so it's what he would hope to do, should he form the next government, but it's definitely not a promise. and a key test in politics of a list with five things on it is whetherjournalists can remember all five at the end of the day. shall we test ourselves? let's go. fastest growth in the g7 by the end of the first term of a labour government. highest sustained growth. yes, ma'am. nhs fit for the future. yeah. clean, green energy superpower. correct. i'm not sure what that means. making britain's streets safe. safer streets. and also removing all barriers to opportunity for children. basically, a very 2023 version of health, education, crime, the economy and energy. yeah. ed miliband, when he was leader

of labour, he had five promises, and tony blair did it before the �*97 election, so this is sir keir starmer�*s version. chris mason is missing from the studio tonight, because he was in manchester watching keir starmer. a jacket—less keir starmer, by the way, giving his speech. here's how keir starmer sounded while chris was watching. we're going to transform the way britain does its business from top to bottom. we'll modernise central government so it becomes dynamic, agile, strong, and, above all, focused. more open to expertise, to partnership with business, unions, communities and civil society — mission—driven government. and chris mason's mission is to get back to the office at some point, so we grabbed a word with him earlier. hello, newscasters, from manchester, where we've just finished our piece for the telly news on keir starmer�*s speech, and a curious

one, because often you might expect me to say, here is what was in it and start rattling off all sorts of policy ideas but there wasn't much policy in it, really. the strategy keir starmer is adopting is that he reckons in all likelihood the general election is around about 18 months off, maybe longer, so he doesn't want to say too much, too soon about specifics because he could be a hostage to fortune. a good idea could get nicked by the conservatives or others. instead, he's sticking to big themes, or missions, as he called them. what was striking today was the venue, the co—op building in manchester, an imposing venue, and lots of floors up above where keir starmer was speaking, and he tried to make a virtue when he walked in on how many people were there, and people looking over from various balconies upon him and it was pretty well attended for a political speech, not in an election campaign. you get a sense when you see keir starmer on the public

stage of the confidence a political leader gets when they are miles ahead in shedloads of opinion polls. it's inevitable, if the opinion polls suggest you might be the next prime minister, you are perhaps bound to walk a little taller. so, what was in the speech? this focus on missions, as he calls them. he reckons it's a new way of thinking about government. he says he wants to get away from what he calls a sticking plaster approach to government, where things are sorted because there's a crisis, and then you move on to the next crisis, and he talks about the backlogs in the nhs every winter as being a classic example, and instead trying to rewire how government works to ensure that, over time, a labour government, if they win a general election, is able to stick to its central missions. those central missions are not particularly surprising, he talked about the economy, wanting to see an economy that was growing faster than any other in the g7 group of industrialised countries

by the end of a first labour term, so within five years. also a focus on the nhs and on education and on crime and a couple of other things too. their plan is that, over the coming weeks and months, they'll then flesh out each one of the missions. that will start next week, when we will see keir starmer popping up in the city of london, talking about their economic prospectus and talking to some business leaders too. i think the big question is going to be for how long can he keep things quite big picture? when is there a greater clamour for detail? so, in terms of these five missions, how do they compare to rishi sunak's promises, his five promises back injan? a lot of the subjects are the same, about growing or managing the economy and sorting out the health service, although the way rishi sunak has done it is targeted, things like a pledge on where

inflation will be, where growth will be next year... reducing the debt. ..government debt overall, and the nhs pledge is much more focused on the backlog of people waiting for appointments and procedures. and a very specific one, which was — stop the boats. yeah, and none of that from keir starmer, but he did talk a bit about asylum, because there was a story today about the asylum backlog and the number of cases being processed. he did talk about that but it's not in the top— no. so much of this is about how he would try and run the government, so a lot is about the meetings he would have as prime minister and how they'd be different from the meetings rishi sunak has. i suppose he is trying to set the parameters as he would like them to be set in the run—up to the next election. these are the areas he wants to fight the next election on. yeah, but it would be good to put more flesh on these bones, and we can do that now as we are joined by shadow health secretary wes streeting.

hello, wes. hello. there are loads of things we can ask about this. the health mission, first of all, when will you be fleshing that out, as we only got flesh on the bones of one mission today. yeah, in the coming months, keir�*s going to do a big speech. i've already given quite a bit of direction of travel on health and social care reform. the first part of the mission, there is a whole agenda about life sciences and medical technology, which has enormous potential both to improve productivity in the nhs and also to revolutionise the way we do medicine in this country, so we can notjust diagnose and treat earlier, but potentially predict and prevent, which is just revolutionary in terms of genomics and data. and the final thing, which i would argue is the hardest bit and probably a generational challenge, is to close health inequalities in our country, because if you are serious about that, that's notjust a mission for the nhs or even the department of health, that's about tackling poverty, poor quality housing, it's about low wages.

and i think that probably epitomises why this mission—driven approach is so important, because government's got a role to play but we can't do it alone. a massive role for the private sector. for the private sector, civil society, trade unions and for us as individual citizens as well. the choices and decisions we make, particularly in terms of our health and wellbeing. i hope what people take from today is, a, a clear sense of what labour's priorities are, but also i hope that voters who are cynical about politics and the ability for politics to do any good, i hope they'll be reassured by the fact we're not pretending we'll be able to fix everything overnight or in one term of a labour government. and, yes, there'll be pledges and that manifesto for the first term and the yardsticks they can judge us on, to decide if we get a second term, but i think it's really important we don't keep on doing what i think the conservatives have been

doing, especially on the nhs, of sticking plaster, short—term gimmicks, quick fixes that don't work and you stumble from one crisis to another. and in the case of the conservatives, from one prime minister to another, one chancellor to another, one health secretary to another. so how do you get the highest sustained growth in the g7? what is sustained, by the way — two years, three years, two months? what percentage? so, two parts of this. in terms of how you do it, it's again go back to the mission approach — it's a wide range of things. firstly, government has to have a clear industrial strategy. it has to create the conditions for growth to give businesses the certainty they need to invest. that's why the emphasis we placed on institutions, for example, respecting the obr, the independence of the bank of england, rachel reeves�* fiscal rules, that's the kind of thing that's led to people likejohn allen from tesco saying, when it comes to a plan for growth, labour's the only serious team on the pitch.

i don't know what the plan is, though. what is the plan? how do you get it? just because you respect institutions, doesn't mean the economy will grow. no, that's where the industrial strategy comes in. which is what? back at the party conference, jonathan reynolds set out the industrial strategy for the country, whole planks of the economy and where we want to take it, so in my area, health and care, i thought it was really revealing, actually, thatjohnny identified health and care as industrial strategy, not simply public service policy, because you look at the labour market and how many people are both unwell and therefore out of work, a big part of getting the health of the economy back in shape is the health of the nation, but also, if i can go back to what i was saying about life sciences, if the life sciences sector, particularly some of the big players, with an international footprint, if they know what your life sciences approach is going to be, they are more likely

to unlock investment, and one reason we set out these missions so far ahead of a general election is so we can roll up our sleeves. are you saying you're going to create the environment that will allow institutions and private companies to invest? that's how it will grow? that is part of it. there's no guarantee that will happen. we have been really encouraged by the conversations with business leaders. but there's no guarantee that growth will happen, is there? look at what the last labour government did. if the economy had grown in the last 13 years of conservative government at the same rate as under labour, there would be £40 billion to either invest in public services or cut taxes. they had a financial crash to deal with, the conservatives, when they came in in 2010. i think the conservatives can point to the long—term

financial crisis and the pandemic and the war in ukraine as facts in mitigation as to why their economic record has been so poor, but that doesn't explain why we have had rock—bottom growth, low productivity, wage stagnation for more than a decade. those are partial explanations but certainly not excuses for the poor mismanagement of the economy we've seen. so government can help create the conditions for growth but it has an active role to play growth so for example education and skills, it's vital for making sure we have notjust the workers we need but the skills we need and making sure the nhs is functioning properly means means we have a healthy, happy, motivated workforce. i think what sets labour apart from the conservatives is that we understand the role that the state can play. so what percentage of growth are you looking for? 296, 496, 596?

well, under the last labour government, we saw growth of over 2%. but as keir said today, we're going for the ambition of being the highest sustained growth in the g7, which is hugely ambitious. and i'm quite comfortable with people saying today, "bloody hell, that's really ambitious. are you sure you're going to be able to do that?" as keir said, actually, why shouldn't britain have the highest growth in the g7? were there things that were rejected? for example, did rachel reeves say, we considered this target for growth but we rejected it? i'm intrigued about how these missions get designed. it's been a collaborative process across the shadow cabinet. even my mission, of perhaps all the missions, people might say, well, that's just about the nhs and the department of health. we can't do what we need to do in terms of the health of the nation without a genuine cross—government approach,

a partnership with business and wider civil society if we are serious about tackling health inequalities or working with the life sciences and med—tech industry to revolutionise treatment. so it has been a collaborative process and we're all happy with the missions as established. but in terms of the specific milestones for the health mission, the education mission, the law and order mission, we will be setting out the milestones, the yardsticks in the coming months. is this your offer to the voters? are you saying, we are promising you, the voters, we will do this if we form the next government? to be clear, the missions are about where we want to take britain in the long term. in our manifesto, we will set out the specific promises for that parliament and the measures by which voters can judge us. all of our promises will be fully costed and fully funded, and all of our targets will be for the parliament and we can be held to them. if we are serious about achieving these missions,

it's not a one—term project. it's at least a two—term project. we won't get a second term unless we deliver on the pledges of the first. this speech was in manchester. did you all get the train there together like a shadow cabinet school trip? myself, rachel and jonny reynolds got the train up last night and other colleagues followed and i came back on my lonesome because we were going to different parts of the country. so when the gang was on the train together, were you sat there eating haribo? did you have a glass of wine that you get at train stations? i have given up cakes and sweets and chocolate for lent, so i am very virtuous. and are you doing sudoku and rachel's got her headphones on? not talking? if you look at my instagram story from yesterday, you will have seen that rachel reeves was reading the financial times to myself and jonny reynolds. like an audiobook? like a bedtime story. we may have had a gin and tonic on the train up, setting the world to rights. rachel and jonny are very good friends. but also, on the life sciences

and technology piece, we are working closely together as a team. that's the other thing i have felt, having been in the shadow cabinet for about 18 months now. there's been a galvanising of the labour team. in the process of putting together these missions and thinking in a serious way about what we would do in government is galvanising the team. keir starmer has done this sticking plaster politics pitch a few times. do sales of plasters go up every time he does it? that would be an intriguing little stat to find out. that is your mission for this evening. newscast, taking on all the big questions of the day. thank you very much. thanks for coming in. the studio is turning into a bit of a train station now because as one guest goes, another one arrives, although he has not got a train here, he just walked across from the house of commons. it is the security minister, tom tugendhat. nice to be here. i see you have a pen and paper,

were you expecting an exam? well, you never know. i so often forget things that i think taking a note now and then is not a bad idea. it's because victoria is here. if it was chris mason, you would be thinking, i can wing this. you've got notes all over the place. the big political story of the day has been keir starmer�*s five missions. is there anything you would disagree with in those missions? what i like about keir is that he is always up for a new relaunch. this is his 10th or 11th, so i'm delighted to see he is doing so well at it. how many prime ministers have you had? well, this is all on keir and he is a great guy and i'm very fond of him, but here we go again. it's another one. given that these relaunches tend to include pledges that then end up being dropped, like his commitment not to outsource on the nhs or his commitment to free movement, which he has dropped and so on, you will forgive me if i don't take it too seriously. a big thing about it is how government actually operates and focuses, and how the machinery of government can

be moved into a place where it responds to things better. you used to be in the armed forces, so you know about going on a mission. you are a minister now. do you think he is onto something about how this giant leviathan of government actually works in 2023? the person who is onto something is actually rishi. what the prime minister has just done is split up bays into three departments. that is important. getting science and technology to deliver for this country and to transform us for this new digital revolution, that's hugely important. to make sure we have businesses and trade working together and actually delivering, that is important, and there is a whole series where we have put effort into making sure the machinery works, because i'm afraid that really is important. you have to make sure the government works in a way that delivers. but as a minister, do you find yourself pressing metaphorical buttons and nothing happens, or it happens very slowly and you wish it was a bit faster? i'm lucky, i'm in the security area of the home office, which means it's pretty quick.

you talk about things happening quickly in the home office. 0ne agency deals with asylum claims, and the backlog of people waiting for their claims to be processed today was revealed to be the highest it has been since they started counting these things. that is not responsive or quick, is it? that is why rob jenrick has done so much work in reforming this. if you look at what he's done, it's pretty remarkable. he has a whole team transformed on that, and he is making all the difference you need. we need to make sure it delivers, and frankly, the support and the emphasis that the home secretary suella has been putting onto this has been really fantastic. are you in that position in terms of the asylum backlog because of 13 years of conservative government? no, i think we're in that position because there are a huge number of issues that have changed in recent years and we have seen a greater pressure, as you know, on migration over the channel. that is just simply a fact. it's notjust us dealing with it. if you talk to the germans or the french, talk to the italians, they're seeing

extraordinary pressure on them for exactly the same reasons. but the uk used to do it much more quickly. what's gone wrong? i'm not going to talk historically, because i only joined the department four months ago. but what has happened is that suella and rob and the prime minister have transformed the elements going into that and making sure we get this through. it's not fair on people either to have people here who shouldn't be here or to have people waiting who need a decision. both parties, the british people and the asylum claimants, need an answer soon. so i'm glad that we are putting the resources into making sure we get those answers. are you happy with this notion that those who came beforejune last year won't have to have an interview, they willjust fill in a several page form? there is a huge amount of discussions going on at the moment. i'm not going to comment on the different ideas that are propping up all over the place, because some of them are more speculative than formal. but i am convinced that we have

to have a resolution to this, because this cannot continue. it's clear that we cannot have a system where hotels in communities around our country are being requisitioned for use by the state when, frankly, they should be used to promote the local economy. they should be local businesses that host everything from wedding parties and rotary groups to weekenders. that is what they're there for. do you think the people who have been protesting outside hotels in the last few weeks have a point and they�* re justified ? we have to make sure we're resolving the problem. the challenge we have got is that the government has to be in a position to make sure we control our borders. that is a fundamental part of governing the united kingdom and that's what we are dedicated to doing. the home secretary has literally spent the last four months... she had two goes at it. true, but she has been there for four or so months. and still, the boats come. not at the moment, but yes.

there is still a challenge, you're right. that's why we have had general skeates helping the home office and doing a huge amount of difference. and we're working now with the french and the dutch and the belgians to make sure we have a combined effort. the reality is, there are hundreds of miles of coastline on the north european coast, hundreds of miles. and there's nothing we can do to patrol that. that's not british territory. so we have to work with our partners and friends and i have to say, the relationship the home secretary has built up with the french interior minister, her equivalent, has been exemplary. let's talk about ukraine now. tomorrow, victoria is doing a special episode of ukrainecast in the radio theatre with a big audience and lots of people from ukraine. in our old jobs, when i was doing the news in the morning and you were the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, i remember you calling me one morning and you were like, "i'm

in kyiv", and it was about two weeks before the invasion, when we were calling kyiv, kiev. did you know at that point that the ukrainians were going to put up such a fight that they would still be fighting hard a year later? be honest. i have to be honest, i thought they would try. i wasn't at all convinced they would succeed. the ukrainian government, under the extraordinary leadership of president zelensky, turned around an entirely civilian economy and country, turned it from being a sheep into a porcupine overnight. it was a remarkable achievement. and we can see the result now. they are quite literally on the front line of freedom. they are literally defending the west, if you like, as a term, the western european countries today, and it's phenomenal. we owe them a huge debt of gratitude and we are with them. you will know that borisjohnson is saying to rishi sunak, send fighter jets to ukraine now.

do you agree? i agree that we have to prepare for that, and that's what the prime minister is doing. training pilots... so it is going to happen? we are preparing for that? what are we preparing for? are we preparing ukrainian pilots to be able to fly our planes that we've sent them? we have the option to. you don't want to make the decision to send planes and then say, now it's going to take six months to learn to fly them. we want to do everything we can in advance so that when we take a decision, the decision happens. you don't want to have the delay later, you want to get rid of the delay as quickly as possible. so we're training the pilots now, which i think is an extremely important decision and the prime minister has made that call absolutely right. you want to make sure that you have got the resources and logistics in place before you send them, and that is really difficult. it is not something we would

want to do on our own, we would want to do it with partners for obvious reasons, because you need to maintain a supply chain of spare parts. what do you think of borisjohnson calling for this publicly now? well, look, the prime minister is leading entirely in the right direction on this. it's nice to have support, i'd say. we are expecting some kind of peace plan or peace proposalfrom china, potentially to be published on the one—year anniversary of russia's full scale invasion. will it be russia's complete withdrawal from the ukrainian territory according to the un? this is what i am asking, how much credence are you going to give to that? well, china is a permanent member of the un security council and is extremely keen to remind us that its territorial integrity must be respected. it would be extraordinary if beijing were not to respect the territorial integrity of other states. tom, thanks for coming in. nice to see you. that's where we'll leave it.

bye— bye. hello again. there are large parts of the uk that enjoyed a fine day of weather on thursday, with lots of sunshine and certainly was a stunning end to the day across the west midlands. this was the setting sun around sutton coldfield. now, it wasn't like that everywhere. after a sunny start to the day in scotland, the clouds gathered through the afternoon and it did turn quite wet and quite windy. have seen gusts of wind as strong as about 48 miles an hour across northern scotland. but those winds beginning to ease away at the moment. a little bit of rain trickling southwards as our cold front moves across scotland to bring some patches of rain into northern ireland and northern england over the next few hours. although there is a frost,

that tends to become confined to southern most areas as we head into the first part of friday morning. so, for some quite a chilly start to the day, but for many it's going to be quite cloudy on account of this weather front that will continue to push its way southwards. so, a bit of patchy rain possible for northern ireland, northern england through the morning, and that will tend to push its way into parts of wales, the midlands, east anglia. after a sunny start across the far south, it will tend to turn cloudier with a few patches of rain. for scotland and northern england, we'll see the skies brighten up through the day, with sunny spells becoming widespread. but there will be a few showers across northeastern areas, and a cold, and fairly gusty wind. gusts running into the 30s of miles an hour. now, those cold winds will continue to be a feature of the weather around this area of high pressure across northern and eastern scotland and eastern areas of england as we start off the weekend. so, certainly feeling quite chilly here, and there will be quite a bit of cloud coming in off the north sea, but still probably a few breaks in the cloud at times. but the best of any sunshine likely across western wales, western parts of england, northern ireland and western areas of scotland as well.

temperatures close to average, but perhaps feeling a little bit cold, really, given those brisk and chilly winds. now, the winds won't be quite as strong for the second half of the weekend. high pressures again in charge. so, the weather predominantly dry, just a few light showers possible around some of the north sea coast, and temperatures not really changing very much. 7—8 celsius, but, perhaps, not feeling quite as chilly given that the winds will be that bit lighter. now, take a look at the weather picture into next week. and there's a tendency for our area of high pressure to stay close to the uk for much of the week ahead. and that means the weather well into next week should be largely fine and dry with some sunshine. watch out for some morning frost, maybe a few fog patches around as well, but a lot of quiet weather.

welcome to bbc news. i'm lisa—marie misztak. our top stories: 0n the first anniversary of russia's invasion of ukraine — the un approves a resolution calling on moscow to withdraw its forces. as stated in ukraine's resolution, these 1m countries reiterated a clear demand to russia. withdraw. the bbc travels to north—eastern ukraine, and hears personal testimonies about the misery of war. translation: this has been the scariest year of my life. l so little joy and laughter. so much fear, pain and tears. in other news — disgraced hollywood film mogul harvey weinstein is sentenced to a futher16 years in prison for rape — on top of the 23 year sentence he is already serving. and the european union

tells its staff to delete the social media app tiktok — to protect data and