this is bbc news. next, it's time for newscast. newscast. newscast, from the bbc. hello. it's adam in the studio. and chris in the studio. and shortly we'll be joined by a former leader of the conservative party, but not one of the prime ministers that rebelled over brexit this week. so that narrows it down. yeah, to a few. this is like a pub quiz. yes. and that comes after the show. right. so today, a big, big figure left the political stage — nicola sturgeon had her last ever episode of first minister's questions because, after monday, she's not the first minister any more.

it was her, what, 286th or seventh? i think? it was a lot. and this is how she sounded. and actually, spoiler alert, she's quite emotional. words will never adequately convey the gratitude and the awe i hold in my heart for the opportunity i have had to serve as your first minister. it truly has been the privilege of my lifetime. and with these words, presiding officer, i draw it to a close. applause. and yeah, then the other party leaders just dived in with loads of party political points, like a classic first minister's questions. i suppose nicola sturgeon�*s immediate political legacy is quite a lot of chaos in her party as they pick a successor. yeah. so we'll hear who the new first minister is going to be on monday. and i mean the extraordinary thing — i mean, firstly, the very human moment for nicola sturgeon there, you know, to have reached the pinnacle of her trade, i suppose. i know she hasn't delivered

the very thing she would have loved to, which is scottish independence, but to have done the job that she has done for so, so long, but to have done it in a way, you know, her husband as the chief executive of the party where there was this, if you like, discipline and you would see it, you would see a discipline in the snp with her as leader, peter murrell as the chief executive, where you didn't get the outbreaks of kind of argument in public that you would within the conservative party or the labour party. then, she announces she's going and suddenly, you see the sort of edifice of that discipline breaking down. and you do wonder what that will mean for the new first minister. is that kind of a more pluralistic spirit that some might see as a good thing, or does it kind of look dysfunctional, as snp people have been acknowledging over the last few weeks? it kind of has been with this row over who gets to vote on the size of the party membership and all the rest of it. and it's the day after borisjohnson gave more than three hours of evidence to the privileges committee who are deciding whether

he misled parliament in his various statements about party gate over the years. i'm quite surprised, on the one hand that it's disappeared from the headlines so quickly, but actually then when i think about it rationally, it's like, well, it was just part of a process and we've still got to wait a few months for the actual outcome. yeah. so, i reckon it's going to be late spring or early summer before we get that outcome. privileges committee trying to work out, did he inadvertently mislead parliament? did he recklessly mislead parliament or did he intentionally mislead parliament? proving intent really hard because you're going to get into someone�*s head, unless there's some sort of email that says, i'm going to go to parliament at lunchtime today and tell them a load of nonsense, which there doesn't seem to be, at least not that the committee's got. and so, they are going to go away and might get a bit more evidence yet, work out what they can can conclude and agree on. they don't have to agree, but it kind of helps their case if they come to a unanimous conclusion. i think the interesting thing is can they agree and, as they would see it, prove that he recklessly misled parliament, and that's the most dangerous political charge that stands a reasonable chance

of being able to be thrown around borisjohnson�*s neck. he would vehemently deny that he did do that. is that what the committee comes to a conclusion on? and then, crucially, does parliament endorse that sanction or whatever sanction they attach to that? and at lunchtime, the bank of england put interest rates up to 4.25%, which is a lot, lot higher than the nearly 0% that they were for very many years, so that gives us lots of interesting things to talk to the former leader of the conservative party, sir ian duncan—smith is here. hello. hi. i know you really want to talk about tiktok, which... chuckles. yes. might surprise people for your demographic that you're beginning to... tiktok. talk about it. not on it. yeah, exactly. you're not looking at dancing cats, but we'll come on to that ina minute. so you didn't watch the 3.5 hours of borisjohnson at the committee? did you have something better to do? that's the funny thing.

i didn't actually, because i watched bits. i had little bits where i'd walk into somebody else's office and they'd have it on. i watched for about three or four minutes and left. you know, ijust had lots on yesterday doing things, talking to people, various meetings, and it didn't occur to me that i should cancel any of them to go and sit in an office and watch it — a bit like watching paint dry, really, i think, though less exciting. let's see when we watch a little bit of itjust to remind people what some of it was about. this is bernard jenkin, the conservative mp, asking borisjohnson about how the covid rules were followed or sort of followed in downing street. we know that the gathering attracted fixed penalty notices so, in fact, the police have judged that it broke the rules. why did you think it was within the rules? i thought it was essential for work purposes — or at least reasonably necessary for work purposes, because for the reason i've given, sir bernard, that we... november the 13th was a day in which two senior officials, senior advisers in government had left theirjobs in very, very difficult and challenging circumstances. and it was necessary to steady the ship. it was necessary to show that there was no rancour,

that the business of the government was being carried on. that's what we had to do. that's what i had to do. i wonder what you make of that — well, the spectacle of it, from what you've heard and seen and and borisjohnson�*s defence? well, i didn't think... from what i understand and what i've read and the little bits that i saw and talking to colleagues, i don't think anybody discovered some answer that wasn't already pretty much there, that his defence was exactly probably what you would have expected, except longer, and those questioning him were trying to score a point, as far as i can make out. now, whether you believe he was guilty of something or not guilty or deliberately misleading the house or something is another matter but i did think, it lasted that long, pretty torturous, really and, you know, what are they doing? originally, in erskine may, for your listeners... parliamentary rulebook. a kind of rule book. rule book. it did actually say that the charge is always knowingly.

well, the committee dropped that and tried for a wider bracket of charges, which was not actually... it hasn't gone through the house of commons to be agreed on. it was always that... the thing is, did you do it knowingly? if you did it knowingly, that's an offence. if you did it inadvertently and you come back and you apologise or correct order the notice. i was a minister and sometimes, you gave out evidence, then you went back and they said, no, no, you got the figures wrong and you then corrected the record or you went back and apologised as necessary, which is normal practice. so ijust kind of thought this was done to make this a more intrusive and longer term —— and people make their own minds up about it at the end of the day. but i don't know what we discovered from this that was new or anything else. let's talk about tiktok. you mentioned it a few minutes ago. we've seen today parliament say that it's going to ban tiktok and people won't even be able to access it on a personal device if they're using parliamentary wi—fi. we saw the government — was it last week? relatively recently, saying it shouldn't be on government devices either. you're a long—time sceptic

as far as china is concerned, sanctioned by beijing. indeed, lam. and my family. and yourfamily. and we've seen this colossal shift, haven't we, in uk foreign policy attitudes towards china in just the last seven or eight years from david cameron and the chinese president having a pint in a pub in oxfordshire to a more sceptical outlook now, but perhaps not as sceptical as you'd like to see. what do you make of this this tiktok ban? i've been campaigning on tiktok for some time and, of course, in china, there is a national security law that mandates every company — individuals, too — that, when required, must pass all data they have over to the intelligence services. you'll be arrested if you don't do it. and the reality about this is bytedance, which owns tiktok, is locked heavily to lots of suppliers inside china who also pass their data over regularly. so, the real issue is tiktok is a data harvester but with an ability to be able to use that data for malicious intent for a foreign

government. and at last, america's ahead of us on this one. and lots of other countries have acted earlier. but the british government's finally decided it should be banned from their telephones. but i've argued — and i'm pleased that parliament has acted so swiftly — but i've argued that individual ministers should have it off their private telephones because they have their offices — their telephones in their offices. they use them. they talk to each other on them the whole time, often about government business. we said, well, they shouldn't be doing just the same. that isn't it really arguable? well, it's exactly my point. so, if you're going to ban it from a government telephone, ban it from the minister's telephone while they're a minister. and just to give tiktok a right to reply, as they're not here to defend themselves, they insist that they do not share data with chinese officials. there's a bigger picture question here, which is where does it leave our relationship with china? i think things have moved on quite fast. i think the golden decade was a major mistake, personally, but it's got worse since the cabinet.

david cameron, george osborne, i mean, big time cosying up to china. the cabinet that you were in. i was. yeah, i did make some comments about it, but i'm not going to break into the confidentiality. but this is a country growing in power, growing in assertiveness. and ijust draw attention to something which has gone missing because of all the other stuff going on in the house today. but far more important than all this stuff this week was that president xi, at the end of his banquet, turned to president putin and said something along the lines of that we are seeing changes to — the biggest they have been for over 100 years and then he goes on to say, and we will control those changes together. now, this is a man who has created a war in ukraine, huge abuses, human rights threats, and another man, another authoritarian state, very powerful, full of money and lots of technology is basically saying to him, we're together over changing it. and i know what he means. what he's saying is our form of government, our essential unelected, dictatorial form of government is the right government for the world and we are going to win

through against these flaky democracies at some point. this is a real challenge to us and if we don't want to face it as we run with our businesses to them to get cheaper labour and all the rest of it, all we should recognise is every time they're doing it, they have a very clear purpose. we don't. how do we respond to it, then? because there's a challenge, isn't there, for western democracies, that the whole of society, the whole of the — the corporate world in — on the democratic model is not an instrument of foreign policy in the way that it can be in a state like china. which i guess, arguably, in a blunt sense, puts the west at a strategic disadvantage. but at the same time, we want to preserve western governments — western nations want to preserve the very essence of what the democratic model is all about. so, how — how do — how does the west face up to china? well, i think it's hugely about recognising the nature of the scale of the threat that we've built up. i mean, british businesses and german businesses, american businesses all rushed to china in that last 20 years,

all done business with china. president xi has changed the terms of the games on arrival. he's decided that that is going to be on their terms. so, this idea of moving to democracy or freedoms or freedom of expression has all been stopped. it's been reversed, completely. taken over hong kong. so, it's the recognition that something changed in china that has gone missing in western governments' belief and what they're feared of is that they'll upset china and therefore lose business. this is the drive. we compete with each other the whole time in the west. so, nobody wants to see another country get an advantage over us because we're now calling china out. and i think the point is we've just got to sit down and thrash this out together because what is at risk? i genuinely believe it — and i hope i'm not scaremongering — is the very way we live our lives, the things that we take for granted, the freedoms, the debates that we've had in the house of commons. these things have been hard fought for. but for president xi, he thinks they're a zoo—year aberration and the natural form of government for the world is his form of government, and that is the challenge. now, we saw it before.

it took us ages and finally we stumbled into it in the 1930s and recognised it was a terrible threat but it cost 60 million lives to put that one right. we faced it during the cold war but the lesson we had learnt is you have to be strong in the face of authoritarianism and at the end of the day, that collapsed in front of us. but then, we made this great thing that thought, well, we've won now. there'll never be another problem. not true. and this is now rising in plain view. the difference is china recognised something about the soviet union. it wasn't economically powerful, so the west was able to beat it. they are economically powerful, and they've taken away that one lever that we had over the soviet union and there's a different game altogether now. another subject — we're going through them all this time, the economy. so, interest rates up again at lunchtime on thursday. inflation, surprisingly up in the last few months, which people didn't expect as the as the granddaddy of universal credit, the big new bit of the benefit system. do you think universal credit is coping with this massive hit to people's living standards

in the way that it was intended to? because the whole point about universal credit is it's mega flexible, you can take it up, take it down, it adds to people's incomes as their circumstances change, you know, uc is performing and that's why we persuaded and i'm pleased with the chance of the budget to do what i wanted to do, which is to add the other bit to uc, which is universal support — universal credit, universal support. that's because for the first time, universal credit identifies whole household income. it means now we know who are really coping and not coping. so what we can put alongside that is ways of getting those families that don't cope into remedial help, sorting them out, whether it's debt, drugs, whatever, and then getting them back into the work process. so uc is flexible in that regard. how the government sets the table is important because if you drop it down, which is what they've now done, it means more people keep more of their income on the way through the the benefit system. and, of course, it proved itself working during covid because without that, many people would have died because they'd have been queuing up injob centres catching covid. so, it was very flexible. over a million people were taken on in about three

weeks in covid. you couldn't have done that with the old legacy systems. so, obviously keeping going and changing it is absolutely key. but when it comes to inflation, again, i saw america's put up their interest rates. they're worried. this last bout of increased inflation, unpredicted in a way you can argue should have been because this dates back to the period when you actually started planting the crops, when the cost of energy was really high. this is about two months after the war in ukraine starts. you know, when they've harvested, now they're looking to repla nt. it's that point where energy is high, fertiliser costs are through the roof. i know because i have some family that have a farm. all of those have taken this period to come through to the harvest price and that's gone into the network. and then the result is the price suddenly shot up to reflect those. whether that continues or it comes back down at the next session will be the debate. but i think the bank had no other option, sadly, but to raise interest rates. i hope they'll bring them down fairly soon if this doesn't go through.

final question. i read in various places that you might have at some point acquired an extra "i" in your name. were you born "ian" and then an extra "i" popped in at some point? no, we added it. my father insisted on it later on, because, of course, i was born in scotland. right. he was a proud scot. right. and he said when it was put on the register, he then later on said, this is not the right spelling. so it was put on the register as ian — if you like, the english way... the anglicised way of spelling it. and he said to me when i was about ten, i think it was, or maybe a bit earlier, i'm not sure, but i seem to recall he said to me, i want to change this and you should have it iain. isaid fine. i didn't know much of the difference by then. you know, my first name is actually robert. so, robert adam fleming. i've known you for 20 years

and didn't know that. so i don't go for the whole three name things. just adam fleming will do. on my passport it says robert adam fleming — for any identity theft people out there! well, actually, my first name is george. oh, right, ok. how many names have you got? just george iain. but that was all, so ijust... i was called iain. right. thanks for giving us lots of food for thought. iain duncan smith. pleasure. now for something completely different. this week the bafta nominations came out and there were six for the big bbc one drama the responder, which is where martin freeman plays a police officer in liverpool. and we can now congratulate the writer of that show, tony schumacher. hi, tony. hello, hello, hello. yes, congratulations. i mean, it's quite something. although you're harvesting so many nominations. it's incredible. it's so exciting. it's amazing. i mean, obviously, i'm totally conscious that we're not going to win anything, but that's all right. you know what i mean? i set myself out tojust make this television show, and six nominations for the baftas isjust beyond anything that i was imagining, so it's incredible. well, for the eight people in the country who didn't see it when it was on, it's available on iplayer.

here's a little taste. i wanna be a good bobby. he's a mess. it's important work. i think it's whack—a—mole. except the moles wear trackies. you're working with carl sweeney, aren't you? why is he so angry with you? because i robbed his cocaine. you what? you are dead, lad! now, tony, i mean this in the nicest way, but there are quite a lot of cop shows at the moment. what made yours different? you know what? if i knew that... no, i think the reality of it... i think because i was a cop for nearly 13 years. and, you know, i'm sure that that played a large part of it, the authenticity of it. but also, like, you know, i love a good cop show, you know, so i'd never criticise anyone who's making them. but i wanted it to be as real as it possibly could be, you know? so let's have a bit of humour, let's have a bit of darkness, and let's make it about the people who aren't committing the murders, the people who are, you know, doing these high—profile crimes. let's make it about the little people, the small people, you know, and just enjoy

being in their company. how do you find it now when you sort of look in on as an observer from the outside, policing — and particularly, i guess, when you see, like in the last few days, policing in the news. we've had this report, haven't we, from louise casey, the baroness who was looking into the met police and the culture and standards there. how do you, i don't know, sort of weigh that up, considerthat, ponder that when you see it now as an outsider, but someone who spent so long on the inside? you know, you spend hours... you get really introspective, to be honest with you. and i start thinking about, did i work with people like this? you know, when you hear about these terrible whatsapp groups and stuff, you think, did i work with people like that that? did i know those guys and just didn't realise it was happening? but what's interesting is... how do you answer that question? did you? i don't know. i mean, you wouldn't know, would you? you don't know. i worked with two bobbies who i thought were really very, very, very close friends.

and after i'd left the job and i was driving a taxi for a living, trying to make my way as a writer, i picked up the liverpool echo one night and their mugshots were on the front page. and you think, what? i thought i knew these people. they'd done something bad. yeah, yeah. i think the pair of them went to prison for corruption. and, you know, you have this weird thing where you sort of... it's difficult to say, you know, do you know these people? because by definition, you don't know, you just don't know. but there's aspects of the recent reports and there's aspects of whatsapp groups, and you do look at that and you do think, you know what, maybe it is there, you know, definitely is. but what was interesting was this morning, funnily enough, this morning i spoke to merseyside police about mental health and policing. they'd invited me in years ago before these bafta nominations came out and my fee went up! i went in to talk to them.

and what was quite interesting was, for me, whojoined the police in 1996, was the difference in supervision. it felt different. it felt more professional than when ijoined. now, whether or not that's just because i'm in a police training centre where recruits are coming in and everyone's trying their best, i don't know, but it felt better. fundamentally, policing is, you know, it's in a state of flux. i think society is changing so quickly, you know, and police forces are struggling to cope. you look at what's happening in the met, you know, with the casey report. we've got police forces in special measures around the country. i think gmp was in special measures for a while. you know, there's real problems. and i think issues like this come from the top. we see the government, you know, borisjohnson in government, when he was at the helm.

if you've got somebody at the top, in management — i'm not talking about the very, very top. i'm talking about senior management who are maybe not doing the job in a way that it should be done. people, will let their own standards slide. and if the barrel's rotten, you're going to get more bad apples. there's no getting away from it. if the barrel is wet and rotten, your apples inside are going to get rotten. is there stuff that happened to you when you were a bobby on the beat that you would never put in a drama because people just wouldn't believe it? absolutely, yes. there are things as well which are, like, you wouldn't, i wouldn't, i was very careful with the responder beats, we used to call them, you know, the scenes where it was actual chris and rachel were dealing with members of the public, when they were in a house or on the street dealing with a member of the public, i was really careful to make sure nobody could ever look at those and say,

"that was me." and when you go to the bafta ceremony, do you think actually it willjust be a bunch of posh people, because actually the industry is dominated by people from wealthy backgrounds? i would say that it won't be a bunch of posh people, but it will be a bunch of people, upper middle class people who mean well and want to do good things in the industry. but there's no getting away from it — outside of actors, there won't be many working class people there. you know, i've been to meetings sometimes where i've felt like a novelty, almost. i've felt like a novelty. i'm in a room and people have kind of come in — so what's the working class guy? you jump up and down and shout. i mean, i've got to tell you now, this is my telephone voice. you know what i mean? when i'm on one, you wouldn't get a word out of me. you would not understand a word i'm saying. it's really frustrating. i said to one of the guys the other week, i don't think i've worked with so many people in my life called toby. in fact, outside of television, i don't know anyone called toby.

if you're called toby where i am, you're a dog. you know, it's a strange thing. and you hope that people like me coming through will get a few more on the table. is it changing, though? i mean, i often wonder... i'm a kind of middle class kid from north yorkshire. are you from yorkshire, chris? but i don't think somebody who sounds like i do would have been bbc political editor a generation ago. so i think there is a change that's happening, and i guess is it happening in your world of television as well? and do you see that change happening? i feel like a bit of an outlier, to be honest with you. whether or not i am or whether or not that's my own prejudices, i don't know. and there's a big thing as well — i don't want anyone who's, you know, middle class or upper middle class... i don't want anyone feeling bad about doing what they do. i want people to do what they do and love what they do. all i want is i want people tojust think about, you know, reaching out to other communities. tony, before i let you go, do you want to give us the scoop on what's coming up

next, what you're writing next, or is it going to be responder 2? it is responder 2. but i'm also doing a couple of other projects, both with the bbc, which is exciting because ijust love the bbc. and i'm notjust saying that because you're paying my mortgage. i think the bbc is one of the greatest organisations on earth. well, from a bbc one programme that hasn't been nominated for any baftas, thank you to somebody who's worked on a bbc one programme that gets millions of viewers and loads of bafta nominations. thanks, tony. thank you. thanks, lads. nice to chat. cheers, tony. cheers. and you know what, chris? there will be a sequel to this episode of newscast available — as always — on bbc sounds very soon. seamless! tomorrow! you're not giving me any awards for that link, are you? i'm not. no, i'm not. for best linking screenplay also available as a podcast. anyway, thanks for spending time with us. we'll be back very soon. bye. bye— bye. newscast. from the bbc.

hello there. it's been another unsettled day, a day of sunny skies and heavy showers, some of them thundery. here in wiltshire, you can see storms stretching onto the horizon as far as the eye can see. and then we had, of course, the inevitable downpours like here in norfolk. you barely make out this rainbow. it was raining so heavily. now the rain has been totting up and of course, this month has been wet so far. there are some places that have seen nearly double the amounts of rainfall we'd expect in march. and there's more rain to come through the weekend and into the early part of next week as well. now, the radar picture showsjust how widespread the showers have been today. this line of showers created quite a few thunderstorms across parts of southern england, extending into areas of east anglia as well. and during this evening and overnight, the showers won't be quite as heavy, but they'll

still be quite widespread overnight. so many of us will continue to see rain on and off through the night. so it's going to stay quite windy across england and wales. it's the breeze and the cloud that keeps temperatures up. so temperatures falling no lower than about four to eight degrees celsius. and as we head into the weekend, low pressure starts to pull away into the north sea, but it's close enough still to bring plenty of showers around. we do get a ridge building into wales, in south west england later in the day and that should improve the weather here. so saturday morning, it's quite a showery start with showers quite widespread. there'll be some bright or sunny spells coming through, but i think the greatest chance of seeing downpours into the afternoon northern ireland, northern england, across the midlands and into parts of east anglia, some of the showers in that zone still heavy with some thunder. still for most of us, just about on the mild side with temperatures 10 to 14, but starting to get a bit cooler in scotland. and that's a sign of things to come for the second half of the weekend

because colder air is going to start to move in to northern areas of the uk. now further south across england and wales, it's a wet day coming up on sunday with some heavy rain. quite slow to ease off as well. bright skies further north, a mixture of sunshine and showers, but the showers in scotland will have a wintry flavour with some snow up over the hills above about 200 metres elevation. by the end of the day you'll start to see the snow coming down and it will start to feel a good deal cooler, particularly in the northerly winds. a reminder this weekend that the clocks change, but the weather doesn't. we've got loads more rain into next week.

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this is bbc news. the headlines.... a state visit by king charles to france is postponed because a! a state visit by king charles to france is postponed because of more lanned france is postponed because of more planned protests _ france is postponed because of more planned protests against _ france is postponed because of more planned protests against president . planned protests against president emmanuel macron�*s enforcement. translation: the emmanuel macron's enforcement. translation:— emmanuel macron's enforcement. translation: ., ., translation: the king and the queen consort to come _ translation: the king and the queen consort to come make _ translation: the king and the queen consort to come make a _ translation: the king and the queen consort to come make a statement - translation: the king and the queen consort to come make a statement in l consort to come make a statement in the middle of a demonstration. honor consort to come make a statement in the middle of a demonstration. how a child's drawing _ the middle of a demonstration. how a child's drawing sparked _ the middle of a demonstration. how a child's drawing sparked police - child's drawing sparked police investigation, a criminal case and a foreign ally torn apart. day four of the trial of gwyneth paltrow in her role in a ski crash accident. the actress and businesswoman is prepared to give testimony. we will have all the latest in a moment.