this is bbc news. the headlines... the british veteran presenter phillip schofield says he has agreed to step down from itv�*s this morning "with immediate effect" after more than 20 years ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky meets uk prime minister rishi sunak at the g7 summit injapan — after landing zelensky tweeted that "peace will be closer" as a result of his meetings. russia hits back at a deal to supply ukraine with f—16fighterjets — saying it's fraught with "massive risks" for the west — amid claims from the notorious wagner mercenary group that bakhmut is now under russian control. in northern ireland, the republican political party sinn fein is on track to become the largest party in local government — with calls

for the return of local rule in stormont. this is bbc news. now on bbc news, newscast. hello. i'm tina from radio 2 let loose on newscast. i'm james let loose from scotland on newscast. they've left us in charge against all the odds. they have. who decided to do that? this is my first time. possibly my last time. who knows? i very much doubt it. and because adam's away. yes. and chris is away. but chris is somewhere really quite interesting. he is with the prime minister, rishi sunak at the g7 summit injapan. we can have a look at him because he's on the aeroplane or he's not any more. but he was on the aeroplane with the prime minister. look at all the reporters huddled around, and chris, i must say, tina. crouching down there. is he crouching? is he kneeling?

i don't know. i think he's got strong thighs, whatever he's doing. you know what i was also thinking? annoying. if you suddenly get turbulence at that point. if you get hurled into the prime minister's lap, nobody wants that. well, you never know. oh, well. or maybe they do. anyway, we'll hear more about rishi sunak�*s trip to japan and hopefully we'll hear from chris as well on today's episode of newscast. newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it's james cook, the bbc�*s scotland editor and the studio here in westminster. and it's tina dahely, bbc presenter, also in the studio at westminster. and we're talking about the g7, the g7, one of these acronyms. summit. that's the g7 summit to use its official name. and this is a group, isn't it, of major democracies. can we do we think name them. yeah off the top? problematic if we couldn't, so ask obviously i'll start with the easy one, the uk this the us and canada. yeah.

go to europe, france, italy, germany and japan. japan. chris is injapan, but he is. let's hearfrom him. hello, james. hello, tina. welcome to hiroshima injapan, the site of this year's g7 summit of world leaders. let me give you a bit of a sense of the the journey here. i think you've been looking at that picture of all of the westminster reporters huddled around the prime minister on the plane. we were able to ask questions for about 45, 50 minutes on the way here. that's quite standard on these kind of trips. there's no cameras recording it because it be too noisy on the plane. but all of the answers are on the record. and there's been a good number of stories that you might have seen or read or heard about connected to that conversation. i can also exclusively reveal that whilst it's obviously a real privilege to be able to travel the world with the prime minister, it is knackering. so we haven't seen a bed since wednesday morning when we got up to go to the airport.

and now here it is at thursday night. and well, i'll leave you to judge as to how coherent i am. so what's going to happen? the summit will get under way tomorrow. what will be talked about? ukraine will be a big topic. can the g7, which in combination has made a big contribution towards arming ukraine, can it remain united? is it in it for the long haul as the as the war drags on and on and on? and then there's a parallel conversation, which some say has overlapping themes, and that is around china an increasingly muscular china. and what it may or may not do as far as taiwan is concerned. taiwan, which regards itself as independent and a thriving democracy, china which regards taiwan as its own, and has been doing military exercises in and around the seas near taiwan. now, that matters as far as global

security is concerned, and it matters too economically, because taiwan is a huge producer of semiconductors, hugely important in smartphones and tvs and laptops, and were there to be some sort of invasion or even some sort of situation that just made the whole business of taiwan's trade more difficult, that could have massive global repercussions. so we expect that to feature on the agenda, too, as well as and connected to that, economic vitality or the lack of it, how the g7 countries respond to what has been economically a very tough time, partially because of the war in ukraine and the effect that that has had on spiralling prices. so that's how the next couple of days look, we're all looking forward to seeing hiroshima in the sunshine and in the daylight because we've onlyjust arrived and it was pouring down. mercifully, it has now stopped, but it is dark because it's well into the evening here. so it'll be interesting to see this city in the light,

see what the world leaders are getting up to. and tomorrow morning, japan time, middle of the night at your time. i'll be sitting down with the prime minister still trying to work out what's to ask him. if you, us newscasters have any ideas, let me know. on social media. you'll be able to hear that interview with rishi sunak on bbc breakfast and on the today programme and on 5 live and all over bbc news on friday. i think that's quite enough prattle for me. i'm going to keel over and get some kip, talk to you soon. well, no wonder he's tired. that is a long journey. he needs a bed. get him a bed. he doesn't need a bed. and when we were watching him earlier on the feed, doing one of the many zillion things that chris does, i've never seen anyone yawn so widely as he's allowed. he's working very hard. someone who is not thousands and thousands of miles away and hopefully not fast asleep is the liberal democrat leader, sir ed davey, our first guest on newscast. and we have lots to talk about with you. we have sewage, we have

local elections. we have the g7. welcome. thank you very much. have you have you been to japan? i have both when i was a minister, when i was trying to persuade people to invest in renewables in the uk, in our offshore wind industry. but also when i was in business. a lot of the chat will be injapan about china, russia, what's going on in ukraine. we're talking about our overheating planet a bit later. do you think the focus should be on climate change? that's got to be a key focus. i mean, g7 summits and other similar ones are about us working with other countries, and liberal democrats strongly believe in working across national boundaries for the greater good of our own people and the world. that's why we're pro—european, for example. but at the g7, there's got to be lots of discussions. you're absolutely right. china, obviously, ukraine, that's going to dominate things dominate both in order to try to tackle russia and its aggression,

but also the implications for our energy markets. that's so hitting millions of people in this country and elsewhere for the cost of energy. so i'm assuming that's going to be top of the agenda. well, as tina says, we'll be speaking later to dr tamsin edwards about that. so more on climate change to come. but today's big thing, the thing you've been dealing with today, there's an impolite way to put this in a polite way. the polite word is sewage. there was an apology this morning, wasn't there, from england's water suppliers for pumping sewage into waterways. how do we solve that problem? and indeed, perhaps more importantly, who should pay for it? well, we've got to have a massive investment programme focused on the worst polluting elements of the system, first to really make some action quickly. but the bill payers shouldn't be paying for it and that's what the water companies are saying. they should be paying for it.

so i think if you look back at what's happened in recent years, i think some laws have been broken. they have not been doing what they were legally required to do. should they be prosecuted? well, there have been some prosecutions. the question is, has it been sufficient? but looking forward, i think we absolutely need to make sure the companies and their shareholders pay the price for this. they might argue that they're not making as much profit is other sectors. i don't believe them. i think there should be a sewage tax on top of their corporation tax to generate some of the funds. i don't think the dividends should be anywhere near what they've been and given. i think they've not been doing their legal obligations and the right thing over a period of time yet making profits. i think the regulator, the government has got to turn around to them and say the next few years you're not going to be making these sorts of profits. you've got to invest. is sewage the new potholes, basically? you find people on the doorsteps

quite agitated about this. you say that when i went across the country during the local elections, not a lot of doors spoke to a lot of people. and i was generally surprised by how much there was coming up. yes, potholes did come up. i can confirm that. but people were worried, worried about sewage in their local rivers, on the sea, on their beaches. i had in eastbourne, for example, people really upset about about that. and they see it for the context of everything from walking their dog and their dog going into the river and the sea to public health, to the destruction of their local environment and nature. so people, ithink, quite rightly, are pretty angry about this and they're pretty disappointed that the government have been so weak in the face of clear failure. now, let's talk about local elections. you've had a pretty good month, haven't you? 12 new councils, more than 405 new councillors. but you always seem to do pretty well in local elections. how can you translate that success

into the next general election? can you? how can you? i'm very keen to talk about the next election. but let me justjust push back a little bit. we don't always do well in local elections. we have been doing a lot better in recent years. the last year we got more gains across england, scotland, wales than any other political party, and this year we outperformed what the pundits said we would do. now, to be honest with you, we outperformed what we thought we were going to do. or what you were spinning. when these seats were last fought, we we made 704 gains. the tories made 1300 losses. labour went backwards. we either clear winners in these areas four years ago, so we come off a really high base. so we thought we might make 150, maybe 200 gains to make over 400 was was great. and i'll tell you why, it was it was things like sewage, actually, but it was what we've been saying on the cost of living on the nhs.

and i'll be very frank with you people very angry with the conservatives and i do think the tories are in some trouble. i think people have looked at how they've seen out of touch don't seem to care, theyjust get it and people feel that their time is up. you probably won't give us an answer to this next question. i'm going to ask it anyway. and i know you're probably sick of people asking you, but would you consider a coalition with labour? let me tell you why i think i can't give you an answer for that yet. and it's partly to what i said earlier, because you can't take it for granted as a long way to go. but i've noticed and i've been around the liberal democrats for a long time, i worked with paddy ashdown and then charles kennedy and every leader since, and some of them focused before the election on after the election. and in observing that, i think it took their focus on the job in hand and the job in hand is to win more votes, persuade people to vote liberal democrat, to win more seats, particularly at this election off

the conservatives a few off the snp maybe the odd one off labour and to really perform as we have more liberal democrat mps in the next parliament. but you're ruling out a coalition with the conservatives, aren't you? well, you know, ifought the all my life and i think except when you were in government. well, no, i did that. you put them into power. but let me be clear about this. i don't want to them to be the next government. i'm out of government. my party wants them out of government. the country, there's no coalition there. there'll be no deal of any sort with conservatives. i want them out of government. and ijust i want to be super clear on that. you know, sometimes you say, well, you know, you haven't answered the question, how clear can i be... it's pretty obvious, therefore, that what's left is a potential coalition government.

have you spoken to sir keir starmer about that? no, i sat next to him at the coronation. i was dying to know, and i know you've swerved this one as well, what you were talking about apart from the music, because you were sat next to each other for a very long time. we did talk about the music. absolutely. what else? we talked about the coronation. are you telling us the idea of the next general election didn't come up at all? yeah, well, we were, no, we actually more swapping notes about the local elections actually more for exclusively. exclusively, actually. did you mention the general election at all? no. it was an opportunity to have a chat, wasn't it? yeah, but i want to focus on myjob. and we were obviously referring to how we had performed and i asked him how he thought he'd performed in the local elections, how labour performed. i was really proud of what what we had had done because, especially in large parts of the country, we are basically fighting the conservatives in areas where labour is very, very weak. and so, you know, he's

inevitably interested in the liberal democrat successes we've had against the conservatives in the blue, what i call the blue wall. what is striking, people may not know, in the blue, what i call the blue wall. she's also been struggling, if you don't mind me saying so with illness, how is it how do you manage to do all of that and lead a major uk political party? well, my wife is amazing. she has ms, but she does loads of things. she's a local councillor, she's a bundle of energy, and she does a huge amount of caring of our children, including our disabled son, john. so, she does have ms, but as many people who know about ms will realise there's something called remitting ms. so she's actually very healthy in many, many ways.

her mobility is a bit restricted. so i'm very fortunate to have emily supporting me. and john's disabilities are quite severe. he can't walk or talk. he's got an undiagnosed neurological condition and that means he has a lot of care. but we have to have support and help and we're very fortunate to have a family that's very supportive. we have carers who come and support us. but yeah, i mean i'm lucky in the way that i'm my seat is in suburban london, in south west london, kingston, surbiton. so i go back there every night. that means i can help get john up in the morning and if i get home early enough, i can help him put him to bed. your father died when you were four, and then your mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness when you were 12. she'd had a mastectomy. she had breast cancer when i was nine. but then, as is too often the case, it went to her bones as what's called secondary cancer. and she was ill for three

years before she died. and why have you decided to talk about this now? it's a good question. i mean, i didn't for most of my political career and when i stepped up to be the leader, i'd had a long chat with emily about it and my brother, actually. and i said, well, ok, people are going to be looking at me and asking me questions and i've got tojust be upfront. and so i was very much upfront, particularly about my parents and my son. the other thing that struck me when i began to think about why i should talk and how i should talk about it was how politics has changed so much. i mean, years ago, not that long ago, actually, people didn't talk about mental health. now there's some mps from all parties who've gone on the record and talked about their mental health. and i think that's a really good thing. so people can understand the impact and how many people are affected. and i think that can help be part

of how we sort the problem out and make mental health a bigger issue in the health service. so i felt that the environment was a bit friendlier than it used to be, maybe in the past a bit too macho. and , well, ithink it's the right thing to do. so it strikes me that when you hear that very powerful story of your early life as a child, that i can't imagine how hard that would have been, how heartbreaking that would have been. is there something positive for you that came from that trauma or was that simply trauma thatit�*s all bleak? well, it's going to affect different people in different ways. 0k. so some people have, you know, never recover. and they have mental health problems. and we need to recognise that. and one thing i've campaigned on is when families are bereaved,

much better counselling and support for the children but also for the surviving spouse if there is one. i was lucky. i had a loving family. my mum was amazing. she prepared me, you know. i used to spend hours talking to her on her bed when she was ill and she prepared me. and then i had my grandparents, my brother, friends. so i was fortunate in many ways to be able to get over it. i think what it did do, and this is actually observed about a lot of young carers, they tend to be more empathetic. not surprisingly, they sort of understand when other people are suffering, they get it and understand it more. they tend to be better with time management. that's an odd thing to say, but when you're caring for someone and you're working or studying, you really have to organise yourself well. i learnt that when i became a mum two years ago. yeah, there you are. yeah, exactly. and it's a natural thing when you're juggling you suddenly to be really skilled with your time and, and there's a degree that if, if you're fortunate, like i was and you had a loving

family, you do build a bit of resilience. and i know that's sort of a trendy word at the moment, but you do feel that, you know, if you can take that knock, you're ready for other knocks. and maybe that's prepared me for politics. i don't know. sir ed davey, thanks so much for coming in and for being so open with us. my pleasure. thank you. well, shall we talk about one of the biggest stories of maybe this year or indeed all time? all time, yes. true. it's this research is saying scientists saying, let me get this right. there's a two in three chance that we will pass the 1.5 degrees celsius global warming threshold between now and 2027. and to explain that, which is really needed certainly for me, is dr tamsin edwards, who is climate scientists, a climate scientist at king's college, london. hello, tamzin. welcome back to newscast. thank you. lovely to be here. sounds scary. is it?

newscast? very frightening. climate change is easy. what is it? what does that actually look like? what happens if we cross that threshold? it's really important to sort of put this particular story into context. what they're talking about is the probability of exceeding 1.5 degrees for at least a year. and that's different from the things that we normally talk about as climate scientists, which is the exceeding of one and one half degrees as the average temperature. and that's something you think about over something like a 20 year period. so we're talking just to go even more back to the basics, 1.5 degrees celsius above what? yeah, it's a good question. so usually the baseline we use is the late 19th century because that's broadly, you know, more or less before we start having a big influence in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions from industry and some land use change as well, but mainly industry burning fossil fuels and so forth. so, you know, we've

already got to 1.1 degrees of global average warming. it's on top of that baseline. yeah. so 1.1 degrees of warming since pre—industrial ish since we started burning the stuff in the ground. yeah. more than we did with peat back in the day. yeah. and obviously one degrees doesn't sound like that much, but we, we already see changes in our weather. we're already seeing more extreme heat. we're seeing changes in rainfall. some parts of the world are warming faster than that, like the arctic up in the north is warming about three times faster than that. but more importantly, you know, in terms of our lives, it's affecting extreme weather and sea level rise, of course, as well. lots of other factors. so i think we have to sort of think about this particular thing in context because it'sjust thinking about going over that threshold just for a year as opposed to the average. so an analogy we might think about is think about like this time of year, april sort of may. we quite often get a really, really hot day, you know, maybe not so much this year,

but we often get a really hot day and maybe two or three in a row, you know, we get the barbecues out, we get excited about, but we might get sunburnt or something and then the temperature goes back down. you know, it's not an average. it's kind of gone back down for the rest of the spring. maybe it sort of fluctuates a bit as we go from spring and to summer, and it's only when we reach summer and the average temperature goes up that we've really reached above that threshold. so this is what this report this week is talking about is those fluctuations. so you're just nudging over, you're sort of wiggling over. the bumps of the curve are kind of wiggling over that threshold and back down. and that's different from the paris agreement target, which is why we're even talking about 1.5 degrees in the first place, which is basically we agreed as the world, basically under the paris agreement to limit global warming to well below two degrees and pursue efforts to one and a half degrees. so that's where the one and a half degree limit comes from. but that's an average. it doesn't say we can't exceed it for a year or even a day. it's about the average over more

like 20, even 30 years. you know, it's the average climate. and you need policy change. you need to bring people along with you. can you talk to us about the work that you do with parliament, the research you do? yeah. i've got a new kind of pilot role that's being trialled this year. it's called thematic research lead in climate and environment. yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful. basically, there are lots of really amazing staff who work within parliament to inform members of parliament, peers of the kind of evidence out there, whether it's science, it could be from other parts of society, people's experiences, industries and so forth. is it an alphabetical order? was anything thatjumped out that was just amazing or different or really powerful if you were to pick one?

well, obviously i'd encourage people to listen to the whole series, and each episode is only 15 minutes long. but i think what the actual kind of main story of the series is that there's no magic bullet. so that's my first kind of sitting on the fence answer, which is there isn't one solution that fixes everything in all places. it's going to work everywhere that has no side effects or trade offs, obviously. i mean, there's loads of nice things in the series which have really good trade offs and benefits. i was just talking actually earlier with my parliament colleagues about biochar, which is the idea where you take charcoal, so you sort of burn wood slowly under the right conditions, make charcoal and sort of grind it up a bit and put it in the soil. and so, because it's charcoal, it doesn't decay in the same way that wood does. it sort of holds that carbon in for hundreds, if not thousands of years. the benefit is that it also makes the soil better so you help your food to grow, your crops or whatever where you put it, so you can sort of take the wood from the trees and not worry about it decomposing and letting that carbon go into the air. but you trap it as charcoal and put

it in the soil to help the plants. now, that's not the only good idea in the series, but it'sjust a nice one that shows there are so many benefits of acting on climate change, of cutting emissions, of trying to take the carbon out of the atmosphere again and trap it in forests or underground or anything like that. there are loads and loads of benefits if you do it the right way. if you think carefully about how to notjust cut emissions, but also help with biodiversity by planting the right kinds of trees, the right kinds of forests, preserving peatlands, you know, nature based solutions, they call them. so you're thinking about biodiversity. how are we going to, as a society, reduce pollution? how are we going to make people's lives better? how are we going to create jobs? right. all this stuff. i think we've got a lot better at thinking about and working out what those benefits are. so that's one of the things we try to focus on in the series. so a hopeful note to end on. dr tamsin edwards, thank you so much. thank you so much. i think that went ok? yeah. do you think you'll be back?

yes, actually, tomorrow with dermot o'leary. i'll be looking forward to it. but for now, thanks forjoining us here on newscast. hello there. we've got differing fortunes across the four home nations this weekend. have a look out of the window here in west wales, beautifully sunny, feeling lovely and warm in the sunshine in light winds. move northwards into scotland, much more layered cloud. earlier on that's brought some rain, that rain tending to peter out for the most part. the cloud covers scotland and northern ireland and we're starting to see something a little bit wetter coming into the far north—west. underneath that cloud, temperatures are going to be around 16 or 17, could be a touch warmer as it brightens up in the moray firth,

but in the sunshine across england and wales, temperatures reaching 20 or 21 in the west, a little cooler around some north sea coasts. i mentioned some rain coming into the north—west and this evening and overnight, it gets a bit wetter for a while in scotland and northern ireland before the rain tends to peter out. could see a bit of mist, fog and low cloud again across eastern areas of england, and with clearer skies in england and wales, temperatures could be as low as four or five degrees. let's set the scene for sunday and we've got high pressure extending across the uk. that weather front bringing the rain overnight gets stuck in scotland and just peters out. a bit more of an east or north—easterly breeze could drag in some cloud from off the north sea, particularly into the south—east of england. there will be some sunshine around as well. still that cloud for much of scotland and northern ireland, not much rain falling, though by the afternoon and in the far north—west, there could actually be some sunshine. not necessarily going to help the temperatures, mind you. may well be a little bit cooler in scotland and northern ireland on sunday.

still, the warm sunshine for england and wales and those temperatures reaching 20 or 21 celsius. into next week, not too much changes really, you've still got the high pressure around on monday. another weakening weather front moves in from the atlantic, bringing very little rain. following that, the odd shower perhaps for western scotland, perhaps northern ireland but on the whole, a lot of dry weather. plenty of sunshine for england and wales, maybe a slightly more northerly breeze on monday but those temperatures changing very little, 17 to 20 celsius. and that weather pattern continues into next week. again, high pressure is never too far away. it's going to be in the far north that we could see some weather fronts now and again and a stronger breeze that maybe will bring some rain. but on the whole, a lot of dry weather into next week and those temperatures are near average as well.

live from london, this is bbc news: the british veteran presenter phillip schofield says he has agreed to step down from itv�*s this morning �*with immediate effect�* after more than 20 years. ukraine dominates the g7 summit as president zelensky arrives in hiroshima to meet world leaders. russia warns of massive risks for the west after the us agrees to train ukrainian pilots on american f—16fighterjets. in northern ireland, the republican political party sinn fein is on track to become the largest party in local government — with calls for the return of local rule in stormont. and ireland's katie taylor will be hoping for a homecoming later tonight in dublin when she faces england's chantelle cameron in a light—welterweight

world championship match