this is bbc news. the headlines: a home office source says e—gates are now starting to come back on after long delays for some passengers travelling to the uk. it's the final day of campaigning in turkey ahead of one of the country's most divisive presidential elections where the economy and immigration are key voter concerns. huge political rallies have been held to drum up support ukraine's most senior security official tells the bbc the country is ready to launch its long—expected counter—offensive against russian forces. in a rare interview, oleksiy danilov describes the planned assault as an "historic opportunity". itv says it investigated rumours of a relationship between presenter phillip schofield and

a younger employee in 2020, but both repeatedly denied it. now on bbc news, time for newscast. james cook, scotland editor to keep me company. how are you? very good and you are here for a momentous day of political news because rishi sunak was on tv this morning and admitted this about his reading habits. are you reading these julie cooper books? . yes, it is true! unclear how that has emerged! is it true? yes. i love them. which ones? can't remember, just the sexy bits. i did not see that coming, to be honest. i'm not surprised because his favourite tv show is emily in paris so he doesn't quite like the things you would expect him to.

each to their own. in the classic newscast style we will do a quiz where we will read extracts to each other and we have to work out if they arejilly cooper extracts or from other books written by politicians. which there are a few. and some of them are quite, what is the word? racy! you are at an advantage because i never read anyjilly cooper. i have never. i'm going first, is the first quote, jilly cooper or a politician? she was looking, this may sound crude, but no less than the truth, like a lingerie model only cleverer and if anything, bigger breasts. jilly cooper or a politician? politician. want to take a punt at which one? gordon brown! your neck of the words.

it is a politician but incorrect as to the identity, borisjohnson in his novel. i would have thought he would have written better than that. fair enough. here we go. try me. i've not seen that before, it's new to me. she had held his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes as her own sent him a thousand messages of seduction. with the boldness and skill of a woman ten years her senior, she had guided his hands over her virginal body. i think that isjilly cooper. no. who do you think it might be? i am trying to think of politicians... william hague? it's not, it's a female politician. jacqui smith? nadine dorries. of course, she is prolific. i should have guessed that as well. shadows in heaven.

last one because we have to talk about the news although i could do this all night. i'm happy as long as i'm mounted, he used to say, and you are so compulsively rideable. surely that is jilly cooper! absolutely, 1000%, it is from riders. i'm sure they are very good but there is a theme runs through them. i was going to try and say a mounting joke... let's not. let's get on with this episode of newscast. hello, it is adam in the studio. and james in the studio. lovely to have you here and we will be joined virtually by chris mason who's been on a beach all day but talking about migration because today we got the latest net migration figures. and net migration is... the amount of people coming in minus the amount

coming out, or i suppose the opposite if it was true which it isn't. it very rarely is, so the actual number is 1.2 million people moved to the uk in the last year and 557,000 left which gives you a net migration figure of 606,000. that is lower than some of the numbers that were being hinted at, maybe even 700,000 or! million but still very high. to find out what that might do to our politics, here is chris mason who spent the day on the beach in great yarmouth. life is a beach, a pretty breezy beach. welcome to great yarmouth in norfolk, looking at these migration numbers. and there is a kind of ocean of subtlety and nuance in them. yes, they are record—breaking when you look at the stark members but when you start to break them down and analyse the _ specifics, there are things with exploring. there is of course ukraine and all those people who sought sanctuary here

since the war broke out. hong kong as well, we heard a lot of talk this week about student numbers, the government plans to limit the number of dependents that certain students, international students, are able to bring with them. why did we come here to this corner of norfolk? if you go back to the brexit vote in 2016, more than 70% of people here who voted in the referendum voted for brexit and when you speak to people around here, the whole question of migration is a very live one. there is talk of the three ps that bring in migrants, people in packing, picking and plucking, so a lot of agricultural workers drawn here. they work on the fields and in the factories. and speaking to people here, you get the range if you want in terms of what people think about the question of migration and i have been speaking

to some people up the road in a pub, they had finished their social club gathering and having a quick pint at lunchtime and there was huge respect for the fact that migrants were willing to come here and work in agriculture, huge pride that the country provides a sanctuary for people fleeing conflict, not least ukraine but also they felt the numbers were too high. there was a question around sustainability. and there was a scepticism, frankly, as far as politicians' policies are concerned to try to get those numbers down _ but what i do detect speaking to people here, and this matches what we see in some of the opinion polls, is that the salience of the _ issue of immigration, the importance that people attached to it, does seem to have eased off since the _ brexit referendum. in other words, that mantra, that promise which has now been delivered, of taking back

control over migration, the fact that power does lie down the road at westminster and politicians can pull levers and do something about it, really matters to people but there is still scepticism about whether those politicians will be willing to make the difficult judgments or open about the trade—offs to try to get those numbers lower as the prime minister has today promised. can he manage to do that and if so, at what cost? and also, what do labour promise to do in the countdown to the next election and after it if they were to find themselves in government? hopefully, chris was wearing factor 50 because it was very sunny there. we asked a government minister to come on to talk about the figures but no one was available. the prime minister was interviewed earlier on itv and this is what he had to say on the subject. this week we announced new measures

and i think that pretty much the biggest thing anyone has ever announced of bringing levels of migration down and it is a policy which limits the amount of family members that people who are studying here can bring with them when they come and study and what we have seen in the last few years is that number of dependents hasjust absolutely spiralled and it goes alongside our other plan to stop the boats because that's really important. i'm pleased to say we are joined in the studio by the shadow home secretary yvette cooper. good to see you. we have said i will expect migration to come _ we have said i will expect migration to come down. these figures include ukraine, _ to come down. these figures include ukraine, hong kong, and there has been _ ukraine, hong kong, and there has been an— ukraine, hong kong, and there has been an increase in international students — been an increase in international

students after covid that obviously brings _ students after covid that obviously brings great benefits to the country. _ brings great benefits to the country, but there is also the significant issue about the 120% increase — significant issue about the 120% increase in work visas and just a short— increase in work visas and just a short number of years at the same time _ short number of years at the same time as— short number of years at the same time as you — short number of years at the same time as you have the skill shortages in the _ time as you have the skill shortages in the country growing. i think when you have this combination of a big increase in work visas, and also clearly big problems in the asylum system. and in terms of the conservative ministers approach they have net migration at twice the level they were aiming at. i think it shows a level of chaos in what they are doing, i don't think they have got any kind of plan or grip on immigration or asylum and really, where is the home secretary? she is not on your programme, not on any programme, did not even come to parliament,

she isjust missing and these are the policies she is in charge of. i would not say coming on here or not is... you underestimate yourself! but in terms of the labour position, to be clear, you want these figures to come down but by how much? we have said we don't think it is right to set targets. because it's inconvenient? look at what has happened with the targets they have set up and it's a complicated measure because it accepts immigration, includes international students and refugees... and they've just changed how they measure it. they have changed that and it includes all sorts of different things. david cameron set a target and it was completely failed, meaningless. boris johnson set a target and figures went in totally the opposite direction and it does not seem to have affected any of the policy decisions he took. rishi sunak seems to be shifting around setting different targets, it's not really what he's doing but he seems to be still setting targets. i don't actually think it is a sensible approach to the issue.

what we are trying to do is set out, this is what our policies would be, the practical things we would do that we think would make a difference. but the question is how much of a difference and people have a right to ask them how much of a difference do you think this will make in terms of numbers? but that also depends on things like whether you have a situation like ukraine, which nobody could anticipate, and also depends on what is happening in the labour market and the pace of the economy and so on. there is a lot of different factors in any one year and that is why we think it does not make sense to have a target but we have said here is some things we would do to tackle the problem that has led to the big increase in work visas. because immigration is important, international recruitment will carry on being important. but the system needs to be properly controlled and managed and we also need to target these skills shortages here at home. it cannot just be this situation where employers always turn to overseas recruitment and never actually do the training and

tackling the skills shortages at home. and the announcement you made earlier this week was kind of related to that so explain, this idea, you have the shortage occupation list where employers are allowed to bring in people from the rest of the world kind outside the points—based immigration scheme. but you would change that to be what? we would make a couple of big changes to the shortage occupation list, it's part of the points—based system, part of the skilled... extra points? you get extra points if you are on that list but at the moment, there is no link between the shortage occupation list and any training requirements so engineers, nurses, they have been on the list since it was first set up, they have been on for 15 years but there's never a proper plan to tackle the shortages. and in many cases, those shortages just get worse and worse. at the same time, there is also this weight discount.

—— wage discount. it does not apply in the nhs but it does for a lot of private sector employers where if you are on the shortage occupation list, you can recruit for 20% less than the going wage. so that means you can pay somebody less if they have come from overseas to do a shortage occupation when there should actually be an incentive to train and pay people fairly here in the uk fairly here in the uk. aside from this, philosophically, taking a big step back about what labour believe in immigration, you are not! million mild away from the conservative party? you basically believe the same thing. who conservative party? you basically believe the same thing. who knows what they believe? _ believe the same thing. who knows what they believe? it's _ believe the same thing. who knows what they believe? it's well - believe the same thing. who knows what they believe? it's well above l what they believe? it's well above man, _ what they believe? it's well above man. what — what they believe? it's well above man, what does she believe because my is— man, what does she believe because my is chaos — man, what does she believe because my is chaos. she man, what does she believe because my is chaos— man, what does she believe because my is chaos-— my is chaos. she said there is no aood my is chaos. she said there is no good reason _ my is chaos. she said there is no good reason why _ my is chaos. she said there is no good reason why we _ my is chaos. she said there is no good reason why we cannot - my is chaos. she said there is no good reason why we cannot turn | my is chaos. she said there is no i good reason why we cannot turn up enough hgv drivers, batches of

through makers, do you agree? she also said that so that british workers do not forget how to work. totally ridiculous. hang on... if you don't mind, do you agree with that? that is my question? that there is no good reason why we cannot train enough hgv drivers, butchers and fruit pickers? we should be training drivers and butchers and there has been an— issue, with the seasonal agricultural workers, we should recognise because the government did attempt to get british workers, do the _ seasonal work and i have done lots of fruit picking. it was my summerjob! yours as well? james. i worked in a call centre. where did you work? it was a farm in hampshire and i picked strawberries and gooseberries. it is hard. i grew up in angus.

i even had to drive a tractor. me also but not very well! this is not off topic! this is completely relevant because we did that and i did that at a young age as a child and where i grew up in the strathmore valley, lots of children did that work. and these days, they do not seem willing to do so and the farmers say they are struggling to get labour, which is your point, without it being immigrant labour. is it ok? it has become more professional, the pace, compared to how slowly we were packing. i'm sure you were both very good! we are talking about 35 years ago! there is a seasonal worker scheme and the government has tried to recruit so we should recognise there will always be international recruitment and our country benefits from having different skills and different talents coming to the uk from abroad

and it always has done, building up businesses are working in the public services, but the system has to be properly controlled and managed and we have seen a 50% increase in work visas in the last three years since _ the pandemic and that shows there is something that the conservatives are _ completely failing to address, these growing skills shortages in these long—term skill shortages. the nhs is the best example, the government controls training and have totally failed to train enough nurses and doctors for many years. we hugely benefit from people coming to work in our nhs, caring for loved ones, treating us when we are sick. but if the nhs is always continually increasingly recruiting from overseas, and not training in the uk, it is not getting the balance right. on a different note, this morning on itv, we learned that rishi sunak secretly likes jilly cooper novels.

breaking news for you ?! are you a fan? i have not read any jilly cooper for a long time. i did quite a long time ago. did you like them? i think i read one or two of them and they were fun at the time. what sort of novels are you into? highbrow or middlebrow? maisie dobbs. it is a sort of crime novel set in the 19305. a lot of people after covid did not have the attention span for novels. did that happen? it happened to me! the big thing was going on holiday, i used to read novels on holiday and

until the kids were born and then i found the first holiday after we had the oldest daughter, and ed had read three novels in one week. full on novels! he reads on everything. and i had just read three magazines! that was the difference. that tells you about the division of childcare labour. he does a huge amount of cooking, which i do not do, but with the childcare, definitely. the thing about keir starmer, i picture him at a football match in his free time, not reading a book. is that... he is obsessive about football. he will talk about football at any excuse. thank you very much for talking to us. thank you for having me. back to migration and let's look

at some of the figures in more detail and figure out what is going with the director of the migration 0bservatory at oxford university which analyses uk migration data. thanks very much for having me. the first question is, what do you make of these figures? 606,000 is the net migration figure of people coming into the country, did you predict that? was it going to be about where we would land? always difficult to predict figures because so many different things affect them but it was clear that it was going to be a higher number and it is. for context, if you look back to 20105 net migration would be in the range of 25,0000 and sometimes 300 or a little bit more so this is significantly higher and the measurement is not exactly the same, but we can tell that these are high numbers by historical standards.

if you say it was up to 300,000 in that period and about 300,000 of this 600,000 is attributable to ukraine and hong kong, is this that unusual by historic standards if you strip that out? i think there are still some unusual things going on. in particular the increase in international students is very striking. and the numbers of people granted visas with international students has more than doubled in a few years. and that has an impact on these figures, in the short—term. but because most international students tend to stay temporarily, what we expect is after three years, when they start to go home, we will see emigration increasing and that brings down the net figure and we already see some of that and the main figures did not

increase more because there has been an increase _ in emigration of international students which helped hold the figures. what did you think of what yvette cooper said? i was surprised... some classic mansplaining! tell me what you thought? there does seem to be a degree of consensus between labour and the conservatives that if there was more training then perhaps demand for foreign workers might be lower. i don't think that is universally the case in every industry but there is something specific about health and social care because the government has a degree of control over the labour market that it does not have in other industries, funding the training places and setting indirectly, determining pay and conditions in the industry so it is much easier, the government has more levers in that industry and engineers. what really got me about what yvette cooper said and i am

glad she is not here because she would give me total evils is that if you took away some of what she said, quite a lot of what was left, you can imagine a government minister saying, lots of factors that go into immigration and what the economy needs so pinning certain numbers on things is not very sensible. that is what you can imagine the home office minister saying. is that somebody looking at being home secretary next year and knowing they will have to front up figures? they might be lower than where they are now but still higher than they have been in the past. and then have all the same criticisms thrown back on them as? the issue with the targets and specifying what you want the number to be, people want politicians to say, i can bring net migration of a certain amount. the challenge for the government and why politicians are reluctant to commit, policy

does not dictate what the _ number of people is. it sets the criteria but a number of people who take up the offer will vary over time and if you look at international students, we had a very similar regime to the one we have now, 15 years ago. but the number of people who took this up was much smaller so you cannot always predict what number of people will come in under the policy you setup. we are treating this at this moment and because you look at the data as a statistical discussion but there is another aspect of this, a very significant aspect, which is culture. it is all very well having the numbers we like and talking about demand and need and requirement but for a lot of people listening, watching, they might think, i have an opinion about what this country looks like or should look like culturally and that also affects the public perception towards immigration and that must feed into policy—making ? of course it does. but that is very hard to quantify. that is right, it is easier to talk about economics and growing the labour

market and vacancies. you can look at some kind of cultural measures with opinion polls but it tends not to be very satisfactory. ultimately, these are things that people sort of feel rather than quantify. having observed this conversation that we have had nationwide for a long time, how do you think it has changed since brexit? just the way people talk about immigration and the numbers? i think there have been interesting changes in public opinion, we have the best data on public opinion and there has been a surprising shift since around the time of the _ referendum that public opinion appears to have become more positive about migration. at the same time, the salience of migration. just before the referendum, it was routinely one of the top issues, you would ask people the big issues facing the uk and immigration often

came up, if not number one then two or three. it has fallen down a lot and there has been an increase in the last few months but not as much as you would expect. sorry, especially when you look at what is happening with the numbers. you might think the opposite would happen. as the numbers of net migration was rising? indeed, and you have the numbers and then the political debate and a lot of focus on migration, including the issue of— small boats so it is surprising and we will see what happens next but _ for the moment it is surprising to me that the salience of immigration has not increased more. interesting to have that analysis, thank you very much. thank you for having me. and thank you for being here and keeping me company in the studio while chris was sunning himself in great yarmouth and investigating opinions on migration as well. it was a pleasure. we will be back with another programme very

$0011. goodbye! newscast from the bbc. hello, good afternoon. cloud and sunshine amounts will vary as we head through the next few days. there is some cloud around today, as captured by our weather watcher here in the highlands, but lots of blue sky and sunshine. for the vast majority of us it will be completely dry this bank holiday weekend too, with high pressure dominating, some more spells of warm sunshine but clouding over at times too. and this is the cloud produced by our cold front earlier on today on the satellite picture. it is gradually sinking southwards, introducing more cloud this afternoon across northern ireland and into northern england. brightening up for northern scotland. by the time we get to the end of the day, some strong gusty winds perhaps over the northern isles, but the best of the sunshine in england and wales, temperatures here ranging between 19 and 22c. cooler towards coastal areas.

and don't forget the sunshine is strong at this time of year. the uv levels will be high and they will remain high as we head through into next week. and of course the grass pollen season is also just getting under way. now, overnight tonight, we will start to see parts of northern ireland and much of western scotland cloud over. if we do see any prolonged clear spells across the highlands, temperatures could drop very close to freezing. it's milder further south for england and wales, temperatures in mid to high single figures. high pressure still dominates on sunday, it is certainly looking dry and settled. there will be some areas of cloud around, mostly out towards western areas of scotland, where, again, it will feel cooler across northern ireland too. some areas of cloud out towards eastern areas of england, generally a cloudier—looking day with the best of the sunshine i think for western wales and for the far south—west of england, devon and cornwall. there will always be a cool breeze, it is picking up towards eastern coastal areas by the end of the day. highs of 22 or 23 celsius in the best of the sunshine. let's take a look at bank holiday monday. it is cooler and breezier

across the south of england, particularly towards those eastern coasts. again the best of the sunshine further north and west, highs of around 21 celsius perhaps across the central belt of scotland on bank holiday monday. and looking ahead to the rest of the week, well, the high pressure is going nowhere. it is keeping us dry and settled. there will be variable amounts of cloud around at times but also some sunshine and if we take a look at the outlook for our capital cities, you can see that most of the temperatures recover into the late 20s in celsius.

live from london — this is bbc news. a home office source says e—gates are now starting to come back on after long delays for some passengers travelling to the uk. it's the final day of campaigning in turkey ahead of one of the country's most divisive presidential elections. ukraine's most senior security official tells the bbc the country is ready to launch its long—expected counter—offensive against russian forces. in the uk — the post office apologises for using racist language to describe sub—postmasters who were being wrongly investigated as part of the horizon computer scandal. itv says it investigated rumours of a relationship between presenter phillip schofield and a younger employee in 2020 — but both repeatedly denied it.