tv Newscast BBC News February 24, 2024 4:30pm-5:01pm GMT
4:30 pm
parliamentary party after refusing to apologise for saying islamists had gained control of the mayor of london, sadiq khan. he made the comments while talking about pro—palestinian protests on gb news on friday. the spokeswoman for the russian opposition figure, alexei navalny, says his body has been given to his mother, more than a week after he died in prison. but they are still unsure whether the russian authorities will allow them to hold the funeral that they say he deserves. on the second anniversary of the full—scale invasion of ukraine by russia, president zelensky vows that his country will defeat russia. several western leaders in kyiv are pledging their solidarity. but ukraine is losing territory, and there are warnings moscow is taking advantage of the delays in delivering western military help.
4:31 pm
a full bulletin of news at the top of the hour. now on bbc news, newscast. chris, can i read out some fan mail we've received? 0h, blimey. have we? yeah. although there is a twist. this is from rich, who posted on the newscast discord server saying, i would like to say, a, i read it in the guardian, didn't understand it. b, i read it in the mail, didn't understand it. c, i listened to it on pm on radio 4 and didn't understand it. d, i listened to it on newscast, understood it, ithink, and have now explained it to others. hurrah! yay! so that's a big tick for us. although notably that was an episode you weren't in. that is a detail we could have glossed over. i was basking in rich's glorious vocabulary and praise and was quite happy to just soak it up in a very royal sense. but you know, you're right. i wasn't around. there is a chance for you to redeem yourself on this episode of newscast. newscast from the bbc.
4:32 pm
hello. it's adam in the studio. and it is chris in salford. and what rich was talking about in his excellent piece of correspondence was our coverage on the previous episode of newscast about the shenanigans in parliament, where lindsay hoyle, the speaker, sir lindsay hoyle, picked one too many amendments to be voted on and it caused all sorts of chaos in all sorts of directions. chris, you're out there in the actual real world, but this has been so huge. you must have felt it and heard it even where you are now. the curious thing, adam, is that the further you are away from westminster, i find, either sort of mentally or geographically, the more kind of curious and bizarre some of the conventions of swi in central london can look, rows about parliamentary procedure etc, etc. but the reason i'm here in the north—west of england is that i've been in rochdale in greater manchester for the last couple of days, where there's a by—election in a week's time, and there's
4:33 pm
a connection between what's been happening in westminster and what's happening here. and it's the capacity of the conflict in the middle east to put real strains on our politics. we've seen that playing out at westminster. we see it playing out in rochdale too, a constituency with a substantial muslim population, many of whom are particularly exercised about what's happening in gaza. and we've seen the guy who was meant to be the labour candidate, who will have labour next to his name on the ballot paper, being disowned by the labour party, azhar ali, over allegedly anti—semitic remarks for which he's apologised. so the two issues come together with this capacity to exert this great tension on our politics. and, in terms of what happened today in the story day two, in the story, day two, we heard from sir lindsay hoyle again, who popped up in the house of commons chamber to apologise again. i will apologise, i always will when i make a mistake. idid. i offer an 5024, that is within my gift and power.
4:34 pm
but i will also say i will do whatever it is to protect anybody in this chamber or anybody who works in this house — that is my duty of care. and we also heard from the labour leader, sir keir starmer. so many sirs in this story. he denied pressuring the speaker into selecting the labour amendment, which was the cause of all of this. although that doesn't mean there weren't potentially people in labour who were pressuring lindsay hoyle and rishi sunak, the prime minister, did a clip with broadcasters where he said actually it was the wrong thing to do, to kind of give in, as he said, to extremists and change parliament's procedures because of perceived or actual threats to mps from people. and a growing number of mps have been signing that... it's kind of like a petition, it's called an early day motion, saying that they don't have confidence in the speaker, but it doesn't look like that's going to turn into an actual no—confidence vote in lindsay hoyle, so he survives for another day. and this was the start of my conversation i had with grant shapps, the defence secretary, who popped into the newscast studio
4:35 pm
earlier to talk about the two years since vladimir putin invaded ukraine. but of course we ended up starting the conversation talking about all of this. defence secretary, hello. hello. this is the first time someone�*s bodyguards have come into the newscast studio to check its all right. so that was very exciting. is it ok? i think you're safe. no threats here. obviously, we'll talk about about ukraine and the anniversary at length. but ijust wanted to ask you about the shenanigans in parliament on wednesday. do you accept lindsay hoyle�*s apology that he kind of did the wrong thing, but for good reasons? first thing to say, as a government minister, as i'm speaking as a member of parliament here, because it's a matter for the house, it's not a matter for the government. that's how parliament operates. second thing to say is i think it is very important that parliament is able to debate in a normal way. we have a set of rules in parliament for how procedures work. you've got to have that anywhere
4:36 pm
because otherwise it would always be a free for all. the set of rules very clearly say that, if it's an opposition day debate, you have to take their motion. and i am concerned that there was excess pressure perhaps put on the speaker to accept a different outcome. and, you know, clearly that meant that the snp in this case didn't get their particular motion debated or rather voted, which isn't right. i was in there because i'd just done a statement on ukraine when mr speakerwas again apologizing for it. apologising for it. i'm actually more concerned about the pressure that keir starmer, who had a meeting with him immediately beforehand, was putting on the speaker. and i think actually i'd really like to hear what was said, what did keir and his whips say to pressurise the speaker into this position? fundamentally, we can't have a position where certain things can't be debated or certain motions can't be debated because somehow one word will make it, or a few words will somehow mean it's unsafe. and, you know, we all live
4:37 pm
in a world in which parliament is designed to allow different views to be expressed, and those views shouldn't be stopped by the speaker. to be fair to keir starmer, he's just done an interview at lunchtime. you probably haven't seen it because you were doing other things. but he said that he didn't threaten lindsay hoyle. he said he had a conversation with lindsay hoyle about making sure there was the broadest set of options possible. look, we all know that was the screws. we all know that there were many resignations the last time, the issue for labour, the last time it was in a tight spot. and so, of course, it looks like there's cause for him to have put pressure on. and that's why i think what he needs to do is publish the details of what was said and done, what are the conversations that the other whips had and so on and so forth. because otherwise, essentially the speaker is the fall guy for actually pressure that the leader of the opposition and labour may have inappropriately put on him. last thing on this, we had an email from newscaster charlie who said,
4:38 pm
"i consider myself to be news savvy, reluctantly middle class and quite "politically involved, but i can't for the life of me "figure out the following. "where did parliament go so hideously wrong?" do you think charlie's got a point? well, it's really interesting, because i've just come to you from doing a statement on the two—year anniversary of putin's illegal invasion of ukraine. and, as i said to the chamber, here is an issue upon which parliament is entirely united. everybody is singing from the same book, one hymn sheet, and everyone's making clear, look, what putin's done in ukraine must not continue, must continue, not to be, must continue not to be, to go unanswered. so you literally have the best of parliament where we're able to speak with a single voice. and there's nothing wrong with debate, by the way. i mean, yesterday was the worst because there were different opinions. but those opinions must be heard and must be expressed through votes. and we can't go back to the bercow years where, you know, actually the opinion of the speaker or maybe pressure on the speaker in this case, i suspect, led to an outcome which is the wrong one for the house.
4:39 pm
ok, let's talk about ukraine. i remember it so clearly. two years ago that morning, i was doing my old job. so i was stood outside downing street. there was a massive thunderstorm and it sort of felt kind of like the end of the world. what was going through your head at that point? i mean, you weren't defence secretary then, but i mean, you obviously cared. i was woken up at 3am by a phone call. i was transport secretary. they said, there'll be a car outside at six, you'll be going straight to cobra. that's in the cobra rooms in 70 whitehall in the cabinet office and we'll have a discussion about... of course, we've been having several cobras in the lead—up, because we could see this coming, about what to do. one of the more minor upshots actually of that conversation that became more major over time was that those cabinet ministers in the room were specifically asked to make contact with their ukrainian counterparts. and i did a man called oleksandr kubrakov, and he and i later on that day, 24th of february 22, had a zoom call
4:40 pm
in which he was on his phone standing in a field some kilometres outside kyiv. and i said, what's the situation? he said, well, first of all, we feel like they're close. there was this, if you remember, 40—mile convoy of tanks from belarus coming down, which we didn't know at the time from belarus coming down. which we didn't know at the time was going to get bogged down. which at the time looked very frightening missiles. and he had essentially escaped kyiv to go to this field to have the conversation. right. and there actually started a great friendship. he and i've met many times since, including in kyiv, but in many other places, including in other nato formats. and i said to him in the transport area that i'll be taking action that day, closing airspace to russians,
4:41 pm
russian aircraft, closing our ports to russians. but, of course, we had already got ahead of the game because this country had already provided lethal weapons to ukraine. so in particular, the nlaw anti—tank missiles. yeah. borisjohnson loved them. nlaws. that's right. absolutely incredibly effective. we'd already been training ukrainian troops, for example, so we'd already had a head start. and that conversation and those conversations with other relevant cabinet colleagues in different areas really started to build the foundation of this extraordinary uk—ukraine relationship, which actuallyjust recently led to the prime minister signing a 100—year cooperation security partnership with ukraine, which we're going to develop even further.
4:42 pm
so, of course, we thought, putin in kyiv in three days, i was just at the dispatch box today saying, we're about to enter our third year, and he's nowhere near. and, of course, fortunately, the ukrainians have managed to take back 50% of the land they took. but plenty of danger on the horizon still. i mean, it's really hard to sum up the entire conflict, but one of the words a lot of people are using is stalemate. i mean, what word would you use? yes, it's been a stalemate along the main... so it is a stalemate. it has been a stalemate along the... because that's a controversial word. just, you know, call a spade a spade. right. it has been a stalemate right from the north, down through and through to the south, with bits moving backwards and forwards. unfortunately, we saw avdiivka was recently taken by the russians, having previously been taken by the ukrainians. they've done a strategic tactical retreat. the one place that hasn't been the case, and it is in no small part thanks to the united kingdom, is down in crimea. now, remember, crimea was taken in 2014. yeah. and the wider world did not respond
4:43 pm
as it could and should have done. but actually, so the russian black sea fleet have operated from there. they took over the bases, in fact, they already leased the bases that have been there for 200 years. in that time, the ukrainians in the last six months have started to attack this enormous soviet—era black sea fleet around crimea and have started to open up trading passages. so, for example, ukraine is not far off now being able to export the amount of grain each month that it did before the war, which is extraordinary. and that has happened through ways that i can't fully go into, but lots of help and support from ukraine's friends and partners, chief amongst them, the united kingdom, and i'm very, very proud of what we've done to make sure that ukraine can help restart their own economy, because they need to, in a wartime economy, pay the wages, buy munitions and much else. and that's the one bright spot. and, you know, there are many other
4:44 pm
ways in which this war is changing shape going into its third year. you said in your statement in parliament and i was listening in parliament, and i was listening to it, that this is a make or break year. yes. why now? i mean, if putin is happy to spend billions more and we're happy to spend billions more, this could go on for years. you're sort of suggesting that it won't. i'm not saying it won't go on for years. i'm saying this year will be a definitive moment, an inflection point in this war, for the reasons i say, you've got a ramping up of the russian economy. i think they're probably devoting something like 30% of their economy to the industrial production of war fighting stuff. but on the, if you like, on the good side of this, the ukrainians and our friends, there are now 52 countries in a coalition. it's called the uk defence contact group. it was started by the uk, so we founded this. we handed the leadership to the us back in the early days of this. we met last week and we meet most
4:45 pm
months or every other month. last week we met in brussels as nato conference was getting going and this is 52 countries providing a lot of different stuff. so the world is still there. the world is still pushing up there. there's a big question mark over america. and this is why i say this is definitive because. my argument... in congress, i went to the white house, but i went to meet congressmen and women, particularly on the republican side, just the other week. my argument to them was actually very straightforward. don't help europe because europe needs america's help. help europe because it's actually in your own, you know, national interest. and particularly, actually, as republicans. because if your big concern is, you know, president xi is looking at this, he'll be wondering about, you know, does the westjust give up? therefore, can you just go to taiwan and everyone will make a fuss, but then... actually, if you care about those
4:46 pm
things, then you have to show that when you set up a red line, that red line remains in place. and you can't just rely on civilised nations getting bored. so very much in us interests, very much in republican interests. but clearly there's an issue there. there's the money and there's what a future administration may or may not do. so these things are all in play. but if trump wins and he cuts off the supply of american money, ukraine loses. it's over. i don't think it's that simple. and that's, by the way, two ifs before you even got to the main proposition. it's quite likely. you know better than i do and can guess it better than i. it's hard to say. and of course, it depends what happens in the meantime with the, what is it, $61 billion of potential aid in the package, which is still now actually being passed by the senate, not being passed by the lower house, house of representatives, yet. but we'll wait to see what happens there. so there's all of that first. and then, of course, i mentioned there are 52 countries in the ukraine defence contact group. that's still these 51 other countries who can decide what we're going to do as well.
4:47 pm
so, no, i think it's far from over, but for the reasons discussed, this year is very important. right. i know you won't want to talk about the trident missile that plopped in the sea on the submarine. there's only so much i can say on it. must have been gutted. that would have been quite a cool moment. well, let me tell you, actually, i spent17 hours under the water with our brilliant submariners. and so it was amazing to see it anyway. i mean, just obviously to state the obvious upfront, it would been wonderful to see it go off — but i can be very clear about this. this was not... the reason that the boat, the submarine and the crew and the launch have all been signed off under what are extraordinarily exacting criteria, and that boat will go back in service, is actually everything that we needed to know about it worked. the only thing which didn't work was specific to a test arrangement
4:48 pm
rather than a live fire. so we can be completely, and the us and the uk are absolutely one voice on this, 100% confident that in a live situation this is the most, in fact not one of, the most reliable weapon system in the world for missiles. 191 successful tests. although two british fails. but for completely unrelated... did you press the button? and i'm afraid i didn't, no. i was wondering if they'd let you do that. no, no, no. but for completely unrelated reasons, as i say, it's i know the language is a bit difficult, and i can't unpack it further, unfortunately, as the us and us said, there was an event—specific anomaly, but actually it literally means that in a live—fire situation, the particular issue would not have been an issue. so we are absolutely 100% confident in our nuclear deterrent.
4:49 pm
grant shapps there, and we'll let you into a little secret. i think there was some quite top secret stuff in that folder he had on this very, very table. right! sitting in grant shapps�*s old seat, it's dr hannah white from the institute for government. hello. and your think tank is so well connected, i've just been invited to an event with bothjohn major and gordon brown at the same time. so i'm glad you're slumming it with us two tonight. now, you used to work in parliament. you used to be one of the clerks. so, one of the people that advises the speaker what to do. what did you think when it was all unfolding yesterday? i mean, it was fairly amazing. i was actually trying to chair another event and my phone kept pinging at me, all these news alerts. i mean, it was sort of remarkable scenes reminiscent only, i think, of brexit times in parliament. and that much more surprising because of that, i think. we thought that was passed. well, lindsay hoyle as a speaker defined himself very much against john bercow and the way he used to procedurally freelance. he even put in place special
4:50 pm
procedures to stop that happening or to to acknowledge when it was going to happen. like what? well, this idea that the clerk of the house could write a letter and place it in the library of the house saying you are now departing from precedent. oh, which she actually did yesterday. which he actually did, so that was a real sort of throwback to brexit times. and when hoyle, when he was getting elected in the first place, sort of proposed that procedure, we all sort of thought, well, he's proposing it because he never intends to have it used. and there it was being used. so it was, yeah, it was quite remarkable scenes. his argument that he kind of he did the right thing. he did the wrong thing for the right reasons, like letting there be as many options for mps as there as there were. is there not some merit in that approach? especially when something as emotional, as chris was saying, as this conflict? absolutely there is merit in that approach. that is what the speaker is supposed to do. they're supposed to enable the house to have the debate it wants to have. and there were those three different views. and so he was trying
4:51 pm
to facilitate that. ithink, unfortunately, though, the procedure was more restrictive than optimal, because it's a procedure that was developed when we only had two main parties in the house. so it only needed to allow for a sort of binary situation on an opposition day. and he decided to take the risk of freelancing to change that procedure sort of on the hoof, to try to allow all three propositions to be debated and voted on. yeah, because one of the conclusions of what might have happened if this had all gone as he intended was that actually the snp motion wouldn't have been voted on at all. so actually you would have ended up having a vote on two, not three. so not fulfilling the three options thing at all. well, i think what he was hoping would happen is that the labour vote, the labour amendment, would be voted on and voted down. that would leave the snp motion unamended to be voted on. so all the wording there, and then you could do the government amendment,
4:52 pm
so everybody would get their vote. but that was taking the risk that you would get that labour amendment voted down and he was taking the risk with the snp's opposition day, and that's the thing that they were really objecting to. what really strikes me in all of this is so key to the share price of any speaker is that sense of trust and trust across the house. and lindsay hoyle, as you were saying, built his whole case to be speaker in the sort of post—bercow era on exactly that, and i would say at least prior to this week had a pretty high share price amongst the vast majority of mps for that kind of perceived sense of fair play and fairness and impartiality. and my goodness, it's taken one heck of a hit. even from afar, speaking to a sort of range of mps, to what extent can he try to take in the hope that with an election rather than seeking to bring
4:53 pm
about a situation where he feels so, fairly recently, then! in parliament, exactly! so what tends to happen is they see the writing on the wall. and it's really important that the role of speaker can only be done by someone who commands the confidence of all sides of the house, who can be seen as a neutral, impartial arbiter. that is the whole job. and so at the point at which you don't feel that you can do that, it does become quite difficult to continue. and there almost shouldn't need to be a formal means of removing you at that point.
4:54 pm
in terms of lindsay hoyle�*s future, what i can't work out is that, so there's one argument that what, 50—plus mps have signed this early day motion saying they don't have confidence in him. if that many mps don't have confidence in the speaker, well then he's kind of done for, even if he doesn't get chucked out of office because you just you can't survive with that many people saying you're rubbish. but equally there is an election for who should be speaker, and there are other people who get votes. so actually you start off not having 100% of mp supporting you anyway. so how do you solve that dilemma? which one is right? i mean, i think at the start of the parliament, you go through the process, an alternative vote process as it is actually to find someone in the house settles on a candidate and then they all sort of rally behind the candidate at that point is the theory of how it's supposed to work. i mean, ithink you're right. if a large proportion, even 10% of mps are saying they don't have confidence in the speaker, it kind of depends what they do with that. if they leave it having signed an edm and they go around being a bit grumpy, that's, you know, maybe he can sort of work his way
4:55 pm
through and build back trust. if they start to sort of demonstrate it in other ways, if they start to withdraw from kind of participating in usual channels, discussions which he oversees to determine the business of the house and those sorts of things... that's the code for all the behind the scenes conversations that happen about what gets voted on when and who. exactly. and that gets done between the parties. and if they say, well, we can't trust the speaker to be an impartial arbiter in those discussions any longer, we're not participating, that really starts to make it quite difficult for him. chris. final thought from you ? busy, noisy, messy week in politics would be a sort of pithy final thought both where i am or up the road from where i am and where you guys are. yeah, i just thought... because we all keep reminiscing about... not reminiscing, it's not as happy as that, about the brexit era. and you think, oh, politics will reset to like a new level that's below that. but actually, no, you realise that is the new level. it's there permanently. it's what people have got used to. i worked it out the other day.
4:56 pm
220 mp5 have joined parliament from 2017 onwards. that's a third of the house which thinks this is normal. yeah. and also, i mean, you know, democracy and argument can be messy as well. that's not to defend orjustify anything, but that is... well based on certainly contemporary experience, fact. hannah, thank you very much for coming in. and chris, please do apologise to the people who are working really hard around you in the office that you've just plonked yourself down in. i hope we've not been too annoying to them. and i've been shouting like a shouty thing. yeah. and good to see you've got lots of antiseptic wipes there for any, any screens nearby. oh, yeah! hygiene, hygiene. right. that's it for this episode of newscast. thanks very much for listening and watching. we'll be back with another one very soon. bye. goodbye. newscast from the bbc.
4:57 pm
hello there. it was a cold and frosty start up and down the country this morning. there were some mist and fog patches around, too, but through the day we'll see plenty of dry and sunny weather, particularly towards eastern areas, more cloud further south and west and there'll be a few showers as well. these, again, wintry in nature certainly over the high ground. now, most of the showers fade away this evening. skies clear, light winds, it's going to turn cold and frosty pretty much right across the uk. we'll see some dense mist and fog patches developing, particularly across northern england, the midlands and eastern england, where they will be stubborn to clear through the morning period. now, part two of the weekend, we've got to contend with this area of low pressure, which will be skirting towards the southwest of the uk and then spreading towards france as you move through the day. so its southern britain which will see wet and windy weather for a time because of this low pressure system. and we'll be on the colder side of the low as you can see,
4:58 pm
the blue colours there indicated on the air mass chart. so another cold frosty start, stubborn mist and fog patches which could take their time to clear across the midlands in towards eastern england. a few wintry showers across northern scotland. otherwise plenty of sunshine across the northern quarter of the country, but it turns wet and windy. south wales, southwest england, particularly the channel islands, that rain moving along the south coast through the day. bit of uncertainty to the northern extent of the rain. it looks like it'll be, i think, the m4 corridor southwards, which has seen most of the impacts from that. stays wet, windy across southern britain as we head through sunday night. again, gales, perhaps an exposure towards the far south west. a few wintry showers across northern scotland into northeast england, otherwise mostly dry with clear skies. another cold night to come here, a little less cold in the south because of the cloud, the wind and the rain. into monday, that area of low pressure continues to push in towards france. a ridge of high pressure builds into northern and western areas, so the best of the dry and dry to where they will tend to be across northern areas, just one or two showers across the far northeast, but it stays windy across the south, particularly the southeast corner as that low pressure pulls away and takes the rain with it.
4:59 pm
so blustery and raw feel across the southeast where the winds will be lighter further north. those temperatures in single figures for most — factor in that wind in the south and east will feel more like one or two degrees there. and then as we move deeper through the new week, atlantic low pressure systems return. they'll bring wetter and windier weather, but also milder south westerlies. it will turn less cold both by day and by night. live from london, this is bbc news.
5:00 pm
tory mp lee anderson has had the party whip suspended following his comments about the london mayor sadiq khan. the comments from a senior conservative, are islamophobic, anti—muslim and racist. alexei navalny�*s family says his body has been handed to his mother, over a week after the russian opposition leader died in an arctic prison. on the second anniversary of russia's invasion of ukraine — president zelensky insists his country will win — but urgently needs more weapons. we will be live in kyiv shortly. hello, i'm nick schiller. we start this hour here in the uk where the mp lee anderson has been suspended from the conservative party. he had refused to apologise for saying that islamists had gained control of the mayor of london, sadiq khan. during a discussion on gb news about pro—palestinian marches
19 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
BBC News Television Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on