The chancellor, rachel reeves, has promised to make kick starting economic growth a national mission . A key part of that is a plan to reintroduce compulsory house building targets, as our chief economics correspondent dharshini david reports. How do you go about building prosperity? loosening red tape to revive private investment in home building and energy infrastructure form the foundation of today s plans, aimed at underpinning a decade of renewal. It will be up to local communities to decide where the housing is built but it has to be built. If the answer is always no, we ll continue as we are and continuing as we are means living standards continuing to decline and it means public services continuing to deteriorate. The plans involve reviving mandatory house building targets, allowing development on so called grey belt, parts of the protected green belt already built on, and lifting a ban on onshore wind powered developments. She knows she may be in for a fight. How prepared are
Position, with their 1% pay rise, a real terms pay cut, rejected by the independent peabody. So what do the government do? nothing. Less than an hour ago, there were competing briefings on what the deal was going to be but it turned out to be nothing. Our nhs staff deserve better than this. They have worked incredibly hard throughout this pandemic, the personal sacrifice is astounding. Their hard work never stops, and that is not without consequences. Work related stress has increased by nearly io%, mental health is consistently the most reported reason for staff absence in the nhs, accounting for approximately half a million days lost every single month. Half a million days lost every single month to mental health. These issues preceded the pandemic, but the increased pressure, intensity and trauma experienced by staff is taking its toll. Reports published in january found that nearly taking its toll. Reports published injanuary found that nearly half of front line nhs staff are suffe
almost one in five adults have now had a second dose. and on first jabs, we ve now vaccinated 33 million people, including 60% of the 45-49 million people, including 60% of the 45 49 year olds. and we know that this vaccination programme is making a big difference. we know that it is helping to reduce suffering and save lives. potentially on a very big scale. but we don t yet know the full extent of the protection that we re building up, the exact strength of our defences. and as we look at what is happening in other countries with cases now at record numbers around the world, we cannot delude ourselves that covid has gone away. i see nothing in the data now that makes me think we are going to have to deviate in any way from the road map, cautious but irreversible, that we have set out. but the majority of scientific opinion in this country is still firmly of the view that there will be another wave of covid at some stage this year. and so we must as far as possible learn to
hello and welcome if you re watching on pbs in the us or around the world, i m kasia madera. the us presidentjoe biden, has delivered a major speech reaffirming the us commitment to nato and the principle which underlies it, that an attack on one is an attack on all. just over four weeks after taking over from the trump administration, mr biden s message stands in marked contrast to donald trump s ambiguity over the us role within nato. in a moment we ll hear from the us secretary of state in an exclusive international tv interview. but first, that pledge to unite the west, from president biden. i m sending a clear message to the world, america is back. the transatlantic alliance is back. and we are not looking backwards. we are looking forward together. it comes down to this, transatlantic alliances is a strong foundation. the strong foundation on which our collective security and our shared prosperity are built. the united states is fully committed to our nato alliance. a