and joining them, virtually, will be 30 members of the public. the debate gets underway in around 20 minutes time, and between now and then we ll be looking at the main issues of discussion with our political analysts professor sirjohn curtice, professor of politics at university of strathclyde, lesley riddoch, author and broadcaster and pro independence campaigner, and pamela nash, chief executive of scotland in union. but first, our scotland editor sarah smith who ll be asking the questions tonight has this preview of what ll be happening later. soon, i ll bejoined here by the leaders of all five of the major political parties in scotland, who, as you can see, are going to be at an appropriate social distance from each other, and the audience members will come via the magic of technology. they will be asking their questions via zoom on screens that politicians will be able to see, assuming that they remember to unmute of course. and in my experience, it s much, much
welcome back to our special programme on that scottish leaders debate. that has lasted an hour and covered a lot of the issues that we thought would dominate the debate. the first was how scotland and best recover from the pandemic. the first was how scotland and best recoverfrom the pandemic. what the first was how scotland and best recover from the pandemic. what an independence referendum distract and hinder efforts to rebuild the nation part of the economy, and how will the nhs clear its waiting list and treat serious diseases like cancer? douglas ross of the scottish conservatives that are his party priorities with jobs and economic recovery. he pledged investment in a projector and promised funding for full fibre broadband. the s&p s nicola sturgeon outlined her plan to continue to suppress covid and support businesses in their recovery from the pandemic. when the commitment to build 100,000 affordable homes. she defended her support for a second referendum and a desire
and how followers of the qanon conspiracy tried to make sense of the inauguration and donald trump s exit. we ll speak to the man who followed the group for 3 weeks during the handover. hello i m laura trevelyan in washington, christian fraser is in london. once we saw international cooperation to develop vaccines to combat covid 19 now, countries are fighting each other to get their hands on doses. tonight the eu said its exploring all options to enforce vaccine agreements, that would seem to include a possible ban on the export of vaccines outside the bloc. astrazeneca announced this week it would have to cut the number of shots delivered to the eu before the end of march from 80 to 31 million, citing production problems at its european factories. a senior eu official suggested today that coronavirus vaccines produced here in the uk should be shared with the bloc until production in europe recovers. but here s why the british factories are now performing better. the uk go
that, however long it takes. mark reckless. i am grateful to the prime minister for spending so much time in rochester and strood. dr phillip barnes, the acting chief executive of medway hospital said this morning that , what our hospital needs is a period of patience and stability. does the prime minister agree? the prime minister. agree. i agree that it does need those things but it also needs the , attention that will be brought about by the special measures that medway is in. we have seen extra a and e consultants and nurses going in. 112 additional nurses and 61 more doctors, but it will take time to turn around a hospital that did have very high rates of mortality and still has challenges. the only thing that i fail to understand is why he decided to join a party that does not believe in the nhs and that wants to break it up. in 1971, the first refuge in the world was set up in chiswick in my constituency. the home secretary yesterday announced £10 million for