Image source, Google

Leaders for the SNP, Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will take part in a debate broadcast by STV on 3 December.

STV say the format of the hour-long broadcast will see the party leaders debate each other directly.

They'll also take questions from host Colin Mackay, the broadcaster's political editor.

The Scottish Greens say they are "extremely disappointed" to not have been invited to take part in the programme.

They're the only political party with seats in the Scottish Parliament to be excluded from the debate. The Brexit Party and Ukip - who are standing in 15 and seven Scottish seats respectively - have also not been invited to take part.

A Scottish Greens spokesman said: "Unlike the other parties the Scottish Greens don't have unlimited resources and millionaire donors. That's why our local branches need to decide carefully how to deploy resources and unfortunately that means we can't stand everywhere. It's deeply depressing that STV has allowed an unfair voting system and financial advantage, rather than actual political influence, to drive its decision."

STV says it is planning a series of interviews with party leaders - including those from the Brexit Party and Scottish Greens - due to be aired at a later date.

To add some context to that protest outside the Labour manifesto meeting, you might remember that in September delegates at the Labour Party conference voted to urge Jeremy Corbyn to include a commitment to the free movement of people, in the party's next election manifesto.

In the last election, Labour's manifesto vowed to end free movement when the UK leaves the European Union.

More details in our story from the time, here.

Jeremy Corbyn has arrived at the meeting, being held in London, that will finalise Labour's election manifesto.

He was accompanied by shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

Just minutes later, Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union, arrived. He went over and spoke to protesters who were chanting in support of maintaining the free movement of workers across the EU.

"I'm going to support free movement, and I support migrant workers," he told them.

Image source, DANNY LAWSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Earlier this morning, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Vince Cable, criticised Boris Johnson's response to the recent floods in Yorkshire.

Sir Vince told Sky's Sophy Ridgy that Tony Blair or David Cameron would have visited areas affected by flooding "on day one".

Having a quick Google, it does look like Mr Cameron went to a fair few flood sites during his time in No 10.

In December 2015 he went to York after hundreds of people were forced out of their homes. The year before that he went to flood-hit parts of Pembrokeshire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire.

Image source, Darren Staples/PA Wire

Back in 2000, then-PM Tony Blair visited flood victims in Gloucester. Like Mr Johnson, he was heckled by some locals - with one saying: "It's all right for you in your nice warm office but we've waited six years. It will happen again and it will cost millions."

Sir Vince said both Mr Blair and Mr Cameron "would have conveyed empathy" on these visits, "which Johnson doesn't".

"I mean, the Tories regard him as a great electoral saviour. I'm afraid I don't think he's showing signs of that," he added.

"I think to be a really top class politician, an effective prime minister, you have to have this ability to empathise with people and their problems, and he doesn't [...] he just didn't come across right."

We know you're busy, busy people so you might have missed some of our best election content during the week - features we hope will help you make sense of what is going on.

During the day we'll flag up some of the most useful pieces that you can read today to bring you bang up to date.

Last Sunday we brought you the tale of the one place in the UK that won't be offering voters any choice. Did you know that the Speaker traditionally runs unopposed in his/her own constituency because the other major parties do not field candidates?

That is the fate of Chorley this time around, as you can read here.

Image source, UK Parliament

While a record number of women are standing in the election, Jill Macauley is the only woman among the 16 candidates standing for the Ulster Unionist Party.

The Northern Irish local councillor, who describes herself as a "multitasker and political aficionado" on Twitter, is standing in the South Down constituency - which about 20 miles south of Belfast.

Here's a picture of her at a local voter registration event a couple of days ago.

Before Parliament dissolved for the election, the MP for South Down was Sinn Féin's Chris Hazzard. He's campaigning for re-election after becoming an MP in 2017.

You can see the full list of candidates for the South Down constituency - as well people vying for seats across the whole of Northern Ireland - in our main story.

From Labour's working hours confusion to the prime minister's frosty reception in Yorkshire, here are some highlights of this week on the election campaign trail.

Where else can you fast-forward through an entire week in less than four minutes?

There's a lot of reaction this morning to news of the police looking into allegations of electoral fraud, after claims the Tories offered peerages to Brexit Party election candidates to persuade them to stand down.

When we spoke to the Met Police press office, they were keen to make clear they don't comment on individual cases - so their comments "do not necessarily" refer to the Conservative Party.

Here's their statement in full:

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Image source, PA Media

Cabinet Minister Michael Gove says calls for an investigation into electoral fraud by the Conservative Party sound "pretty nonsensical".

The Brexit Party's Ann Widdecombe said she was offered a role in the next phase of Brexit negotiations if she agreed to stand down as a candidate in the marginal seat of Plymouth Sutton and Devonport.

And Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has said senior figures have been offered inducements, external, such as government jobs, in return for not running against Conservative candidates.

Pressed on whether anyone in the Conservative Party was looking into the accusations, he said: "Well, this is the first I've heard of it."

Police say they are assessing two allegations of electoral fraud.

Image source, EPA

A record number of women look set to stand for Parliament next month, with female candidates likely to comprise about a third of the total.

Provisional Press Association analysis found 1,120 of 3,322 registered candidates were women.

The Conservatives and Labour are set to field candidates in every constituency in Britain, except Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle's seat in Chorley in Lancashire.

Read our full story here.

Police say they are assessing two allegations of electoral fraud, after claims the Tories offered peerages to Brexit Party election candidates to persuade them to stand down.

Labour peer Lord Falconer has urged the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service to launch an investigation.

He said the claims - first raised by the Brexit Party's Nigel Farage - raised "serious questions" about the integrity of the 12 December election.

The PM says the claims are "nonsense".

Read our full story here.

Senior government minister Michael Gove says he was "completely unaware" of any conversations going on between his party and the Brexit Party, following allegations the Tories offered peerages to other election candidates to persuade them to stand down.

Police say they are assessing two allegations of electoral fraud.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

The Conservatives and Lib Dems have both unveiled tree-planting pledges today.

Back in 2015 the Tories also promised they would plant more than 11 million trees over the next five years - but by 2017, planting was well behind schedule.

Ex-Environment Secretary Michael Gove is blaming the EU for this.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today Programme, he said the UK had been "trapped" by the EU Common Agricultural Policy.

He didn't specify in what way the CAP had prevented the UK from planting trees but said: "Across the political spectrum, whether people argued for Leave or Remain, there are very few people who argue that we should maintain the unfair, unjust and un-green Common Agricultural Policy.

"It's one of the big benefits of leaving the European Union, and it will allow us to meet these tree-planting targets which will ensure that we deal with the climate crisis that we face."

John Pienaar
Deputy political editor

Image source, PA Media

Labour's latest "retail offer" of free broadband for all showed - if it still needed showing - voters are being handed a choice of rival ideologies as stark as any we've seen since Margaret Thatcher took on Labour's Michael Foot in 1983.

Younger voters may imagine this is what normal politics looks like. It isn't. Or at least, it wasn't.

All the parties are desperate to grab the attention of an electorate which has never trusted its politicians less, or been less tightly bound by old party loyalties.

So far, the 2019 general election has been unlike any in living memory.

Read John's full analysis piece here.

Professor Sir John Curtice
Polling expert

Image source, GETTY IMAGES/PA

The election provides a chance to choose between different parties.

But what voters think of the party leaders - the candidates for prime minister - can also matter when they decide how to cast their vote.

So what do voters make of the leaders of the main parties fighting seats across the UK at this election? And how does their popularity compare with the leaders in 2017?

Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, Sir John Curtice, has the answers.

The BBC has been under fire ever since it broadcast old footage of Johnson laying a wreath at the Cenotaph, instead of the real footage from last weekend of him looking "dishevelled" with the wreath upside-down.

Newswatch says 2,000 people complained about the edition of BBC Breakfast, which ran the incorrect footage three times.

Viewers tell the programme the footage used was "a little bit more helpful to Mr Johnson" and that they "find it very hard to believe this was a genuine mistake".

Presenter Samira Ahmed says the BBC maintains it was a genuine mistake with the digital system used to store and edit news footage, called Jupiter.

Archive and current footage is colour-coded, but any user can restore archive material, make a clip and rename it for broadcast again, she explains.

That's what happened, in this case with footage from three years ago, as the Breakfast team prepared a preview item before Sunday's wreath-laying.

BBC Breakfast editor Richard Frediani says: "It was a human error, it shouldn’t have happened, I apologised at the time and I've come on Newswatch to apologise again."

He says another team arrived on Sunday evening to prepare for Monday's show. They searched for Cenotaph footage, found the old clip and mistakenly thought it was from that day's service.

The footage was labelled with 11/13, the correct date, but not with the year. That would have been visible if the staff had looked in notes attached to the footage, but they did not.

Ms Ahmed challenges Mr Frediani, saying that many viewers believe if Jeremy Corbyn had appeared that "dishevelled" at the Remembrance Sunday service, the media would have made "a very big deal of it".

But Mr Frediani rejects that, saying he is trying to be "transparent and honest about what was just a mistake".

Fishing will almost certainly be on the agenda for the SNP later, when its leader Nicola Sturgeon visits the north east of Scotland.

Ahead of her visit, the party's deputy leader in Westminster, Kirsty Blackman, said the fishing policy in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal did not deliver what Scottish fishermen who voted Leave asked for.

"The proposal that was put forward to people in fishing communities by those who supported Leave is not the proposal that is coming through as a result of the deal that Boris Johnson has negotiated."

Speaking on Radio 4's Today Programme, Ms Blackman, who's party wants to Remain in the EU, added: "The big issue for me with the Common Fisheries Policy and the way that it has worked is that has been people from the Westminster Parliament, who don't know anything about Scottish fishing."

Image source, UK Parliament

Negotiators had been "doing things such as swapping away some of Scotland's quota in order to ensure that fisherman in the south west of England get more fish, get a higher level of quota," she added.

"So, we've been very badly-served by Westminster and the Common Fisheries Policy would work significantly better for us if we had had people with Scottish interests at heart putting forward the case and arguing for our quotas."

After a busy day answering questions from the public and unveiling his battle bus, Boris Johnson will again be on the campaign trail for the Conservative Party.

Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party is finalising its election manifesto.

Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson has a couple of events in London today, including planting a tree in Hampstead to coincide with her party's pledge to plant 60 million trees a year if it wins the election.

Meanwhile SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is expected to warn Brexit will hit the north-east of Scotland hardest, on a campaign visit to the Brewdog brewery in Aberdeenshire.

As far as we know Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has no campaign events planned today.

David Shukman
Science editor, BBC News

We now have yet another green battleground in this election campaign: trees.

After claim and counter claim about everything from a ban on fracking to improving flood defences to reducing carbon emissions, there's a flurry about forests.

The Conservatives say they'll plant at least 30 million more trees every year, a pledge that is roughly in line with a recommendation from the government's official climate advisers. But that would represent a massive increase compared with earlier targets set by the government and, as the other parties are keen to point out, these have not been met.

For their part, the Liberal Democrats have gone much further than the Conservatives by promising to plant 60 million trees a year - that's double the Tory number - arguing that that's needed to help fight climate change.

The Labour Party says its plan for trees, when it comes, will be guided by the science.

Experts in forestry say that a huge programme of tree planting is needed if the UK is to have any chance of reducing its carbon emissions to effectively zero.

They also say that the aim, though difficult, is feasible but will depend on careful planning - "to get the right trees in the right places", as one specialist put it to me.

He also said the effort had to be properly funded and "joined-up", by which he means co-ordinating many different government agencies, forestry organisations and farmers - no easy task.