Afternoon Briefing Friday 31st October

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands, so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Hello, this is your Times Afternoon Briefing for Friday 31st October with me, James Kitchen. Buckingham Palace says Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been struck from the official role of the peerage.

0:44It comes after the king stripped his younger brother of his royal titles. Andrew will also leave Royal Lodge and move to a private property on the Sandringham Estate, privately funded by the monarch. There'd been continued speculation over recent weeks about Andrew's future following a series of allegations against the former Duke of York and his links with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Valentine Lowe is the former Times' royal correspondent and author of Power and the Palace. He says there may also be another motive behind Andrew's eviction from his Windsor home. This sort of quells the clamour for more clarity about the financial arrangements that he was living there under.

1:23And by inference, it dampens down the clamour for more transparency about royal finances. Royal finances are, of course, always incredibly opaque. No one really knows what goes on. and it's quite a clever move that. Andrew denies all allegations against him. The trade minister has told Times Radio the public shouldn't judge politicians by the front page of a newspaper. It comes after Sakhir Starmer confirmed Rachel Reeves will face no further action over her failure to obtain the correct licence to rent out her London home. Emails published yesterday show her estate agents had agreed to make the application, something the prime minister says he wishes he'd seen from the outset.

2:01The Independent Standards Advisor says the Chancellor hadn't acted in bad faith when initially claiming she was unaware of the requirement. Speaking to Times Radio, Sir Chris Bryant insisted Rachel Reeves had nothing to gain from her error. Are you deliberately seeking to hide some fact? And secondly, is the fact that you're seeking to hide materially beneficial to you, that it shouldn't be in the public domain? The difference between her first letter to the Prime Minister and the second has not materially benefited her. If anything, to the contrary. It's so important that we have a fair system.

2:34You can't just judge every single politician by the front page of a newspaper. It's feared there's a dangerous culture of acceptance over endemic levels of drugs in prisons across England and Wales. The Justice Committee is warning its crippling efforts to rehabilitate inmates. The Labour MP and Committee Chair Andy Slaughter told Times Radio organised crime groups are behind the rise. The price of drugs in prisons could be 100 times what it is on the outside. There are huge sums of money to be made. And therefore, it's not just that prisons are porous, it's almost an industry going on there in terms of supplying and hooking prisoners on drugs.

3:14There's been a rise in the number of people in England diagnosed with meningitis. The UK Health Security Agency says there were 378 cases in the past 12 months. It warns vaccination rates among children and teenagers has declined, leaving them more vulnerable to developing the disease. Meningitis can be deadly or cause life-changing health complications if not treated quickly. And the UK is providing an extra£5 million in funding for the Caribbean after Hurricane Melissa left at least 34 people dead. That comes on top of£2.5 million pledged earlier this week to cover aid including shelter kits and solar-powered lanterns.

3:54Foreign office teams are also preparing flights for British nationals who are unable to fly home on commercial planes. And remember, you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

4:11This episode of The Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk.