Afternoon briefing Monday 10th August

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. Welcome to the Times Radio afternoon briefing on Monday 10th August. It's reported that 230 people arrived in the UK on a single boat overnight.

0:44If confirmed, it'll be the largest number of people crossing the Channel to the UK on a single vessel ever recorded. Reform UK leader Nigel Farrell says it shows that what he calls an illegal invasion is a national security emergency. Meanwhile, research for the Times has found that a decade of small boats crossing the Channel has fundamentally changed Britain's attitudes towards immigration. YouGov has found the percentage of Britons who said migration has been mostly bad for the UK has increased to 43%, up from 33 % in 2016. There was a picture on the front of the Times this morning of a small baby being taken onto a boat.

1:21Government Minister Chris MacDonald was asked about that on Times Radio. It's absolutely heartbreaking and I think it just shows you how desperate people are, that they would make a crossing like that and they would take their small baby with them, knowing just how dangerous it is. And that's why, as I say, the measures that we've taken essentially to reduce attractiveness, increase deportations and so on, which have significantly reduced the number of crossings, they will have saved people's lives, they will have saved the lives of small children. A disagreement over wealth taxes means Andy Burnham is struggling to recruit a close ally to government.

1:52The Times understands that Lord O 'Neill, a former Goldman Sachs economist and Treasury Minister, has yet to reach an agreement with Number 10. He's said in the past that wealth taxes are not very effective. The White House says it's not concerned by the Israeli Prime Minister's rejection of Donald Trump's plan for Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu says the IDF will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is disarmed. Hamas has called for an end to military attacks before it turns over its heavy weaponry. Israeli Special Envoy Fleur Hassan Nahum has explained her country's position to Times Radio. Everybody wants a path to peace here, but you have to understand the trauma in this country.

2:31We don't actually believe that terrorists will voluntarily disarm. They may say they're going to. We don't believe that it's going to happen. And then why should we retreat when the terrorists are still with arms? It's about the sequencing. That's the problem here. And we are getting the fifth heat wave of the summer this week. Temperatures could be up to 35 degrees in the south. Forecaster John Hammond explains one of the reasons for the scorching conditions. Dry ground heats up much, much more quickly than does moist ground because if you've got moisture and lush vegetation, a lot of energy is required to evaporate that moisture.

3:10That energy is not being used up by that process, so all of that solar input is being transformed into heat, which heats the ground, which heats the air, which is why we're reaching 35 degrees yet again later on this week. You can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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