Afternoon briefing Monday 27th 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. This is the Times Afternoon Briefing on Monday the 27th of October. The Housing and Community Secretary has told Times Radio he's sure the government will look at break clauses in asylum accommodation contracts after MPs revealed costs have soared by more than£10 billion.

0:49The Home Affairs Committee says the contracts were estimated to cost£4.5 billion when they were first signed in 2019, but they're now due to cost£15.3 billion. It also says the government has failed to recoup£46 million in excess profits owed by two contractors. Steve Reid told Times Radio the Home Secretary is looking at alternative accommodation to hotels. She is committed, as the government is, to ending the use of hotels well before the full term of this Parliament comes to an end. She's been looking at how we can use army bases. For instance, we've already saved a billion pounds by increasing the number of caseworkers at the Home Office dealing with these applications so we can get through them quicker.

1:32but we did inherit a completely broken system. Prison officers are expected to carry out more thorough checks before releasing inmates after a migrant sex offender was freed by mistake. The Justice Secretary David Lammy is laying out the measures this afternoon after Hadjush Kabatoo was re-arrested yesterday. The parent company of a major North Sea oil and gas firm has filed for administration. Petrofac employs 2 ,000 people in the north-east of Scotland. Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says the company has been in trouble for a while. It does cap quite a fall for Petrofac.

2:07It was originally a company that started in Texas. It listed on the London stock market in 2005 and it got really big. It was in the FTSE 100 in 2012 and then it got hit by a bunch of oil price crashes and then there was a serious fraud office inquiry which resulted in some convictions. The government says it's working with Petrofac and insists the UK arm will keep trading. Campaigners are accusing the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner of downplaying and covering up the problem of grooming gangs in London. The Met is reviewing 9 ,000 cases of child sexual exploitation in the wake of a national review, although it says many of those cases do not fit the common understanding of grooming gangs.

2:50Sasadik Khan has previously said gangs more commonly groom children for county lines crime rather than sexual abuse, while Sir Mark Rowley's denied grooming is a significant problem in London. But former detective John Wedger told Times Radio he has seen the problem firsthand. When I bought into the police's attention the sheer magnitude of it, I was actually threatened and bullied into silence. I was threatened by the loss of my home, my job, my children if I spoke out. And I was told that this would damage the police, past, present and future. It must not and cannot ever get out. The Mayor's office says no stone should be left unturned, while the Met says offending in London is more ethnically and racially varied than in other parts of the country.

3:29And in cricket, Australia captain Pat Cummings has confirmed he will miss the first Ashes test. Steve Smith will instead lead the hosts against England in Perth at the end of November. Don't forget you can subscribe to the Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

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