Afternoon briefing Thursday 13th November

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 your Times afternoon briefing for Thursday the 13th of November. Cabinet Minister Ed Miliband has told Times Radio he doesn't know why Number 10 appears to have briefed against the Health Secretary.

0:46He was asked what's going on. Search me, gov. I mean, look, I think it's been an unfortunate two days, to put it mildly. but you know these briefings happen, they're bad, I'm sure Keir's absolutely furious about it and I tell you though the thing that sustains you in politics through these turbulence and I have been around a long time and I remember the Blair Brown briefings which were actually far worse than this and what sustains you through this turbulence is mission. Some cabinet ministers have demanded the sacking of Sir Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff Morgan Sweeney. He is accused of initiating briefings from No.

1:2510, accusing Wes Streeting, the health secretary, of plotting to remove Sir Keir Starmer from office. A report into the death and safeguarding failures around Sara Sharif, the 10-year-old girl who was killed by her father and stepmother in Surrey in 2023, has said that racial sensitivity was one reason her abuse wasn't uncovered. They fled to Pakistan, leaving her to be discovered dead in her bedroom. The Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership report says Sara's carers were a lethal combination and with hindsight should never have been entrusted with her care. Reporter Sinead Garvin has more.

1:57Despite saying her carers are ultimately responsible for her death, the report also says that opportunities were lost to recognise the dangers she faced. Professionals didn't ask why she was wearing a hijab at the age of eight, despite no family or friends wearing one, which they later found covered bruises. Neighbours also said they'd been reluctant to report concerns because they feared being branded as racist. A judge also had handed her custody to her father in 2019 despite his history of violence, including arrests for assaults on three women and his own children. The cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover has caused a dip in the country's economic output.

2:37The company didn't make a single car in September, contributing to a 28.6 % decline in the manufacture of vehicles, leading to a 0.1 % decrease in the country's GDP that month. The economy did increase slightly overall in the last three months by 0.1%. Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says it's been low for a while though. So the UK used to bump around sort of 2 % a year, sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit worse. After 2007, 2008, it fell back quite sharply. Maybe not quite half, which is what we're getting at the minute, but it did fall back. And then since then we've had a number of economic shocks.

3:12We've had the pandemic. Brexit came into it as well. So all these things have put the economy on the back foot. And the Times and the Sunday Times have won a series of journalism awards, including Political Journalist of the Year for Stephen Swinford. The newspapers were declared National News Organisation of the Year as well at the Society of Editors Media Freedom Awards. For more stories like this, listen throughout the day to Times Radio.

3:43This 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. Quick question. When was the last time a display ad changed your mind?

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