Afternoon Briefing Thursday 21st 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 Afternoon Briefing on Thursday, the 21st of August. The number of migrants staying in hotels rose by 8 % in the first year of the Labour government.

0:43It was just over 32 ,000 at the end of June. A little over 111 ,000 people applied for asylum in the UK in the same period. Migrants who crossed the English Channel accounted for 39 % of the total. Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, has this suggestion for ministers. What they need to do is urgently adopt the Conservatives' bill we presented in Parliament to make sure that every person illegally arriving in the UK and every foreign criminal gets removed. If we do that, there will be no reason to come here in the first place and the crossings will end. Exactly that approach worked in Australia 12 or 13 years ago.

1:20It's worked in the United States in the last six months and Labour should urgently back our plans to do that here. Thousands of Palestinians have been told to leave their homes near Gaza City after Israel called up 60 ,000 reservists for a new ground offensive. The first evacuation orders in almost two months have been issued for Jabalaya, a densely packed refugee camp in northern Gaza. Israeli jets have dropped leaflets advising residents to move south. There are deep concerns about further deaths and hunger among the Palestinian civilian population. But Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Trump, has told Times Radio he supports the new Israeli offensive.

1:59Two plus years ago, I saw the unedited footage of the Hamas body cam, what was actually done to those civilians. I said, God bless Israel, Netanyahu and the IDF. They must kill every single person responsible for those massacres and salt the earth above their graves. Israel will never be safe until those responsible for October the 7th are dealt final and eternal justice. Major retailers are warning Chancellor Rachel Reeves that the core Labour manifesto pledge to improve living standards will be at risk if she raises taxes in the autumn budget. Bosses from Tesco, Sainsbury's John Lewis and Boots say food price inflation could hit 6 % this year.

2:44Helen Dickinson is CEO of the British Retail Consortium. She's told Times Radio that some stores are close to being unviable. Retail profit margins are probably about half what they were about 10 years ago. So somewhere between three and six P in the pound. So actually, it's not like there is anywhere particularly to go because any profit below that, then businesses start to become unviable. They don't have the backing and the support of their shareholders. And you can follow the Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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