Afternoon Briefing Thursday 26th February

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 Thursday the 26th of February. It's reported the assisted dying bill will be scrapped because the government will not be giving it any more time in the House of Lords.

0:45Sky News says the Chief Whip in the Lords, Roy Kennedy, has said no more sitting days will be allocated. That means it's extremely unlikely to pass before the King's speech in May. Dame Esther Anson has been campaigning for the bill. She says dirty tricks are being used. This is absolute, blatant sabotage. This is a handful of peers putting down 1 ,200 amendments, not to scrutinise the bill, which is their job, but to block it. That's what they wanted. A few peers, for their own reasons, have decided that they're going to stop this going through Parliament. 101 ,000 people claimed asylum last year, a 4 % drop on the figure from 2024.

1:31Half of asylum seekers arrived through illegal routes such as small boats. A further 39 % had previously arrived in the UK on a visa or via another arrangement. The Times' Home Affairs correspondent Matt Dathan says migration in general is falling. The number of people coming in on work visas is down again this year. The number of study visas is down. Pretty much every route is down in terms of the visas issued. So come May we might see net migration potentially around the 100 ,000 mark. Families of babies who've died at birth say they feel the NHS is incentivised to record those deaths as stillbirths, even if there are signs of life.

2:09One family said their son was resuscitated for 30 minutes. They were then told he died and his death was declared a stillbirth. Coroners cannot investigate such cases. This is from an interim report into maternity care in England. Lib Dem MP Leila Moran has told Times Radio that failings in care are proven by payouts made between 2019 and 2025. The government paid out a whopping£27 billion in negligence claims. When you look into individual investigations into often what happened, the thing that sings out is that women's voices weren't heard. They just weren't believed. The government could ease the burden of student loans by increasing the threshold at which graduates pay them back or by lowering interest rates.

2:55Graduate Nathan Wyatt says the financial burden is ridiculous. The average debt on these is about£53 ,000. I myself have got£51 ,684 in debt. And the real problem is with these loans is that the amounts are rising even while people are paying. There could be an announcement in Rachel Reeves' spring statement on Tuesday. And you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online. This 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?

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