Afternoon Briefing Tuesday 13th October

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0:19Welcome to the Times Radio afternoon briefing on Tuesday the 13th of October. The Defence Readiness Minister has described a proposal by Reform UK to use lethal force against small boats crossing the English Channel as illegal and disgusting. Reform's Robert Jenrick says the party would deploy the Royal Marines to the Channel and if they needed to use lethal force, they would be able to do so. Minister Luke Pollard has been speaking two times radio. All our armed forces have high values. We train high values, the very best of British values, into all our armed forces. A core tenant of that is no one in the UK armed forces is allowed to accept an illegal order.

1:01They are certainly not allowed to shoot unarmed civilians in a maritime environment. And I think that's pretty obvious for everyone. Reform's Zia Youssef has doubled down on the comments made by Robert Jenrick. If we know that there is a terrorist, if we know there is a people smuggler who could be armed, they need to be ready to react. And in those circumstances, yes, absolutely, they will be, if necessary, authorised to use lethal force against those people. Meanwhile, Reform UK has fallen to third place behind Labour and the Conservatives for the first time since the general election. The YouGov survey for The Times puts Nigel Farage's party on 21%, with the Tories on 23 % and Labour on 24%.

1:41The Times' political editor Stephen Swinford says it's interesting, but far from conclusive. Everything is within the margin for error, right? It's a few points at best. So that's the question. Does this become part of a trend now? What is clear is that reform is no longer polling at 30, around there as it once was. It's now kind of in the low 20s. And that is kind of pretty consistent in the YouGov polls that we're seeing. So what doesn't change, though, is regardless you stand back, reform is still a big electoral force. There are millions of people every day that are Nigel Farage voters. They believe in the party and they believe in what he's doing.

2:16And that is a problem for Kevin Bader. The International Monetary Fund says the UK economy will grow faster than expected this year by 1.3 percent. But it's also warning the government against a rise in public spending. It means, however, that Britain could have the second fastest growing economy in the G7 after Germany. But Linda Yu, an economist at the University of Oxford, says the IMF has some bad news as well. Inflation, which is something that would affect most people, I think most immediately, is going to be stuck at 3.3 % and won't return to the 2 % target of the Bank of England until the end of 2027.

2:53At worst news, unemployment, which is hovering just under 5%, is expected to rise to 5.3%. And the use of screens in classrooms is causing pupils to develop language and eyesight problems. That's according to 150 leading clinicians who've written to the Education Secretary. They have told Lucy Powell there is a crisis unfolding, causing physical and developmental issues. Daisy Christodoulou is a former English teacher and head of assessment at a network of academy schools. I think reading on screen is very, very different from reading on paper, not just for young children actually, but for adults.

3:29We get distracted more on screen, we skim and scan more. It might be appropriate in certain contexts in the workplace, but I don't think it's something that you want to have as just your sole default model of reading. You can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online. With almost half a million customers and over a trillion dollars of secure payments, Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify bill pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit bill.com slash proven for a special offer.