Afternoon briefing Tuesday 19th May

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 Radio afternoon briefing on Tuesday the 19th of May. The energy price cap is forecast to go up by 13 % in July.

0:43Normal Insights prediction is equivalent to£209 a year for the typical household. Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says that would be a big one-off jump. This is probably quite accurate because the observation window, where they look at wholesale prices and work out what's going to happen to retail prices, it closed yesterday. So these are absolutely the latest numbers. And it's mostly down to rising wholesale prices, particularly the rising price of gas because of the conflict in the Gulf. We use gas to generate electricity, not as much as it used to, but still generating some electricity.

1:15And, of course, for home heating. The official cap will be announced next Wednesday. Unemployment rose to 5 % in the three months to March, while vacancies fell to their lowest for five years. Average earnings growth also fell to 3.4%, although that was 0.3 percentage points above inflation. The think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds in work has fallen nearly as much as in Covid or in the financial crash. Helen Miller, director of the IFS, told Times Radio there's a number of reasons behind that. One thing that's been talked about a lot is rising youth minimum wages.

1:50We can't rule out that it's that, but it doesn't look like it's that on its own. There's also been a rise in mental health problems for young people. More of them are on the kind of benefits you get when you can't work because you're too unwell. So that's part of it. AI may be playing a role or it's too early to really be able to use the data to see that. So I think there are multiple factors going on. A third parliamentary private secretary to West Streeting has confirmed he's resigned from government. Steve Race's announcement means a dozen ministers or aides have now left over Zakir Starmer's leadership.

2:21Vladimir Putin is due to arrive in China for talks with Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader has described Russia's president as his old friend days after hosting Donald Trump. But Michael Sheridan, the former Sunday Times Far East correspondent who's written books on Xi's China, says the relationship is increasingly imbalanced. China has not launched a war. China is prospering economically. Its exports are conquering the world. Right now, nobody is buying a lot of Russian goods and a lot of countries aren't even buying Russian oil and gas. So the fear in Moscow and among Russian nationalists is that they will end up being subordinated to China.

3:01Standard Chartered says it will cut 7 ,800 back-office staff in its rollout of AI. The CEO, Bill Winters, says it's replacing what he calls lower-value human capital. And the Scotland manager, Steve Clarke, has named his 26-man squad for this summer's World Cup. 43-year-old goalkeeper Craig Gordon is included, as is Southampton striker Ross Stewart and 19-year-old Finlay Curtis. They're alongside expected names like Scott McTominay, Andy Robertson and John McGinn. Don't forget, you can subscribe to the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

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4:57All rights reserved. Copyright 2026. McDonald's at the FIFA World Cup 2026.