Afternoon Briefing Tuesday 1st September

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 for Tuesday 1st September. England and Wales could run out of prison spaces next year after Andy Burnham cut the number of prisoners who qualify for early release.

0:46Analysis by the Times looking at Ministry of Justice figures shows that by next May there could be as few as 1 ,200 prison cells available. In the most extreme scenario, there could be a shortfall of 600. The government says it's investing£110 million in creating new spaces. The Justice Secretary, Alex Norris, has told Times Radio how many new places he's aiming for. Overall, 14 ,000, adding entire new prisons, which I think people would expect us to do, but that takes time. But as I say, with what we're announcing today in the hundreds of spaces that come online through converting shared use areas, offices and whatnot, so that's the type of scale we're talking about.

1:26The Chancellor, John Healy, is told The Times he will set out how Britain will raise defence spending in a review next year. He says the UK will meet the NATO commitment to spend 3.5 % of GDP by 2035. Economist Paul Johnson has been going through the figures. To get to three and a half percent you're looking at something in the order of 25 or 30 billion pounds so that is a a really substantial amount of money and the point is that is only credible if you do something really quite significant over this parliament and that might be getting to close to three percent of national income by the end of this parliament in 2029 and that costs north of 15 billion.

2:05Kemi Baden-Lock has reshuffled her top team, putting the Tories on a wall footing in case of an early general election. The Conservative leader has sacked Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride and Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel. Andrew Griffith, who was Shadow Business Secretary, is now Shadow Chancellor. Tom Tugendhat is covering the Foreign Affairs Brief. The former Cabinet Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has told Times Radio the changes are about policy development. Along with Andrew Griffith, there's also been set up an economic council with Richard Fuller and Claire Cortino. And I think we're going to see interesting economic policy development.

2:43And the appointment of Tom Tugendhat is similar, that he's very focused and has been for a long time on the relationship with China. He's extremely knowledgeable about foreign affairs. And so I think this is very much putting people in place who could hold those jobs in government. And a former California gang leader has been found guilty of orchestrating the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in 1996. Dwayne Davis, also known as KFD, could now be sentenced to life in prison. William Shaw is an expert on the Los Angeles rap scene and says the conviction could be unsafe. We haven't actually ever proved who pulled the trigger.

3:21So he's getting a first degree murder conviction from something that there are no witnesses apart from himself left because two of the people who were in the car at the time have died subsequently, one of them very soon after Tupac's death. So I'm sure there's grounds for appeal. 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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4:53Thank you.