Afternoon Briefing Tuesday 24th March

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 Tuesday the 24th of March. A price cap is to be placed on pet prescriptions.

0:41The competition watchdog says pet owners will pay a maximum of£21 for their first prescription and£12.50 for any other medicines. Vets will also have to tell customers about savings they could make by buying medicines online. Dominic O 'Connell, Times Radio's business correspondent, says some of the findings of a consultation are eye-opening. Between 2016 and 2023, average prices at vets grew by 63%. And the average first year treatment expenses, so how much you paid on a pet in the first year of ownership, went up by 53%. Over that time, inflation was only 32%, so about double inflation. And at the five big chains, there were five big chains of veterinary practices that account for about 60 % of all the vets in the UK, prices were higher by nearly 20 % than at independence.

1:30Rachel Reeves will announce plans later to guard against unfair energy price rises. Oil prices have surged because of the conflict in the Middle East. Claire Coutinho, the Tories' Shadow Energy Secretary, has told Times Radio the UK could be more self-sufficient by drilling more in the North Sea. Ed Miliband has two fields in particular, Jack Dorne Rosebank, which have been sat on his desk. I signed off one of them when I was in government. He's just been sat on it, mothballing it. And they could be up and running in time for Christmas. So in terms of what we could do now, we could absolutely be making a difference to our domestic gas supply.

2:05That means less money going abroad. And it's also gas which is lower emissions. The Times has been told that Steve Whitcoff, Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, has travelled to Pakistan, which has offered to host in-person talks with Iran. So far, though, there's no sign of any meaningful Iranian figure joining him there. Trump says talks with Tehran so far have been very good. but the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament says talks have not taken place either directly or indirectly. The journalist Aria Kovla, based in Jerusalem, says it's difficult to see how negotiations can succeed when the two sides are so far apart.

2:38Trump's saying that Iran's already agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, stop all nuclear enrichment, give Trump all of their uranium to hold onto and look after. On the other side, Iran is saying we demand financial compensation of billions from the US for all the stuff they've done to us, all the bombing. We want the US to leave all of its Gulf bases. We demand that from now on every ship that passes the Strait of Humus pays us a toll. And I've heard that's actually beginning to happen. A couple of ships passed through and paid a couple of million dollars each. Meanwhile, Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history at the University of St.

3:09Andrews, has told Times Radio the new supreme leader of Iran, Majtaba Hammanei, could be unconscious. I'm inclined to think he's in a coma myself. He may not be dead, but he's certainly not functioning as normal. even if he'd been injured in the way that they say it would have been possible to provide some sort of photo or a film or something, you know, of him rallying the troops, shall we say. But there's been no sight or sound of him at all. And so either he's extremely badly injured and therefore they can't have a picture of him. But I suspect it's actually probably worse than that. And you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

3:44This 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? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk

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