Afternoon briefing Tuesday 27th January

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 27th January. The government has announced it'll cap ground rents at£250 a year for leaseholders.

0:44The Housing Secretary, Steve Reeds, told Times Radio the government will not be offsetting that for freeholders. There won't be compensation. We were very clear that we were going to bring this in. It's an unproductive investment. You get investments where you put your big corporation or a sovereign wealth fund will invest in something which is going to create jobs and pay people wages. is ground rent investments don't do anything of the sort. It really is just making leaseholders pay for pretty much nothing. It's not fair and we're going to get rid of it. It's thought the Prime Minister has sided with his former deputy Angela Rayner over the Chancellor Rachel Reeves in order to stave off a rebellion of Labour backbenchers.

1:22Steve Reid has also told Times Radio the decision to block Andy Burnham from standing in a by-election is done and dusted. That's despite senior Labour figures privately believing that'll mean they finish third in Gorton and Denton behind Reform UK and the Green Party. Fifty backbenchers have signed a letter criticising the Prime Minister's leadership. Donald Trump is preparing to withdraw immigration agents and their controversial commander from Minneapolis. Greg Bovino has been criticised for the confrontational tactics used in the city where agents have shot dead two American citizens. Sir Keir Starmer is due to fly to China later.

1:55He'll be the first British Prime Minister to visit Beijing since Theresa May eight years ago. The Times' China correspondent Richard Spencer doesn't think there's a clear strategy behind the trip, though. It's not quite clear to a lot of people what exactly Starmer hopes to achieve by this trip, other than looking more statesmanly on the world's state. What he hopes to get out of it, it's another matter. I mean, he's talking about trade. You know, there's a big trade imbalance in China's favour. There's no sign that there's much we can do to reverse that, though I think that's what he wants to do.

2:27Emergency services say they've pulled dozens of people from cars in flooding in the south-east of England because of Storm Chandra. Roads have been closed and trains, planes and ferries have been cancelled. Two-thirds of adults in England were classed as overweight or obese in 2024, according to the latest NHS data. It shows men were more likely to be an unhealthy weight than women. And the chair of the charity behind Holocaust Memorial Day has told Times Radio rising anti-Semitism since the start of the war in Gaza has clearly led to fewer schools marking it. Former Conservative Chancellor and Home Secretary Sir Sajid Javid says there's been a marked decline since October 7, 2023.

3:03I'm sure that your present-day conflicts have had an impact. And sadly, if I look at the... I was just looking at the stats that we have at our charity on the number of schools that mark Holocaust Memorial Day. It really saddened me to learn that actually it's down in the last two years by something like 60%, the number of schools in England, secondary schools in England. Today, on the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the King and Queen will host a reception at Buckingham Palace to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Landmarks will be lit up in purple this evening. Don't forget to subscribe to the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio Online.

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