Afternoon Briefing Wednesday 20th August

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 Afternoon Briefing on Wednesday the 20th of August. Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, has told Times Radio that local authorities controlled by his party will be making legal challenges against migrant hotels.

0:48All the reform councils will be pursuing this. And I think not only reform councils, I think other councils up and down the country will be pursuing this. This is a major, major legal precedent that has been set. It follows the granting of an injunction to a council in Essex, meaning migrants must leave the Bell Hotel in Epping by September 12. It was one on planning laws following weeks of protests. Inflation has risen to its highest level in a year and a half. The Consumer Prices Index rose to 3.8 % in July, up from 3.6 % in June. It's the highest since January 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

1:28Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says there are predictions it could rise quite a lot more. The question now is how high will it go? Some people think it will go to 4%, some think perhaps 5 % by the end of the year. And it is a little bit of a headache for Rachel Reeves. And the gilts market, which is sort of hanging over her head, is very sensitive to inflation. So we might see what happens to gilt prices this morning. Rachel Reeves is said to be drawing up plans to hit the owners of high value properties with capital gains tax when they sell their homes. It's part of an attempt to bridge a£40 billion hole in the public finances.

2:05For higher rate taxpayers, a threshold of£1.5 million would hit around 120 ,000 homeowners with tax bills of just under£200 ,000. Housing expert Henry Pryor has told Times Radio it's extremely unlikely to happen. It will never come to pass because politically it would be impossible for them to enact it. However, it's based on a very sensible, pragmatic premise, which is that an awful lot of people earn an awful lot or have earned an awful lot of money just by sitting in their homes. But if you were to bring something like this in, not only would you have people with pitchforks in Sloan Square, you would also have a massive impact on the fluidity of the market.

2:48And Time to Say Goodbye, sung by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli, is the most popular song at British funerals, according to a survey. Frank Sinatra's My Way, Tina Turner's The Best and Westlife's She Raised Me Up are also popular choices. Jess May, a funeral celebrant, has been telling Times Radio about the requests she has been getting. I had a woman who had wall-to-wall Rolling Stones. She was a massive Mick Jagger fan. Harry Potter's theme tune, David Bowie. I had a guy that ran a music shop and he had Starman and then he had everything. Was David Bowie right from the beginning to the end?

3:22I've had Bob Marley, One Love, really popular, Blackbird from The Beatles. And you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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