Afternoon briefing Wednesday 22nd October

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 afternoon briefing on Wednesday 22nd October. A cabinet minister has told Times Radio she's sorry to survivors of the grooming gang scandal for the way a national inquiry is being handled.

0:46Yesterday, the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said it was untrue to suggest the government had looked at broadening the scope of the inquiry to child abuse more generally. But one of several survivors who has quit, Fiona Goddard, is accusing Ms Phillips of calling her a liar and wants her to resign. Speaking to Times Radio, the Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds apologised to Ms Goddard. If that's what she says, and I don't think she is a liar, I'm sorry that that's happened. That shouldn't have happened. The Home Secretary has been clear that we are not diluting the focus of the inquiry.

1:18The voices of those girls has to be listened to. And we will continue to try to build their confidence again in this process. Rachel Reeves is planning to raise£2bn a year in taxes on lawyers, GPs and accountants in the budget. The Chancellor is expected to target limited liability partnerships which exempt workers from employers' national insurance by treating them as self-employed. It's thought 190 ,000 people use them, particularly in the legal profession, but the Times' political editor Stephen Swinford says it could create more problems for the government. Family doctors who are in a lot of these limited liability partnerships will hate it, and the The government has long learned that the last thing you want to do is irritate the doctors.

2:02They are unionised, they are responsible for delivering your target of helping to reduce waiting lists. So that is, I think today, that will be a potential problem for them. They will get a backlash from some of those groups involved. Inflation was unchanged in September, hitting 3.8 % for a third month running. Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says it is below what many analysts expected. The big question now is, is this just a one-off blip or does it suggest that actually, as the Bank of England was suggesting earlier in the year, that inflation has now reached its high for the year and may trend down from now?

2:39It is still nearly double the Bank of England's target of 2%. And I think at this level it means there's probably not going to be any more interest rate cuts this year anyway. September's numbers are particularly significant as they're typically used to calculate by how much benefits will rise in April. An analysis by the Cyber Monitoring Centre estimates the Jaguar Land Rover cyber attack has cost the company, its suppliers and local businesses£2 billion. That makes it the UK's most damaging data security breach. Double-decker trains will run in the UK for the first time. Eurostar says it's buying up to 50 trains to use across its network, including to London's St Pancras.

3:17Most of the UK's railways can't handle double-decker trains because of issues like low bridges. And the Royal Horticultural Society has unveiled the line-up for next year's Chelsea Flower Show. It says the focus will be on healing, with gardens focusing on Parkinson's, gynecological cancers and breathing conditions like asthma. Don't forget you can subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

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