Afternoon briefing Wednesday 27th May

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 your Times Radio news briefing for the afternoon of Wednesday the 27th of May. Sir Tony Blair has told Times Radio that the current government has no clear projects and has to face the consequences of an AI revolution.

0:48The former Prime Minister says his party has put taxes too high on working people and should abandon policies that aren't saving them money. He was asked if he was advising the government to rip up Ed Miliband's net zero targets. Yes, I am, because I'll tell you exactly why. And it's not that I'm against renewable energy, clean energy, and it's not that I'm a climate denier. It's coming to terms with this reality. The three biggest emitters in the world today are China, America and India. Together, they account for just over 50 % of global emissions. All of them are pursuing cheap energy and electrification.

1:25Sir Tony also criticised the increase in the minimum wage. Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Dan Tomlinson told Times Radio the government is dealing with current issues that people care about. If we look at the jobs market, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, there weren't really any people on zero-hour contracts. Now there are hundreds of thousands of people struggling with that uncertainty. So yes, we are passing our employment rights legislation to give people more certainty in work. The cap on the cost of energy per unit will increase from July, increasing the average monthly bill by about£18 a month or£220 across the year.

2:00That's the average for a typical home that uses gas and electricity, but will vary according to house size and usage. Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says the big question is what will happen in October when a new price cap will be in place. People's energy usage goes up in the winter, obviously, and it all depends really on what happens in the Strait of Hormuz. if liquefied natural gas shipments from Qatar continue to be blocked, then wholesale gas prices will probably still rise. Even if the Strait of Hormuz is open, though, most energy experts do not think wholesale gas prices are going to fall quickly, which means we're not likely to see a big fall or any fall, really, in the energy price cap.

2:39The number of babies born last year was the lowest since 1977 at just under 585 ,400 in England and Wales. The latest figures from the ONS say that the average father of a newborn is aged 34 and the average mother is 31.1, which have both gone up slightly since the year before. Data editor for The Times and The Sunday Times, Tom Calver, explained what else the statistics show. The number of live births where either parent was born outside the UK has risen again to 40.2%. So it's four in ten of every baby is born to at least one parent that was born outside of Britain. And I think this is a really fascinating consequence of a lot of the migration that we've had over the past few years.

3:23In football, West Ham has announced it will stick with Nuno Espirito Santo as head coach. They're being relegated to the championship and say he is highly motivated for the challenge of guiding the team back to the top flight. For more stories like this, listen throughout the day to Times Radio.

3:47Radio 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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