Afternoon briefing Wednesday 28th 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 your Times Radio news briefing for the afternoon of Wednesday 28th January. Dame Sarah Mullally's election as Archbishop of Canterbury has been confirmed.

0:45The formalities took place at a service at St Paul's Cathedral. Archbishop Sarah is the first female archbishop and will lead the global Anglican communion. Sir Keir Starmer's landed in Beijing for a visit aimed at strengthening relations with China. despite concerns back home about espionage. He's under pressure not to gloss over human rights abuses. The Times' Stephen Swinford was on the plane with the British delegation and told Times Radio what the Prime Minister told the travelling lobby journalists. He has said that he's going to raise the treatment of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-doboxy campaigner, and a British citizen who has spent five years in detention.

1:22That is one of the big questions of this trip. Will he raise human rights issues? will he raise treatment to the Uyghurs, he signaled very strongly that he will. The Prime Minister has tried to frame the Gorton and Denton by-election next month as a straight fight between reform and Labour over fears of the Green Party splitting the vote on the left. He said there is only one party that can stop reform and that's the Labour Party. Although both reform and the Greens were 13 ,000 votes away from winning last time, there were only 250 votes between them. The number of police officers in England and Wales fell by 1 ,300 in the year up to last September.

1:58They were the equivalent of 145 ,550 full-time officers. 24 of the 43 forces reported an increase in officers, but this was offset by the remaining 19 forces losing staff. The head of the Metropolitan Police has told Times Radio he supports the Home Office's intention to create one national police service, Sir Mark Rowley told us this will actually support local provision. If you waste money on 43 headquarters, 43 technology functions, so you're buying technology 43 times, you're implementing it 43 times, you're maintaining it 43 times, it's a very expensive mess. That expense of having too many organisations and too much, too accidental a design is actually effectively drawing resources away from the local.

2:43The BBC has apologised for introducing its coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day without referring to the murder of Jews. The presenter said the day was for remembering the 6 million people murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago. Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said any attempt to dilute the Holocaust, strip it of its Jewish specificity or compare it to contemporary events is unacceptable. For more stories like this, listen throughout the day to Times Radio.

3:15This 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. Here's a tip for you. There's a podcast out there with fans waiting to be your next customer.

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