Afternoon briefing Wednesday 5th November

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 5th November. The Education Secretary has defended a more diverse curriculum with more teaching on climate change and online misinformation in England, insisting to Times Radio it is not indoctrinating children.

0:48This is not about telling young people and children what to think, it's encouraging them to think critically, to be discerning, to challenge what they see, to question what's in front of them. Especially important given how much we know that they're exposed to online, some of it frankly being pushed by people that don't have our country's interests at heart. Bridget Philipson says she will implement most of the year-long review. It also recommends the government work out ways to reduce the length or number of GCC exams children sit and to scrap the English Baccalaureate, which is a way of measuring school attainment introduced under the Conservatives.

1:20The Conservatives say the changes will worsen children's understanding of grammar and maths and narrow their education. A major review suggests the UK is losing 7 % of GDP and businesses are losing£85 billion a year to workplace sickness. Former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield says the country's sliding into an avoidable crisis. The Times columnist Fraser Nelson says it's the first time the effect of sickness has been quantified. Now the Mayfield Review's figure is devastating. £1 million in potential lifetime lost earnings, with the same figure, he says, roughly again for the state. Up to£1 million per person written off.

1:57So to me this makes a huge case for overhauling what we're doing right now and looking at the vast amount of damage we're doing socially and economically to the workforce. The review calls for more support for workers and employers to improve poor health and work to tackle structural challenges facing people with disabilities. M &S's pre-tax profits have fallen 99 % for the first half of this year after a crippling cyber attack in April. Times Radio's business correspondent Dominic O 'Connell says the numbers are a bit better in measures which exclude new costs like a joint venture on Ocado. So if you look at the statutory profit number, in the previous half year, the half year last year, they made statutory profits of£391 million.

2:41This half year,£3.4 million. If you look at the company's preferred measure, which is called adjusted profits, they fell nearly£230 million. So perhaps that£230 million number is a better approximation of what it cost them. A senior law enforcement officer says investigations into alleged grooming gangs were potentially shut down because of human error. The National Crime Agency's Deputy Director, Nigel Leary, was outlining the initial findings of an operation in which the NCA is examining thousands of cases to identify failures in how child sexual exploitation was investigated. A crime survey for England and Wales estimates that 13.6 million adults, three in ten, experienced abuse as a child or teenager, including emotional, physical or sexual abuse or neglect.

3:27Of those who were abused as a child, 15.4 % said they'd experienced domestic abuse in the last year. And Donald Trump says sweeping Democratic victories in the US were down to the longest federal government shutdown in history and the fact he wasn't on the ballot paper. The left-wing Democrat Zohra Mamdani's won New York City's mayoral election, while Democrats won governor races in Virginia and New Jersey. Don't forget to subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

3:58This 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