Afternoon briefing Wednesday 6th 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. This is the Times afternoon briefing on Wednesday 6th August. Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff has met Vladimir Putin in Moscow for last-minute talks to get a ceasefire in Ukraine.

0:45Friday is the president's deadline for progress on talks, otherwise he's threatened sanctions and tariffs. The former British ambassador to Ukraine, Lee Turner, is pessimistic though. Last time that the US had some kind of peace deal on offer, it basically gave Russia everything it wanted. Absolute concessions by Ukraine, nothing from Russia. and all of this really puts the future of world peace on the table and would store up immense problems for the future for all of us. An independent economic think tank believes Rachel Reeves will have to fill a£50 billion black hole in the public finances this autumn.

1:24The National Institute of Economic and Social Research says U-turns and weak growth will force the Chancellor either to break her spending rules or her manifesto promise on tax. Deputy Director Stephen Millard spoke to Times Radio. The problem is that the kind of small-scale taxes that you can tinker with, she can leave the income tax thresholds unchanged, she can change pension tax allowances, she can fiddle with capital gains tax. All of these things give her a little bit of money. But if she's going to get up to£50 billion, then one of the big taxes undoubtedly will have to be raised. The government has always said the Chancellor's spending rules are ironclad.

2:04migrants who arrive across the channel on small boats will be able to use human rights law to frustrate attempts to deport them under the government's new returns deal with France. The Times' politics newsletter editor Stefan Boscher explains. The terms of the treaty is slightly unclear. It says that anyone who's wrapped up in a legal case or any sort of injunction or anything that has to do with human rights law won't be eligible to be sent back to France. So there are claims this morning that people who file bogus asylum claims to try to stay here, won't be able to be sent back to France. The government insists the legal claims are unlikely to be successful.

2:40Activity in the construction sector dropped at the fastest rate for five years in July. The S &P Global Survey suggests weaker demands saw work decrease across the commercial, the residential and the civil engineering sectors. Research suggests 9 % of businesses have had staff quit after being told to stop working from home. The British Chambers of Commerce spoke to 583 businesses in April and May. And on the 80th anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb, the head of the team behind the Doomsday Clock is warning the world is at a reckoning point on nuclear weapons. We're about to go in the wrong direction.

3:16And that's something that I think the public needs to be waking up to. And maybe this anniversary is a way to reintroduce people to this threat that didn't go away at the end of the Cold War and now in fact has become more complex and in many ways worse. That's Alexandra Bell, CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. She's told the Times' World in 10 podcast the world could see a new, widened nuclear arms race. Events have been held in Japan to remember the 140 ,000 people killed by the bomb at Hiroshima. Don't forget to subscribe to the Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

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