Daily Briefing Saturday 8th 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. Hello, this is your Times Daily Briefing for Saturday 8th November with me, James Kitchen. The Chancellor's to announce a stealth tax raid on retirement savings reducing take-home pay and cutting the size of pension pots The Times reveals Rachel Reeves will use the budget to limit a tax break on pension contributions to raise up to£2 billion a year The Chancellor's looking to cap the amount that can be sacrificed without incurring national insurance payments at£2 ,000 Speaking to Times Radio, the former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb warned the move could backfire I guess the people who might be slightly more discouraged, people on that slightly higher earnings, who obviously are putting in£2 ,000 and might start to think, well, do I save in another way?

1:15It does just make pension saving less attractive. And, you know, it's very hard to reconcile this with the manifesto about not raising taxes on working people, because clearly some people will have a cut in their take-home pay as a result of this. The Justice Secretary says he's determined to stop wrongful prison releases after a man mistakenly freed last month was re-arrested. Officers were seen holding up pictures to 24-year-old Algerian sex offender Brahim Kudu Sharif's face as they took him into custody in Finsbury Park in London yesterday. Meanwhile, it's being reported at least four prisoners released in error are still at large.

1:49They rank among 262 inmates in England and Wales mistakenly released in the year to March, up from 115 the previous year. David Spencer is head of crime and justice at the think tank Policy Exchange. He told Times Radio David Lammy needs to step up. These sorts of jobs require really tough political bruisers who are going to do everything necessary to fight for the restoration of control and order in our prisons. And I fear that what we have at the moment in some of these positions are people that are looking for applause from their friends in the do-gooder prison reform lobby rather than people who are going to retain control and order in our prisons because that is the sort of leader that we need there right now.

2:28It comes as some Labour MPs are understood to be plotting to remove Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. The iPaper reports unease among backbenchers about the party's collapsing poll ratings and a potential manifesto-breaching income tax rise at the budget. The party's newest intake of MPs are believed to be involved in discussions about a leadership challenge. Meanwhile, the Tories want the PM to face an ethics inquiry over the appointment of the independent football regulator chair. They're demanding to know whether Sakhir Starmer risked a conflict of interest appointing the Labour donor David Kogan.

3:02And a White House official says Hungary won't be punished for purchasing Russian energy for another year. Fires from Moscow's two biggest oil companies had been threatened with secondary US sanctions as part of Donald Trump's attempts to end the war in Ukraine. These appear to have stalled after a planned summit with Vladimir Putin in Budapest was cancelled.

3:28The sanctions that were indicated could have really plunged the Hungarian economy, which is already struggling and stagnant with a significant cost of living crisis, into a spiral that would have made sure that Orban would not have a chance of winning next year's election. I think that might have been the key consideration for Trump because he values Orban not only as a model for the sort of liberal policies he wants to pursue in the United States, but also as a useful disruptor. And you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify, and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

4:11This 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. Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one, for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization?

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