Daily briefing Sunday 7th September

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. Welcome to the Times Daily Briefing on Sunday, the 7th of September. The Defence Secretary John Healy says the government is looking at the potential use of military and non-military sites for temporary accommodation for migrants who have crossed the English Channel on small boats.

0:47Mr Healy has told Times Radio that progress is being made. We've got military planners working with the Home Office now, looking at sites, not just military sites, other sites, for the potential for us to accelerate the closure of the expensive asylum hotels. We're looking really hard at options now that will allow Keir Starmer to honour the promise we've made to close all asylum hotels. There will also be a white paper this autumn setting out proposals to reform the way courts are applying the right to a family life. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has told Times Radio his friendship with Donald Trump will have no bearing on his party's policies.

1:24Polling has shown it's potentially one of the biggest barriers to people voting reform. but Farad says he's being straightforward and the UK needs to be close to the United States. Well, I could just lie. I could do what everybody else does and say, I'll tell you what, we'll tell you what I think you want to hear or I can be honest and be me. He is not going to influence our policy or what we do but we recognise that actually Trump is a friend of this country and that in terms of defence and in many other areas it's a vital relationship. A think tank is suggesting that parents whose children are missing days at school should go on a truancy awareness course.

1:59Annual figures show persistent absence has doubled since 2018, while severe absence has quadrupled over the last decade. Dan Lilly from the Centre for Social Justice has told Times Radio that parents are missing a key point. Some polling we did with this research, we found that almost half of parents think that their children attending nine in ten days, missing a tenth of school. It's reasonable. There's an understanding deficit there. If a child misses a tenth of days, their chance of becoming neat, not in education, employment or training, when they leave school is six times what it is if they have perfect attendance.

2:3416 and 17-year-olds are more patriotic than the wider public, according to research for the Sunday Times. 49 % said they were proud of their national identity, but more than a quarter, 27%, supported abolishing the monarchy. Sophie Stowers from the polling company More In Common has been updating Times Radio. There's been polling and we actually find in our research as well that while young people are a little bit more hesitant about things like enlisting to kind of fight for the country in a conflict and things like that, actually their sense of national pride is just as strong, if not stronger, than many older generations.

3:09And we find that's particularly the case amongst young men and boys, more so than young girls, but it is quite kind of strongly represented across that age bracket as a whole. And you can follow the Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

3:26This 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