Evening briefing Monday 20th April

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 Times Radio's evening briefing on Monday the 20th of April. Sir Keir Starmer says it's staggering he wasn't told the Foreign Office had been advised not to give Lord Mandelson clearance to become US ambassador.

0:47The department's most senior civil servant, Ollie Robbins, was effectively sacked last week. After it emerged, he continued with the appointment. The Prime Minister's told the Commons he can't see why he wasn't told. There is no law that stops civil servants sensibly flagging UK SV recommendations while protecting detailed, sensitive vetting information to allow ministers to make judgments on appointments or on explaining matters to Parliament. We're expecting to hear from Sir Olly tomorrow as to why he didn't or couldn't tell the PM. Leader of the Conservatives, Kemi Badenoch, accused Sir Keir Starmer of throwing his colleagues under the bus, saying he failed to ask questions.

1:27Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Labour's Dame Emily Thornberry isn't impressed either. I'm afraid to say, doesn't this look like, for certain members of the Prime Minister's team, getting Peter Mandelson the job was a priority that overrode everything else and that security considerations were very much second order. That's been rejected by the Prime Minister. He's again admitted the appointment was the wrong call. In other news, Iran's thought to be deciding whether or not it'll take part in fresh peace talks with the US. The ceasefire's due to end on Wednesday, but Tehran's accused America of breaking it by seizing a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

2:05Sunday Times defence columnist Mark Urban says the regime's been split on what to do next. There are clearly voices in Iran that have said over the past 24 hours, right, that's it now, we're not coming back, there will be no talks. And yet an American delegation is being readied, presumably on the basis of some kind of reassurance from Pakistan that is doing the mediating, that there'll be someone there for them to talk to. Mobile phone bans in England's schools could be enforced by law. New plans have been announced by the government. It's currently just guidance which head teachers are able to ignore if they disagree.

2:42Officials in Japan are warning of an increased risk of a huge earthquake within the next week after a powerful 7.7 magnitude tremor struck off the northeast coast. Thousands were told to evacuate coastal areas and tsunami warnings were issued, although the largest waves only reached around 80 centimetres. A parliamentary employee has been arrested under the Computer Misuse Act. Common speaker St Lindsay Hoyle says a police investigation is ongoing. And there's a warning red squirrels could become extinct in mainland England by the middle of the century without large-scale culls of grey squirrels.

3:18The native species has seen its habitat shrink by 95 % since greys were introduced in the 19th century. There's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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