Evening briefing Monday 26 January

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 evening briefing for Monday the 26th of January. The Home Secretary has announced plans to overhaul policing in England and Wales in what she's described as the most significant changes in 200 years.

0:45This includes plans to roll out facial recognition technology, slash the number of forces and create a new national police service to tackle major crimes. Shibana Mahmood told MPs she'll restore targets. And set minimum standards that forces must abide by. And where performance falls, we will take action. And in the most extreme examples of a failure of leadership, I will restore the Home Secretary's power to fire a chief constable. Suella Bravman's become the latest high-profile Tory to defect to reform. The former Home Secretary has told a party event it feels like she's come home. She claims Britain is broken and said the Conservatives have no backbone.

1:22We stand at a crossroads. We can either continue down this route of managed decline to weakness and surrender, or we can fix our country, reclaim our power, rediscover our strength. Times Radio's chief political commentator Patrick Maguire says he's surprised Braverman's been accepted given historical opposition to the move from within reform. I'm surprised it's happened because I think there was an awareness for a long time at the top of reform that they couldn't become a retirement home for people associated with the failures of the last Conservative government, particularly on migration. And it's hard to argue that a former Tory Home Secretary puts clear Turquoise water between reform and those failures.

2:11That is one perspective. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has admitted it would have been hard to beat Andy Burnham in the Gordon and Denton by-election after the Mayor of Greater Manchester was blocked from running by Labour. Sir Keir Starmer said fighting an election for the Mayor of Greater Manchester if Burnham stood down would divert attention from other important elections in May. The by-election will be held a month today on the 26th of February. The remains of the final Israeli hostage in Gaza have been recovered. 24-year-old police officer Ran Gavilli was killed fighting Hamas during the October 7th attacks in 2023.

2:42Speaking in December, his parents held out some optimism he'd be returned, possibly alive. The return of all living and deceased hostages fulfills a key condition of the initial phase of President Trump's plan to end the Gaza war. Deaf people are being forced to turn off their hearing aids because of a nationwide shortage of batteries within the NHS GP surgeries and hospital audiology departments are rationing batteries Patients with hearing impairments are restricted to one pack per week and must return to the hospital for more supplies They would normally be handed several packs lasting a few months to save them repeated visits And Nigella Lawson will replace Dame Prue Leith as a judge on the next series of The Great British Bake Off Dame Prue was hired after the series jumped to Channel 4 in 2016 There are more of these stories throughout the evening on Times Radio.

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4:23Thank you.