Evening briefing Thursday 27th 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. This is the Times Evening Briefing on Thursday the 27th of November. The government's U-turning on its manifesto promise to give workers the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one.

0:44Ministers had faced opposition from businesses and were struggling to get their employment rights bill through the House of Lords as a result. The Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told Times Radio it will mean other workers' rights can be put into law. There is a disagreement here. There's been a debate and a negotiation. We've brought partners together in order to deal with this together in an adult way and we've reached a compromise. Will it please everybody? No, it won't. But when you put this package together, getting this onto the statute book has been long overdue and will make a massive difference to people in Wigan and across the country.

1:16The Trades Union Congress says its priority is getting the rest of the package into law, but a minister has told The Times it's total self-destruction. There were a record number of asylum claims in the year to September, 110 ,051. Home office figures show the number of asylum seekers living in hotels has risen by nearly a quarter since Labour took office to more than 36 ,000. Net migration fell 69 % in the year to June to 204 ,000 people. Dr Peter Walsh from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford says asylum is now costing the government£3 billion a year. Lower migration is not necessarily bad for the economy.

1:53What matters really is the composition. And so what we're seeing now is that asylum claims are continuing to rise. is asylum seekers making up 44 % of net migration. And we know asylum seekers, they're not permitted to work. They do reflect a substantial net fiscal negative for the government. Vladimir Putin says Donald Trump's proposals can be used as the basis for a peace deal with Ukraine. But the Russian president has also labelled Ukraine's government illegitimate and said it's pointless signing anything with it. A seventh person has been arrested in connection with the terrorist attack on the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester last month.

2:32The 31-year-old was arrested today when he flew into Manchester Airport. The US government says it's reviewing all the asylum cases approved under Joe Biden's presidency. That would be at least 197 ,000 people. It's after an Afghan man who worked with the CIA during the war in Afghanistan was arrested on suspicion of shooting two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C. The Pope has warned the world is in a new period of global conflict on his first foreign trip since being elected. We are now experiencing a phase marked by heightened level of conflict on the global level, fuelled by prevailing strategies of economic and military power.

3:13This is enabling what Pope Francis called a third world war fought piecemeal. We must in no way give in to this. the future of humanity is at stake. Leo XIV is currently in Turkey and he'll also travel to Lebanon. And the world's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, has announced plans to build a new£3 billion tower at Canary Wharf in East London. It'll house 12 ,000 staff when completed. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, says it's a vote of confidence in the economy. Don't forget to subscribe to The Times News Briefing on Spotify or listen live to Times Radio online.

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