Evening briefing Thursday 8th 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. Welcome to the Times Evening Briefing on Thursday 8th January. The government's expected to do a U-turn over planned rises to business rates for pubs.

0:43It follows a backlash from the industry. More than 1 ,000 pubs have banned Labour MPs from their premises. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is now pledging to give extra financial support to pubs on the brink of closure. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has given her reaction. Over Christmas, Labour MPs were banned from every single pub they tried to get into. They've come back and realised that nobody likes them, so now they're pushing for a U-turn. We told them this when Rachel Rees put out that budget. I told her on that day that she was not doing right by pubs. We have a much better plan, and that is to slash business rates for all of the high street, not just pubs.

1:17The Met Office has upgraded its wind warning for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly from amber to red. It says Storm Goretti will bring dangerous stormy winds this evening. Forecasters say there's a danger to life. Jo Wheeler, a meteorologist at Square Raindrop, says a red warning is very rare. Probably once a year, if that. In fact, over the last couple of years, I've only seen two. And after many, many years doing meteorology, virtually none. So this is big, big news. Winds over parts of Cornwall could reach 80 to 90 miles per hour, which are more than capable of causing some devastating damage.

1:53Elsewhere, there could be up to eight inches of snow over parts of Wales and the Midlands. The Home Secretary says abandoning vetting checks on officers was a dereliction of the Met police's duty to keep London safe. A diversity panel let people join the force despite earlier safety rejections. 25 went on to commit serious crimes including rape. Roy Ram is a former commander at New Scotland Yard. Can you imagine if you're a decent, honest police officer and a new guy comes to your station or a new young woman comes to your station and you do not know now whether they have been a convicted criminal?

2:27Who are you working alongside? Chabana Mahmood is demanding an inspection into what went wrong. Hospitals are adapting temporary spaces with plugs and call bells as corridor care becomes more common. There are warnings about potential hazards, including more difficult monitoring, infection control and potentially a lack of oxygen. Dr Ian Higginson is president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. We can't look after our patients properly from either a human point of view or from a clinical point of view. There's no privacy, there's no dignity, we can't get at them to do what we need to, we can't examine them properly.

2:59So it should be really obvious that we cannot deliver proper care in corridors. The government says it's working with NHS Trust to end corridor care. And you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online. This 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.

3:44PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk.

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