Evening briefing Tuesday 10th February

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0:36This is the Times Radio evening briefing for Tuesday 10th February. The Prime Minister says he'll never walk away from the job after days of fighting off calls for his resignation. Sir Keir Starmer insists he'll lead Labour into the next general election. Speaking at an event in Hertfordshire, he declared he knows what and who he's fighting for. There are some people in recent days who say the Labour government should have a different fight, a fight with itself. and I say to them, I will never walk away from the mandate I was given to change this country. I will never walk away from the people that I'm charged with fighting for.

1:13And I will never walk away from the country that I love. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's former communications chief, Matthew Doyle, has apologised over his association with a pedophile councillor as he loses the Labour whip in the Lords. He was offered a peerage despite campaigning for Sean Morton, who had been charged and was later convicted of sex offences. The Sunday Times' Whitehall editor, Gabriel Pogrand, has long covered the story. He's been asking questions of Lord Doyle. I asked when the relationship ended. I asked whether it ended upon conviction and why even when he was charged, when Morton was charged, Doyle saw fit to champion him and seek to confer a public office on this man.

1:51And answers there came none. The Labour Party, which has obviously been very contrite about its promotion of Peter Mendelsohn, For weeks and weeks, it's refused to say anything to me. A teenager who killed a 12-year-old in an unprovoked random attack will spend at least 13 years in prison. Leo Ross was stabbed in the stomach while walking home from school. The now 15-year-old killer, who can't be named for legal reasons, also injured three elderly people in the days before the incident, pushing an 82-year-old woman into a river. An NHS monitoring board says hospital staff need to stop discouraging first-cousin marriages despite the risk of birth defects.

2:27In a document, the National Child Mortality Database argues blanket advice is unacceptable as the chance of genetic disorder is only slightly increased. Close relative marriage remains legal, despite calls from MPs to ban the practice. A masked gang posing as police has blown the doors from an armoured van in a robbery similar to cult film The Italian Job. Videos shot by motorists in southern Italy show the men wielding Kalashnikovs before making a dramatic getaway. Two have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and weapons charges. James Imam reports for The Times from Milan. It's a road which is famous for this sort of heist.

3:04I mean, something very, very similar happened about two years ago. The robbers this time, the police I spoke with said there were probably about eight of them, brought traffic to a standstill. They did that in pretty dramatic ways by setting a stolen van on fire. All of a sudden, you see a massive explosion and the doors have been blown off. The roof has been blown off. You can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio Online.

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