Evening briefing Tuesday 14th 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 Hello, this is your Times Radio Evening Briefing for Tuesday the 14th of April with me, James Kitchen. New forecasts reveal Britain will sustain the largest hit to growth from the Middle East war and suffer the joint highest inflation in the G7.

0:47The International Monetary Fund warned stagflation is set to plague the UK economy yet again. The IMF's research director, Pierre Olivier Gonachat, said the Iran conflict threatened to throw the world economy off course. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz and serious damage to critical energy facilities in the Middle East, raised the prospect of a major energy crisis should a durable solution not be found soon. Oil and gas prices have increased sharply, and so have the prices of diesel and jet fuel, fertilizer, aluminum and helium. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has vowed to keep inflation and interest rates in line.

1:27It comes as Donald Trump has again attacked Britain over its energy policies. In a fresh post on Truth Social, the U.S. president called on the U.K. to drill baby drill in the North Sea, saying Aberdeen should be booming. U.S. Secretary of State says Lebanon needs a permanent end to Hezbollah's influence. Marco Rubio is hosting Israeli and Lebanese diplomats in Washington for ceasefire talks, the first direct negotiation since 1993. The Lebanese MP Najat Saliba told Times Radio Hezbollah is only taking orders from Iran. The same way we count on the United States to help in putting some pressure on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territory, we also count on countries that are friends with Lebanon and also that have leverage over Iran to push Iran to stop fueling the proxies that it has.

2:22Meanwhile, it's reported talks between Washington and Tehran could resume as early as this week as part of efforts to end the Iran conflict. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are being accused of complacency on defence by the author of the government's own review. In a speech later, the former NATO chief Lord Robertson will warn the UK is underprepared and not safe, adding Britain's national security is in peril. Funding for the defence investment plan appears to be holding up its release. The Times' defence editor Larissa Brown says there's real concern the government isn't taking global threats seriously enough.

2:57There isn't yet an announcement by Starmer that he will increase defence spending, despite the fact that I'm told that the military chiefs and even ministers believe that he should be doing this. And that means that you've got this terrible situation in the MOD for the military chiefs, where they're looking at a 28 billion black hole in the department over the next four years. Bridget Phillipson's ordered the Equality Regulator to tone down its guidance over single-sex spaces and make it more inclusive before she presents it to Parliament. The Women and Equalities Minister hasn't yet published the long-delayed new Code of Practice.

3:34A Supreme Court ruling in April last year defined gender as relating to biological sex. And remember, you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

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