Evening Briefing Wednesday 25th February

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 Wednesday 25th February with me, James Kitchen. The House of Commons Speaker has told MPs he spoke to the police before they arrested Peter Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

0:46Lindsay Hoyle was informed the former ambassador planned to leave the UK for the British Virgin Islands, an allegation that Lord Mandelson has dismissed as complete fiction. The Times' policy editor Oliver Wright says the Speaker will be feeling bruised by this latest turn of events. This information came out because the Metropolitan Police appears to have told Peter Mandelson in a slightly garbled way the source of this information that he was potentially a flight whisk. Sounds like the Metropolitan Police said that the Lord Speaker had told them this. The Lord Speaker himself made clear that it wasn't him that did it and as a consequence Lindsay Hoyle has had to come forward and say no it was actually me.

1:23But I think there will be questions for the police as to why they felt a need to tell Mandelson and his lawyers. The BBC says it's fast tracking an investigation after failing to edit out a racial slur from its BAFTA broadcast. A spokesperson has called the error a serious mistake and says the BBC will provide a full response to complainants. It comes after the Tourette's campaigner John Davidson's involuntary outburst was aired on the programme despite it having a two-hour delay. The government said there's no pause in its Chagos Islands deal despite a minister earlier telling MPs the UK was pausing the handover of control of the territory to Mauritius.

2:00The mixed messaging comes after Donald Trump urged Sir Keir Starmer to scrap the agreement last week, despite earlier expressing support for the treaty. The deal would see Britain cede sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius and pay£100 million a year to lease back the Diego Garcia military base. Sir Keir Starmer has accused the Conservatives of scamming the country on student loans. During Prime Minister's questions, the Conservative leader Kimi Badenow warned the current system was at breaking point. She asked whether the PM would cut interest rates on the loans, to which he replied his government was already tackling the cost of living.

2:34We inherited their broken student loans system. We've already introduced maintenance grants to improve the situation, which they scrapped, and we will look at ways to make it fairer. The Tory leader responded by accusing Labour of inaction on the challenges facing young people and prioritising the welfare state instead.

3:06said.

3:19Energy bills are to drop by£10 a month for an average household from April. The regulator Ofgem says the 7 % fall in the price cap follows the government scrapping an energy efficiency scheme at the last budget. The Conservatives claim the drop's been achieved by sleight of hand, shifting green levies onto tax. Head of policy for the charity National Energy Action, Matt Copeland, told Times Radio more needs to be done. 120 quid has to be said to be something that is material for people and it will help people afford their bills. But the reality is that it won't go all the way and we've got millions of households who will still struggle to pay it so on the one hand it is a lot of money and it will make a lot of difference to people on the other hand it won't make enough difference to enough people to to eliminate fuel poverty and that's what we're all trying to do and remember you can follow the times radio news briefing on spotify and you can listen live to times radio online this episode of the times radio news briefing is sponsored by pwc AI is everywhere.

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