Morning briefing Friday 11th September

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

0:35This is Times Radio's morning briefing on Friday, the 11th of September. Local Government Secretary Angela Rayner has defended giving regional mayors the power to introduce a tourist tax, insisting that it will strengthen local economies. All 10 Labour metro mayors pledge to cap the levy at 5 % when they introduce it, despite warnings from hospitality leaders that it will damage trade, as family staycations will also be included in the new tourist tax expected as early as 2028. Maeve Schaefer is from the think tank IPPR North and told us that regions across the country will benefit from this levy.

1:10It's something that we really welcome because it means that mayors can now have the option to raise money and then, this is the key point here, choose how to spend it. They know very well what is going to make their, you know, city, their region thrive. They can decide to spend it on transport, they could decide to spend it on street cleaning or on bringing more visitors. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has ordered police to use powers to ban masks at protests, saying that men in black balaclavas purposely communicate a fear factor and malign intent. It follows anti-migrant protests led by Patriot Platform's Daniel Thomas, which brought Dover to a standstill last weekend.

1:51Police chiefs admitted that they missed using early intelligence and, in future, promised enhanced coordination, facial recognition technology use and potential arrests ahead of planned demonstrations this weekend. Household energy bills could rise by£100 by 2030 because of severe delays in upgrading Britain's power grid. That's according to the National Audit Office. A scathing report warns that 50 out of 56 essential grid projects are running late, forcing consumers to pay up to nearly£8 billion a year in wasted wind charges to keep the lights on. Energy chief Greg Jackson warned that without urgent reform, daily waste payments will become just normal practice.

2:32Energy analyst and partner at energy consulting firm Beringa, Ellen Fraser, told us that this is an infrastructure challenge. The networks that have got to be in place to connect all of that up and then the demand centres, so typically cities, where actually our demand profiles are changing quite quickly with electric vehicles, with heat pumps etc. Trying to do all of that in a synchronised way where investing cost effectively is actually really, really hard. And that's not to say it's impossible, that's not getting anybody off the hook, but it's quite a difficult thing to do. Former Conservative campaign chief Anthony Lee and his wife, former candidate Laura Saunders, have admitted cheating at gambling over the 2024 general election date.

3:14Southwark Crown Court heard Lee used insider knowledge to place wages and pass details to Saunders before Rishi Sunak's public announcement. Both will be sentenced next month. There's more on these stories and others throughout the day on Times Radio.

3:40This 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. PwC turns innovation into implementation, so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Hi, I'm Jack Ravici-Kramer, host of The Best One Yet.

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