Morning briefing Monday 2nd 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. This is the Times Radio morning briefing for Monday 2nd February. Lord Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party.

0:41The peer says he does not wish to cause further embarrassment over his links to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Files released by the U.S. Department of Justice appear to show three payments made to him by Epstein, totalling£55 ,000. Mandelson said he had no record or recollection of the payments. The Metropolitan Police is facing calls to reopen the case into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after a second woman reportedly claimed that she'd been sent to the UK by Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with the former prince. Pressure is also mounting on Andrew to testify before the US Congress about his relationship with Epstein.

1:21The PM is leading the call, saying that he owes it to the victims to do so. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing. Donald Trump says he's hopeful of reaching a deal with Iran after previous threats of military action over the country's nuclear programme. Tensions between Tehran and Washington remain extremely high, with the U.S. ramping up its naval presence in the Middle East. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned that any American attack on his country would descend into a regional war. Ross Harrison is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. He's told Times Radio that the Iranian regime is running out of options.

2:00The regime has very limited maneuverability on two fronts. one front is the domestic front so in terms of the incredible loss of life with the protests that have occurred over the last three or four weeks has certainly drained the regime of any legitimacy among at least somewhere between 75 to 80 percent of the iranians people will begin moving in both directions across the rafa border crossing between gaza and egypt from today it's been largely closed since it was seized by israel in may 2024 the move is a key part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The Times has revealed that ministers are paying hospitals three million pounds a month to remove patients from waiting lists.

2:42It's a process known as validation. The result makes it look like the NHS is treating more people than it actually is. Two weeks ago, the prime minister claimed new figures showed waiting lists were going down. Here's the Times policy editor, Ollie Wright. It's a pretty remarkable thing that we've discovered, which is something, the technical name is called validation payments. But basically what it is, it's additional payments to NHS trusts on top of what they do to carry out their sort of normal day-to-day job, which is basically being spent going through waiting lists and getting consultants to see whether people actually need to be on the waiting list, which they're there for.

3:19From today, social media users who tout illegal routes into the UK face up to five years in prison. It's part of the government's crackdown on adverts which tell migrants how to get around immigration checks. There's more on all these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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