Morning briefing Thursday 16th October

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 Morning Briefing for Thursday 16th October. The shadow justice minister has criticised the Labour government's handling of the collapsed China espionage prosecution, calling it appalling and unacceptable.

0:47The government last night published witness statements submitted in the case against two men accused of spying on MPs for China. One statement from the Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Collins said the alleged activities of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry were prejudicial to the safety of the UK. Speaking to Times Radio, Kieran Mullen accused the Prime Minister of withholding key evidence from prosecutors. We're told a single civil servant across all of the state of government, the secret service agencies, all these people that would be involved in this, we're told that a single person took the decision on what to put in this statement and not to give any further information, which beggars belief, and if it is true, is complete shambles.

1:28The Cabinet's office has rejected a claim by Dominic Cummings that China breached high-level systems used to transfer the most sensitive government information. In an exclusive interview with The Times, Cummings also said senior officials had deliberately buried the breach when it came to light in 2020. And he said Beijing had obtained vast amounts of classified data over multiple years. Times Radio's political editor is Anna Mihailova. We can also be sure that MPs who are concerned about this are going to start asking those questions and probably demanding a proper investigation into this and what happened and exactly what sort of material was breached.

2:06I mean, there are ways that MPs can look into this that maintains that security and preserves that national security element but still tries to get to the bottom of what happened. A lawyer who represents more than 20 victims of Geoffrey Epstein says Prince Andrew cannot escape his alleged involvements in the scandal despite reaching an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre. A posthumous memoir written by Geoffrey, who took her own life six months ago, claims that the Duke of York considered it his birthright to have sex with her when she was 17. He has always denied her allegation that he sexually abused her in 2001.

2:42Speaking to Times Radio, Gloria Allred said the book's release underscored growing pressure in the United States for the Epstein files to be made public. Well, it is just a reminder that the victims have made the decision not to be silenced, many of them. and here she is, Virginia, speaking from the grave. I'm glad that she wrote the book, I'm glad that she won it published even after her demise. Around 3 ,000 people are taking legal action against the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, claiming it knowingly sold talcum powder contaminated with asbestos in the UK. They allege that either they or a family member developed forms of ovarian cancer or mesothelioma from using Johnson's baby powder and are seeking damages at the High Court in London.

3:28And managers of children's hospices in England have welcomed a three-year investment package by the government worth£80 million. Around 20 % of hospices in England ended the last financial year with a deficit of more than a million pounds. You can follow the Times News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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