Morning briefing Thursday 29th January

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 Briefing for the morning of Thursday 29th January. Sir Keir Starmer has met with the Chinese president, calling it an historic visit, telling Xi Jinping he wants a more sophisticated relationship with China.

0:48The Prime Minister met Mr Xi at the Great Hall of the People on the first morning of his trip to China, amid controversy over the country's human rights record and concerns from the British delegation that they'll be spied on. The Prime Minister's group are said to be using so-called burner phones and laptops for the visit. Starmer has also been urged to bring up the case of Jimmy Lai, the billionaire activist associated with Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, for which he was jailed in 2020. Nigel Inkster is a senior advisor for cybersecurity in China at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

1:24Of course China is looking for what it can get. China doesn't deal with the UK because it loves the UK. it deals with the UK because it sees benefit in doing so. And there are some particular areas where China is interested. I think we need, there has been in the past, I think, a degree of naivety in our dealings with China. The war of words between Iran and the United States is intensifying, with Iran's leadership saying their fingers are on the trigger in the face of what Trump has called a massive armada that he sent to the region. President Trump has declared that Tehran must abandon its nuclear program.

2:02Tehran has said any act of aggression will be considered the start of a war. Joel Rubin served as a senior State Department official under the Obama administration. He says Trump's ambitions aren't clear, and the White House has been emboldened by what they see as a success in Venezuela. My fear is that there's a little bit of hubris going on right now in the White House, that because of the successful abduction of Maduro, Suddenly there's the belief now that we can kind of wield our power anywhere and do that. And we saw that with the discussion about Greenland. But this idea that we can just willy-nilly go around and throw our weight around militarily and somehow get wins all over the place, I think that's sort of the mindset right now in the White House.

2:44And that can lead to major strategic miscalculations. Sakir Starmer will not overhaul the welfare system for at least a year after vetoing plans in the short term for reform. The postponement makes it less likely that any controversial policies would be implemented before the next general election. It's being seen as a way for Downing Street to avoid another confrontation with Labour MPs after a number of bruising defeats in the face of backbench rebellions. Professor Michael Jacobs is a former advisor to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He says Starmer's just waiting for a number of reviews to be completed.

3:19Because the government tried introducing welfare reform without thinking it through properly, just basically making cuts for the budget and that was overturned by the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Labour Party. He is now not going to try another set of reforms without doing proper reviews and then doing proper consultations, both within his own party, but more importantly with all the stakeholders in the National Health Service and employers and so on. Kent residents and MPs have criticised a totally unacceptable increase in bills by South East Water, which in recent months left tens of thousands of customers without a supply.

3:56The company, whose chief executive and chairman are set to be questioned by MPs over the outages, will raise a typical customer's bill by£22 a year in April, a 7 % increase.

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