Morning Briefing Tuesday 27th 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 your Times Radio News Briefing on Tuesday 27th January. Labour MP Richard Bergen has questioned the process by which the decision was taken to block Andy Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

0:47It's understood around 50 Labour MPs have also signed a letter objecting to the decision. Senior figures within the party have privately conceded they expect to lose, with some fearing they could be pushed into third place behind reform and the Greens. Mr Bergen said the decision had been made by a small group within Labour's National Executive Committee rather than the full body and goes against public opinion as well. Only 8 % of people in Greater Manchester back what the Prime Minister has done and that shows how out of touch you can get if you just put a kind of nasty fractionalism first. And so I think the party should look again.

1:23It was only a minority of the National Executive Committee that met and made this really bad decision. It was just the officers met on a Zoom call, nine people cast a vote. There were about 40 people on the National Executive Committee. So that needs to be looked at. The mayor of Minnesota says the Trump administration is preparing to pull federal agents out of Minneapolis. It follows growing bipartisan outrage over the second fatal shooting of a US citizen by immigration officers. President Trump also announced border czar Tom Homan would oversee ICE raids, effectively sidelining Christine Ome, the Homeland Security Secretary.

1:59Aaron Rupar is a journalist in Minneapolis and told Times Radio why he was disappointed in the Republican response to the shooting. Freddie was exercising two of her fundamental rights here in the United States, which is the First Amendment, freedom of speech and assembly, and the Second Amendment, you know, legally carrying a firearm. And, you know, there's kind of a sense that he was killed for the fact that he was exercising those rights in a way that the Trump administration doesn't like. And so there hasn't been the strength of response in the Republican side that I would like to see. There has been some kind of wishy-washy statements about maybe having a pause of the operation here, the need for an investigation that's credible, and that seems like the absolute bare minimum.

2:35Police chatbots could free up the equivalent of 3 ,000 police officers as the Home Office says the use of AI to handle non-urgent queries will cover 6 million policing hours each year. The Home Secretary has announced what she describes as the most significant changes to the police force in around 200 years. Former Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Festus Akin Bosoye suggested chatbots are effective. You'll be surprised the number of contact that the police get for things that have nothing to do with the police. And it causes so much demand. So what these chatbots actually, they have been trained incredibly well and actually have seen them in action.

3:13And they really are just like a human being. And if it's supposed to go to social services, you'll be directed at social services. But if it is an emergency, you will be immediately taken to a call handling the force control room. Sir Keir Starmer is leaving for his first prime ministerial visit to China in eight years. The trip comes days after the government approved plans to build a giant controversial Chinese embassy in London. The King and Queen will host a reception at Buckingham Palace today on Holocaust Memorial Day. They'll be joined by survivors and their families to mark the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

3:46Later, landmarks across the UK will be lit up in purple. And campaigners warn progress on tackling poverty is likely to stall if there's no follow-up on the government's move to axe the two-child benefit limit. The decision to lift the cap was confirmed in the autumn budget. You can follow the Times Radio news briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online. That's your Times Radio news briefing on Tuesday 27th January.

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