Morning briefing Wednesday 19th August

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 Times Radio's morning briefing on Wednesday 19th August. I'm Daryl Jackson. Andy Burnham has said that No. 10 North will take over responsibility for economic growth from the Treasury as part of a huge transfer of power out of Whitehall.

0:49In an interview with The Times today, the Prime Minister raised concerns about the Treasury's traditional dual role in both promoting economic growth and controlling the public finances. He said the Department's focus on balancing the books sometimes clouds the growth mission. Michael Jacobs, former special advisor to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, On Toll Times Radio, lots of government departments do work towards growth. What happens to all the civil servants who work in the other departments that deal with growth? The Department for Business and Trade is, after all, responsible for a huge amount of what you might call growth policy.

1:23And there are other departments too. Energy and security and net zero. Transport. Work and pensions. Department of Housing. All of these departments have a role to play in growth policy. Three members of the same family have died after getting into trouble in the sea in West Sussex. The bodies of a man, woman and teenage girl were pulled from the water at Shoreham after a major search operation was put in place yesterday afternoon. A younger girl is in a critical condition in hospital. A trial will continue today of the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which is accused of deliberately preying on youngsters and hiding the truth about the impact of social media on children's mental health.

2:02California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading a vast case brought by a total of 29 states who are suing tech giant Meta over its alleged failure to protect children. The company says it could result in fines of up to$1.4 trillion. Kieran Southern is US West Coast editor for The Times. If Meta does lose this case, then it may well be forced to change how its platforms work. work. It might have to get rid of the so-called infinite scroll, which keeps users checking new content and it might have to add more robust age verification measures. The Prime Minister's pledged to work to get everyone in for Christmas after he vowed to end rough sleeping.

2:44Andy Burnham's attempting a repeat of efforts during the Covid pandemic, which resulted in thousands of rough sleepers across England being taken off the streets. Figures published by the government in February estimated there were almost 5 ,000 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025 in England. The UK will see showers over the coming days, but one forecaster has told Times Radio the rain isn't going to solve the drought situation overnight. The Met Office says some areas in the country will have the first meaningful rain for a long time this week after a summer of heatwaves and dry weather left many areas facing water shortages.

3:22But they say there won't be a huge amount of rain before conditions become drier again. Gemma Plum, meteorologist and weather and climate lead at Weather Change, told us the rain will do little to help the situation. The ground is just rock hard. It's so dry. So when we do see some rain and we could see some heavy showers as we go through the next few days, the rain can't infiltrate down into the soil because the ground is so dry. So instead it runs off. So we do have the risk of flash flooding. And you can hear more on all of those stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

4:21tech, 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