Morning briefing Wednesday 22nd July

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 News briefing on Wednesday 22nd July. Andy Burnham's told his cabinet to take a hard look at their budgets, with more spending commitments expected to be on the way.

0:46After announcing a£350m investment to end rough sleeping and an£850m plan to cut energy bills, the Prime Minister is expected to restore the£2 cap on bus fares. It's thought that'll cost£300m a year. There's a warning the Prime Minister could be forced to raise taxes if he presses ahead with all his priorities. Energy Secretary Miata Farmbullet says Mr Burnham has made it clear that radical change is needed. If you talk to people across the country, if you knock on doors in the way that I have, you hear people's frustration, that sense that politics is too distant from them, that sense the economy isn't working.

1:22And he's really clear that this has got to be a change moment. And he's setting out a vision for where he wants to take the country. But Mr Burnham has so far refused to commit to increased defence spending to 3 % of GDP by 2030. It's something Chancellor John Healy had been calling for when he quit as Sir Keir Starmer's Defence Secretary, accusing the former Prime Minister of failing to keep the country safe. Matthew Saville is from the security think tank Rousey. He thinks the new Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, could use his experience to talk Andy Burnham round. Maybe the combination of that political weight and the previous Defence Secretary, but one now being the Chancellor, might give an opportunity for a re-evaluation of defence spending.

2:05but I don't think defence should count its chickens. It's got a lot of hard work to do to demonstrate, I think, to the Treasury machine and to the public why extra defence investment is required. Well, after entering number 10, Andy Burnham's shake-up continues. James Murray's been made a Treasury Minister and former Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis is now Security Minister. Meanwhile, Anas Sarwar is expected to be given a peerage so he can become a minister in the Business Department. It means he'll be stepping down as the leader of Scottish Labour. Police are looking into whether failings in the care of a man who killed three people in a stabbing in Nottingham amounted to corporate manslaughter.

2:44The Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust says it'll cooperate with the investigation into its dealings with paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calacane. The studies found obesity is rising much faster in the young than the old, with a surge in women under 40 being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in England. Researchers are calling for more public health measures aimed at making us healthier. And a baby puffin's been spotted at a National Trust site in Dorset for the first time in 30 years. It raises hopes that the last puffin colony on the south coast of mainland England may yet survive. Only three adult pairs are thought to remain on the Jurassic Coast, compared with more than 40 in the 1950s.

3:26Don't forget, you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online. This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, 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.

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