Morning briefing Wednesday 26th November

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 Hello, this is your Times Morning Briefing for Wednesday 26th November with me, James Kitchen. The Chancellor has vowed to take the fair and necessary choices in her budget later as she tries to balance the books with more than a dozen tax rises.

0:47In a statement, Rachel Reeves insisted she will not return Britain back to austerity and promised to take action to help families with the cost of living. The Chancellor said she will push ahead with the biggest drive for growth in a generation. But The Times' political editor Stephen Swinford says Labour MPs may be out of step with the party's voters. Labour thinks it is the party of the working class. That is how it positions itself. But actually, when we talk to YouGov about it, they say Labour is in denial because a lot of its voters are actually well off and they are all going to be hit by this panoply of tax measures.

1:23So it might make Labour MPs feel quite good that they're helping low paid workers, that they're helping the people on welfare, all of the things that are core Labour values. But there is a knock on effect for that, that they're going to end up applying more taxes to their own voters, and that's a political problem. Meanwhile, economists are warning young people's job struggles will be exacerbated by the huge rise in minimum wage. Workers aged between 18 and 20 are to receive an 8.5 % pay rise from April, taking the minimum wage to£10.85 an hour. The Resolution Foundation think tank has called the increase unnecessarily big.

1:58It's feared the rise could boost the number of young people not in education, employment or training. New government plans could see rural areas, including Devon and Cornwall, charging a tourist tax on those staying in hotels and Airbnbs. Mayors, including London's Sir Sirik Khan and Manchester's Andy Burnham, will be given the power to impose the£2 a night levy on visitors from 2027. Ministers are now proposing that areas without directly elected mayors should be allowed to collect the charge too. The hospitality industry warns it could mean that overall taxes account for nearly a third of the price of a hotel room.

2:37Ukraine says it accepts the core terms of a U.S.-brokered peace deal aimed at ending the war with Russia. The proposal is based on a 28-point plan presented to Kiev by Washington last week, which Donald Trump says has been fine-tuned with additional input from both sides. In a social media post, the U.S. president claimed there are only a few remaining points of disagreement. Malcolm Nance is a former US Navy officer who fought in Ukraine with the International Legion of Territorial Defense. He told Times Radio Mr. Trump has ulterior motives. He's more interested not in stopping the bloodshed.

3:15He's interested in the half of trillion dollars of potential cash gold that's in the Ukrainian banks that are sanctioned right now. And so the Ukrainians aren't going to make a quick deal. As President Zelensky said, it's a good start for a framework, but it is not going to be a comprehensive piece any day now, unless he decides to surrender the country. And the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has begun a 27-year prison sentence for leading a coup attempt after losing the 2022 election. A court ruled he'll stay at the same federal police headquarters where he's been held since his pre-emptive arrest on Saturday.

3:56Mr Bolsonaro's lawyers had argued the 70-year-old should be under house arrest due to his poor health. And remember, you can follow The Times News Briefing on Spotify and you can listen live to Times Radio Online.

4:12This 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. Discover more at pwc.co.uk

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