Morning briefing Wednesday 2nd September

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 2nd September. Andy Burnham faces his first Prime Minister's questions later in another major commons test for the new Labour leader.

0:44It follows his first appearance at the dispatch box as Prime Minister yesterday when he set out plans for greater devolution and stronger public control of essential services. He also blamed many of Britain's economic problems on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, austerity and Brexit. Labour MP Chris Murray gave Times Radio his assessment of the Prime Minister's performance. Andy sort of, he firstly just sort of dealt in that kind of core politics of hope, you know, of saying to people, there are some things we can do to get some breathing space on the cost of living. And we understand life is tough and we're going to do what we can to make things that bit better for you.

1:22But also we're looking at the big issues that, you know, really go to the core of the country that people kind of shy away from. A 23-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a university in Utah last year. A judge has ruled prosecutors can seek the death penalty against Tyler Robinson, who faces seven charges. U.S. forces have completed a fresh wave of strikes on Iran, accusing Tehran of attempted attacks on commercial shipping and American troops. Iran has retaliated against U.S. military bases across the region. President Trump's warned Iran it could face devastating consequences if it continues to respond.

2:04Former U.S. Colonel Cedric Layton explained to Times Radio what the latest escalation could mean. Well, like many strikes that we've seen in the last month and a half or so, they're concentrated along the southern coast, particularly near the port city of Bandar So these are areas that the US has struck repeatedly. And right now it's basically designed, it seems to be, to put pressure on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards not to mind the Strait of Four Moves. That seems to be at least the tactical goal of these efforts at the moment. England and Wales could run out of prison spaces next year after the government scaled back its early release plans.

2:45Ministers have excluded more serious offenders from the scheme, but analysis of Ministry of Justice figures suggests there could be a shortfall of hundreds of cells by May. Former Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick told Times Radio ministers are effectively managing the system from crisis to crisis. If you had some problem in a prison, a fire or a riot or something like that, so you lost capacity, the system couldn't cope with that. So it's running, the risks they're running are very serious. They have cut it very much finer than the Starmer government was going to do, and risks come with that.

3:23So it will be a question of keeping everything crossed and hoping that nothing else goes wrong. And Manchester City have equalled the British transfer record after paying£125 million for Enzo Fernandes from Chelsea. There's more on these stories throughout the day on Times Radio.

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