Woman's Hour - Actor Patricia Hodge, Online Safety Bill, Returning to work

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Patricia Hodge has been gracing the stage and screen for over five decades. Well known for her iconic performances in 80s TV series Rumpole of the Bailey and The Life and Loves of the She-Devil. She is currently starring in a revival of the 1941 Lillian Hellmann play Watch on the Rhine at the Donmar Warehouse and plays Fanny. Patricia joins Krupa to discuss the role and how opportunities for women in the film, TV and theatre industry have evolved throughout her career.The much discussed Online Safety Bill returns to the House of Commons tomorrow. The path for the Bill which seeks to make Britain “the safest place in the world to be online” still looks far from certain. The BBC’s Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent Marianna Spring joins us to discuss what the points of contention are. Krupa is also joined by the former Culture Secretary Baroness Nicky Morgan and Lord Richard Allan who was Director of Policy in Europe for Facebook for 10 years. A new drama starting tonight focuses on the experience of three women returning to front line NHS jobs following maternity leave. Krupa will be chatting to the female paediatrician and surgeon who helped inform and inspire the characters on screen about their own experiences of returning to such high pressure roles whilst juggling motherhood. Afghan police have confirmed that a former Afghan MP and her bodyguard have been shot dead at her home in the capital Kabul. Mursal Nabizada, was one of 9 out of 69 female MPs who chose to stay in the country after the Talian returned to power in August 2021. Krupa speaks to Fawzia Koofi, Afghanistan's First Woman Deputy Speaker of Parliament.Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Emma Pearce Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Krupal Patti and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Thank you for joining us at the start of this week. The online safety bill returns to the House of Commons for its final debate tomorrow. It's had quite the journey through Parliament since it was introduced in March under Boris Johnson. Those debates, those delays, they do look set to continue. Last week, the Culture Secretary said she is not ruling out further changes. And this after a group of Tory MPs backed a plan to make social media bosses face prison if they fail to protect children from damaging content online.

Is this something you would welcome? And talking to the media in recent days, the father of Molly Russell has criticised social media companies for their, I quote, underwhelming response to a coroner's call to prevent future deaths. The 14-year-old took her own life back in 2017 after viewing suicide and self-harm content online. We'll be talking to Baroness Nicky Morgan,

former Culture Secretary, and Lord Richard Allen, former Director of Policy at Facebook in Europe. Also, returning to work after maternity leave is tough in many industries. What's it been like for you? A new drama looks specifically at what it is like for women who work in the medical sector but whether it's health care or otherwise i want to hear how

your confidence was impacted by your return to work what about your instinct how are you treated two frontline nhs doctors who were part of the inspiration behind the drama will join us. And this is how you can get in touch. You can text the programme. That number is 84844. Over on social media, we're on the handle at BBC Women's Hour. And you can email us through our website. And you can send us a WhatsApp message or an audio note via the number 03700 100 444. Terms and conditions can be found on our website. And a former Afghan MP has been

shot dead at her home in the capital Kabul. Murzan Nabi Zada was 32. She was one of the few female MPs who stayed in Kabul after the Taliban seized power in August 2021. We're going to tell you more about her. My first guest has been gracing the stage and screen for over five decades. You may know her from her iconic performances in the 1980s TV series Rumpel of the Bailey or for her role in The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. More recently, she played Miranda's mum Penny as well as Mrs Pumphrey in All Creatures Great and Small. And speaking of the actor, Patricia Hodge. She can currently be seen at a new production of the 1941 Lillian Hellman play, Watch on the Rhine at the Donmar Warehouse. She plays Fanny, a matriarch who welcomes her daughter's family to Washington, D.C. after they flee Nazi Germany.

Happy to say that Patricia joins me now. Good morning. Morning, morning. Great to have you with us. Let's start with this new role. Tell us more about it and how you came to be involved. Well, like anything, a script came through and it was a play that I really didn't know. I mean, I thought I probably knew quite a bit about Lillian Hellman,

but not this one. And it's interesting because it can only really be revived at very specific moments. It's her most political play. And she wrote it in 1940 at the moment that America were sort of not engaging themselves with what was going on in Europe. So the Donmar felt it was a good time possibly to put it out there again and see what people felt about it. And it just caught me. The role is a matriarch who is a mixture of being pretty tough

and at the same time shows the vulnerability of, I suppose, all women when their children are in crisis. And you talk about the political climate today and that role that you specifically play and something that we are we are seeing mirrored in many ways with the war in Ukraine yes and that's that's the point one the parallels don't have to be exact but there's huge resonance and you know theatre that's the great thing it is such a communicator and And it moves people very much.

I want to go back to the start of your career. Where did this passion for acting begin? Well, I think it grew like most things. It's an organic thing. Where I grew up, there really wasn't any professional theatre. What I did know was there were lots of very good amateur groups and my family I think believed in having you know skills so I played the piano from six and I was sent to what were then called elocution lessons they're not called that now and then I went to dancing. So dancing was really my first intro into the world of theatre.

And I was absolutely passionate about it. And we had a dance festival on the pier. I grew up in Lincolnshire, northeast Lincolnshire. And that was the centre of my life. And then from there, it began to widen. And I was brought to London Theatre when I was 10 and suddenly saw a big show for the first time and never really wanted to be anywhere else. But sometimes these things take a long time to come to fruition. You know, I wanted to go to stage school, but nobody, nobody thought of it was even possible or it just didn't come into

people's consciences anything like that let alone doing acting as a living it's something you did as a pastime but it's something you turn to after you turn to teaching first I believe yes but I'd done school play I mean I knew that's what I wanted to do, but I had a year in hand. I just happened to be very young in my year group and to shut people up, really. And I didn't know how to go about getting into drama school. So I trained to be a teacher and taught for a year in order to get the qualification. And I loved it, but I just wanted to do this more. And there began a very interesting, varied journey. But you've often been known for

playing rather sophisticated, upper class women. And I want to understand why you feel you've been associated with such roles, considering, as you've shared in the past, you grew up on the Grimsey docks and saw a rough side to life. Yeah, well, again, I think you trace this back when you start to think about it, that I was brought up in a hotel that was right by the dock gates. But we saw all of all the different strata of life there. So everything from the dockers that would come in with their pockets stuffed with pound notes and go straight into the vaults bar and there was always blood on the floor in there to the lounge bar where people played drafts and had a lime and soda and then the cocktail bar where I suppose the more glamorous members of society went and where any visiting dignitaries to the town if they were coming to open a supermarket or whatever would they would

stay with us and and that's where they would go so i i sort of observed many things and and you know if you've seen for example you remember billy cotton back the band famous band leader people like that with his very glamorous wife swathed in mink and diamonds why wouldn't you want to be one of them i have a vision of you peering as a little girl through the gap in a door to this other world almost. That's exactly what I did. And it clearly inspired you. Yeah. And also I had, you know, I didn't have to do plays in my front living room.

I mean, we lived in a small flat upstairs, but we had this huge ballroom. So I could do my own version of Sunday night at the London Palladium. Incredible. So it gave me, it fostered my imagination, let's put it like that. Yeah. As well as these roles as upper class women, you've also been considered as a sex symbol at times. How's that made you feel? No, that makes me laugh. You never see, I don't see myself as that at all, but not remotely. It always surprises me. But I also find it very sweet when people either, you know, say that their husbands have liked you or that they,

I think it's very courageous, actually, and very generous. It's very generous of people to share that with you. Interesting take. You were in the life and loves of a she-devil, and that was based on the book by Faye Weldon, who passed away earlier this month. It was one of her most successful books. Why do you think it was so iconic?

Well, Faye was such an original thinker. She was an amazing woman, so bold and, I mean, did a huge amount, I think, for the cause of feminism. But she thought outside the box. And I think just to take an idea, which is the wrath of a woman who has been sidelined, for want of a better description. And to carry it to the furthest degree it could go is that the object of your hatred you then turn yourself into.

That's pretty imaginative. So it was exciting, but it really, again, it was not a major production for the BBC. It was a side issue, really. It was on BBC Two. It wasn't on BBC One. We were made to do it on video, which was only just emerging as a slightly more compliant medium. We didn't have the major resources, but we had a great director, and we had a good

cast. And we just made it with no particular expectation, but it just caught the zeitgeist. The book specifically, though, it's about a woman who sought revenge after discovering her husband had been having an affair with an elegant novelist. You played that role as the novelist. And as you said, Faye's work often pushed the boundaries, tried to include women who were overlooked, not featured in the media. So how was your character received? Oh, well, I mean, with a degree of derision

because people were on the side of the she-devil. And until really then the balance went the other way. And I remember Faye coming to, she never interfered in things, And until really then the balance went the other way. And I remember Faye coming to, she never interfered in things, but she did come down. We were filming near Eastbourne because we were using the lighthouse down there. And I remember she sat with a group of us after filming. And I was pushing her a little bit on the journey of these characters. And she said, well, really, she said, the thing is that Mary Fisher starts off as a really not a very nice person. And she gets she's a baddie, but she gets gooder and gooder and gooder and gooder. And the she devil starts off as a very nice woman and gets badder and badder and badder and badder.

That was summarizes. That was a summary. And you know what? It was spot on. Yeah. Another bold woman you've played is Margaret Thatcher in the Falklands play. A woman in power at a time of crisis, really. And that must have come with a great deal of pressure. Well, the pressure always to portray somebody who's very much alive. She wasn't in power by that point, but she was still one of the most famous women in the world. So I was very resistant at first. But the producers said to me, look, she will not be called Margaret Thatcher.

She is only referred to as prime minister. And if you look at it as a woman in a crisis and what she does about it. And, you know, it could just as easily have been Barbara Castle or any other of those early iconic women politicians. And then I was able to just see it as that. And the only thing that really interested me was how her mind worked during that time. So I just read the relevant chapters of the Downing Street years. And from there, then it sort of grew organically.

I am whizzing through these roles because they have been so diverse. So from Margaret Thatcher, you then went on to have different roles. But more recently, Miranda's mum, Penny, which many of our listeners may know you from. You play Miranda's mother. Many will have heard the catchphrase, such fun. What was that experience like, especially being filmed in front of a live studio audience? Yes, I do think that's one of the hardest things any actor has to do. And for some reason, for a long time, it was viewed as a rather second-rate form of entertainment.

And actually it's anything but, because you have to balance the... And in this case, I mean, the studio laughter was absolutely almost out of control. But what matters is what goes into the camera. So you have to keep the reality in and while acknowledging the laughter and feeding off it, you have to keep the reality very strict for the camera. And then added to that, you know, Miranda was doing her own looks

at her own special camera. So it was quite a discipline, but a very rewarding one. I do want to spend some time talking about your personal life because I've been very moved by what you've shared about the bereavement you experienced following the death of your husband he had dementia he was 85 at the time when he died and you were playing Miranda's mum at that time as well as being a carer what was that experience like for you? Well, I think the most difficult thing you have to balance is how to take care of yourself when you're taking care of somebody else. And not to be afraid of keeping your own structure because if you don't, then, as one doctor said to me,

there are two victims of dementia, not one. And so to keep oneself still, you know, out there and fulfilled to a degree so that you have still the strength, your psyche was nourished, if you like, your persona was nourished um in order that you could fill in the blanks for somebody who was diminished in many ways it sounds like acting was your form of self-care but there's also a point where you say that you wish you could say sorry to him yeah explain that to us. Yes. It's difficult to define it, but there are all sorts of things that you have, aren't there, through your life, thinking how your life will end together.

And you have, I suppose, an imagined scenario and how you'll see that person out. And when it doesn't pan out like that, you have to come to terms with it. And yes, I wish I could have done better maybe than I did. It takes a long time to understand what's happening. That's the trouble. It really does. You think somebody's getting old and irascible and difficult and you don't realise that actually there is a whole physical thing that's breaking down. No doubt your honesty will resonate with so many of our listeners. So thank you for sharing that. You've also gone on to reflect on then what lockdown was like for you. And there is one bit that really stood out for me when i was reading your various accounts that more than anything in the world i miss family life tell us more about that

feeling and because there's so much going on when we when we think of the world of acting we think of busy people creative people buzzing people and then when you share a line like that, that is so deep and sentimental. Well, we were denied that, weren't we? And yes, I miss, I think that's the thing about when your children grow up anyway and leave home. And it is, it's such a cherished moment in time, isn't it? And it's, well, of course, it's an expanded expanded moment, but nevertheless it's part of one's life. And I suppose, you know, then I don't have a husband and then lockdown denied us the presence of our children.

But I got through it. I have very nice neighbours. I have people I could connect with. And I was absolutely resolute that I wasn't going to go down with it. So. And you continue to thrive. And to end on a positive note, you are starring in the TV series All Creatures Great and Small. You're acting with a whole troop of animals. What's that been like? Oh, no. Well, that's that's lovely. That is such a lovely programme to be part of.

The animals add to it in a wonderful way, but it's a terrific group of actors, producers, directors. You know, I'm lucky to be part of it in the way that I'm very lucky to be in this production at the Donmar because that, again again is another family. You know, we have borrowed families in our business. We have our, and then we sort of adopt families with each production we do. And this is another one of those.

And they're a wonderful cast and it's a wonderful place to work. Patricia Hodge, such a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you for coming into our studio and spending some time with us here on the programme and good luck with the new production. Oh, thank you. Joy for me. I listen to you absolutely relentlessly. Well, that is very kind of you.

Thank you for being so generous. Thank you. The much-discussed online safety bill returns to the House of Commons tomorrow for its final stages. The path for the bill, however, which seeks to make Britain the safest place in the world to be online, still looks far from certain, and we're going to get into that in a moment. But a reminder, though, of why this bill matters. We have regularly covered the issues being discussed as part of this bill including the safety of

children online and new data out just today shows what the internet watch foundation calls a devastating surge of imagery of primary school children groomed into sexually abusing themselves on camera you may also be familiar with the case of 14 year old molly russell who killed herself an inquest into her death found that social media content contributed more than minimally to her death. And in comments to the media yesterday, Molly's father reiterated that social media platforms have failed to make meaningful changes to protect young people from harmful content since the outcome of that inquest. Just last week here on Woman's Hour, we were discussing the spread of misogynistic content online.

And tomorrow, a group of campaigners and politicians will present a petition to Downing Street signed by over 60,000 people demanding that the government adequately addresses violence against women and girls in the online safety bill. In a moment, we will speak to one of those involved. But joining us first to discuss the bill is the BBC's disinformation and social media correspondent, Mariana Spring. Thanks for joining us, Mariana. Let's take this right back to basics almost. Take us back.

What is this bill seeking to do? I think it's important to understand that what this bill is about is forcing the social media companies to make commitments and to explain how they're going to protect people online from illegal content specifically, but also children from what we call legal but harmful content. That's content that might not be illegal, but is certainly harmful to those under the age of 18. And as part of that, what would or will or could happen is that the regulator here in the UK Ofcom will have the power to ask the social media companies to present what they plan to do their commitments and then to prove to demonstrate that they've upheld those commitments and if they don't do that that's when

they could face things like fines or other kinds of and there's a lot of discussion for example at the moment about criminal liability and what happens if they don't honour what they said they would. A lot of the debate though around the online safety bill has been firstly about how it will work and whether it will work. Will it actually protect users online from harms and also the harms in question because a lot of people I've interviewed and I feel like I've probably investigated every facet of online harms over the past few years, are worried about the legal but harmful content that affects, for example, misogynistic hate online. That doesn't necessarily reach the threshold of illegal, but certainly can be harmful.

People who are concerned about the impact on kids and how this bill will manage to separate social media platforms for kids and adults because you're really relying on very good age verification. You want to make sure that kids are, you're sure that a kid is a kid when they're using social media and that an adult is an adult. And that's not always very easy to do. And certainly lots of parents I've interviewed have said, oh, well, my kid all the time will say that they're older than they actually are and they don't need to demonstrate otherwise. It's interesting you say that this is that we say that this is in its final stages because what I'm hearing from you is that there is so much that is unresolved really

what what has made it to into this bill that we know will remain as is and isn't as contentious as so much of the other aspects that you are that you were talking about. So it's the illegal stuff that this bill in its current form absolutely addresses. So that's issues like sexual exploitation, images depicting sexual violence and content facilitating suicide. It's all that kind of content that at the moment, in theory will be addressed by the bill and social media companies will have to prove how they're tackling it and how they're protecting users. But there's just so much when we talk about social media harms, whether it's online abuse, does this bill try and address too much? Or then when it doesn't, people say, oh, hang on, what are you doing about violence against women? Or what are you doing about these other topics?

And I certainly think that it's something that we'll continue to have discussions about in the coming months. I feel like I've done, I've probably been on Women's Hour many times and other places to talk about this bill in its final stages. And that doesn't always mean that it is, although this time it does look like it perhaps could be coming to fruition. There might be an end in sight. Absolutely. Mariana Spring, good to have you on again to talk about this again. Thank you. Well, to discuss this in more depth, I'm joined now by Baroness Nicky Morgan, who was the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport until 2020, and previously the Education Secretary and Minister until 2020. And previously, the Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities

with the Conservative Party. Tomorrow, she, along with fellow politicians and campaigners, will present a petition to Downing Street demanding women and girls that their safety are adequately addressed in this bill. And I'm also joined by the Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Richard Allen, who was Director of Policy at Facebook in Europe for 10 years until 2019.

Thank you both for joining us here on Woman's Hour. Baroness Morgan, I'll start with you. Your thoughts on where we are at with this online safety bill? Well, good morning and thank you for the invitation. And I think we are, it's tempting fate to say we're in the final parliamentary stages and the bill has its final day in the House of Commons tomorrow and then it will arrive in the House of Lords on the 1st of February and there will be detailed scrutiny there but assuming it gets through though I suspect there will be amendments made and it go back and hopefully the bill will become law later on this year I'd expect perhaps by the summer.

And the King's Speech has been pushed back partly for this bill and others. So it's not going to take place till the autumn. So the bill can happen in this session of Parliament. But as you were saying, the bill is in a way a starting point, because then, of course, Ofcom, the regulator, will have to be publishing codes of practice. The platforms and search engines will be having to put in place risk assessments. And so like any piece of legislation, it doesn't all come into force immediately. And of course, there's a whole learning process for everybody in terms of what does the bill regulate? If people are unhappy, how do they, how is that regulated? How do they make complaints, for example. And so we are just the starting point. And so I'm part of that petition,

as you say, tomorrow, which is calling for Ofcom, the regulator, to publish a specific code of practice on the violence against women and girls online, how they're going to regulate that, part of the Ending Violence Against Women Coalition. And that will be just one code of practice that Ofcom would have to put in place. So an extensive change of practice from all angles. Lord Adam, let me bring you in here. Good to have you in the studio with me. As someone who has worked for Facebook, do you think the bill is the right way to hold tech companies to account?

Absolutely. I think it's going to be a profound change in the landscape. Look, when you work in the tech companies, every day you're debating these issues. You're working around trade-offs between safety and freedom of expression and trying to deal with individuals this andrew tate character who's in the news now what do you do about somebody like that and at the moment all those conversations are internal to the companies except where things get leaked out it's going to be so different when you have to go to a regulator and ofcom is a very well respected regulator it's going to have several hundred people working on this. You're going to have to go to them. You have to do a risk assessment.

You're going to, as Marianna said, you're going to have to explain what it is that you intend to do to reduce that risk. And Ofcom is going to test you. And if they find you wanting, they're going to come after you. I think mindset wise, being accountable to somebody external will be a really significant change and that's at the heart of this legislation. We've had this message in from a listener who writes most definitely more needs to be done. Senior figures from social media companies should definitely be subject to time in custody

if found guilty of not protecting children from harm on their platform. And this relates to what we heard just a few days ago from some Tory MPs who wish to make social media bosses face prison if they fail to protect children from dangerous content online. To that, Lord Allen, what are your thoughts? I think we have to be just careful here that we don't do something counterproductive. Look, Ian Russell is in the news at the moment complaining, I think quite rightly, that the responses that you've got from Meta in respect

to the coroner's inquest into the tragic death of his daughter, it's a terrible response. It's very legalese. And we don't want that in this process. We want platforms to go to Ofcom to be entirely transparent, to explain actually where they're failing, so that they can work with Ofcom to get it right. And the problem with the amendment as it's currently drafted is it's going to leave companies thinking they can't be open and transparent. They're going to batten down the hatches because they might get prosecuted. Just to be clear, you feel like people will hide information. They're not going to actively hide, but they're going to do the minimum to be legally compliant.

There are two places where they should be prosecuted. One is if they won't play the game, they won't give Ofcom information or they lie to Ofcom. And the other is, look, at the end of this process, Ofcom says, look, you've got to do this. You're getting it wrong. You've got to do something different. If they then refuse to do that, absolutely prosecute them. But don't have the threat of prosecution hanging over this bit in the middle where you actually want a really open conversation. It'll be counterproductive. On that matter, the parent company of Instagram has said it had introduced a sensitive content control on the platform.

They've called that take a break reminders and a nudge feature for teenagers dwelling on a particular topic. But that is not in response to this specific call for prosecutions to take place. On that, Lord, sorry, Baroness Morgan, what is what is your take? Do you think prosecuting people at the top is the way to go to make a concrete change here? Well, I think the intention would be that hopefully with the cultural change triggered by the bill, there wouldn't need to be prosecutions. But actually, I have great sympathy with the amendment that's been put down by the MPs in the House of Commons, whether it's imprisonment, whether it's fines. I think that actually the danger that, I mean, I think it's disappointing to hear. I understand, you know,

Richard knows the sector very, very well. But it's disappointing, I think it will be to listeners to hear that actually the reaction to having more senior manager accountability is to do the minimum possible and not to think very hard about the way that the companies are behaving. Because actually, I think what this movement is trying to do is to raise those discussion levels to the boardroom, not just to sort of delegate it to the regulatory or public affairs or government affairs people in the tech platforms, who will be dealing with Ofcom perhaps on an almost daily basis, but actually say no, it should be the senior directors who are responsible and ask tough questions of their people working in this field. What are we doing to protect particularly younger people, but everybody from content that is deemed to be

illegal, or to actually change the culture in our company so that we deal with complaints for example when they are made swiftly and fairly and sympathetically and that I think is why people are pushing for there to be individual senior accountability not just when they refuse to comply with Ofcom requirements. Can I also ask you Baroness Morgan about tomorrow's plans you're going to be presenting a 62,000 strong petition about women's safety online what specifically will you be asking for? Well we want Ofcom to draft a specific code of practice which would apply to those who are regulated under the bill in relation to how women and girls are to be protected online. It is sadly the case that actually it is more likely if you're female

that you're going to suffer online abuse. Of course, we know that that abuse can range from very specific threats to people in public life. I think anybody who's put their head above the parapet on social media has suffered that. But of course, it can relate to relationships, to domestic violence, for example, where the online world has become a place where people can be stalked and threatened by current or former partners in a way that wasn't the case perhaps a decade or so ago. And what we're saying really is that women need to be protected online in the way that they are offline. And actually having a specific code of practice would compel the regulator to make

sure that the platforms are doing that. There is a debate. I mean, I think the regulator would say, well, actually, we want protection against women and girls to run right the way through everything we do. But again, if you've got a specific code of practice, which we're calling for, actually, again, I think it changes the terms of that regulation. Okay, so specific targets relating to that. Lord Allen, just last week on this programme, we were discussing the likes of Andrew Tate and the growth of misogynistic content online. I mean, what power do tech firms have to act in these situations without encroaching on freedom of speech? I mean, they do have the power to remove people under their terms of service.

And I think they do quite rightly. Again, I was involved in those decisions. And you look at the risk. If there's real world harm happening because of the speech online, even if the speech is legal, even if it doesn't quite cross the line, I think there's still a very good case to get rid of it. And one of the real challenges for the bill is, I don't think we should be undermining that.

Look, in the real world, people say it should act like in the real world. In the real world, if someone goes in a pub, and they and they scream, women should be slapped, or they use racial slurs, they'll get thrown out. And their freedom of expression is they still got it, they can go somewhere where that speech is okay. But in most mainstream public environments, we don't allow people to be grossly abusive. And we should allow the platforms the same freedom to maintain civil spaces. And so one of the real tensions in the bill, it says you have a duty both to maintain freedom of expression and to get rid of this awful speech.

Those two are in tension. You have to make a choice. And I think if you're making a rational choice that somebody's speech is leading to women being abused in the real world, then the regulators should defend that choice and not undermine it on freedom of expression grounds. This is, of course, much easier said than done. And I'm talking about your experience at Facebook here specifically because when we think of scale, a recognised global platform like Facebook,

is there a real worry here that we just can't keep across everything, the dark web and things really are out of reach of the regulators? I mean, once you're operating at scale, you need to understand what safety standards you're trying to apply. An analogy I often use is driving cars. Look, you know, millions of people go out and drive cars on the road. Some of them drive badly. We have all sorts of rules. Some of them break the rules. And sadly, there are accidents and people get hurt every year. But we accept that the freedom to drive is traded off against the fact that a certain amount of harm will happen. And I think the same will apply to these large online platforms. If millions of people are going to use them, you cannot make them 100% risk free. There's always going to be some kind of harm. That's

terrible. But what we're trying to do is decide as a society what level of harm is reasonable to accept in order to have the benefits of these large platforms that we choose to use. Baroness Morgan, on that, I'd like you to come back on that, actually. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, I mean, you know, you're right. There is a tension and Richard Allen has rightly said everything else. But what you can do and what we haven't discussed so far, are the algorithms used by these platforms. And so actually in the case of whether it's Andrew Tate and misogynistic content or other harmful content, actually what happens often is people find themselves in a vortex.

You know, they perhaps stumble across something or they look for it. And then what these platforms do with their algorithms is they serve up more and more and more content. And anybody who is a parent or works with young people, particularly a platform like YouTube, you know, if you're interested, perhaps we show an interest in something, then suddenly you find your feed is full of other videos, offerings on this, this, this content. And that's how, whether it's in in the case the tragic case of Molly Russell or other young people they will find themselves being served up more and more that is something that platforms can do something about that sort of tension between free speech necessarily and

the content they can decide to change how those algorithms operate so they're not constantly serving up more and more of this content that in some cases literally radicalises people to go out and do harm in the offline world. Lord Allen, you're nodding. Yes, and that's the kind of detailed technical conversation I think between platforms and Ofcom that would be really helpful where the platform comes. And often they do have choices. They can say, look, we tune up the algorithm to more aggressively remove the bad stuff, but it's going to catch this amount of good stuff, maybe including good stuff from outlets like the BBC. Or we can tone it down so that we leave all the good stuff up,

but we might catch less bad stuff as we tweak the algorithm. And I think having that conversation, which is internal to the platform today, that's what they're doing, they're making those choices. Having them come and sit down with a regulator and say, look, here's our choices. Which one do you think most represents meeting our duty of care? That's the legal stand in the bill. That's going to be a really good, positive, helpful conversation and will lead to material improvements in safety over time. I touched on the subject of scale when it comes to the actual organisations, but what about the scale of this bill? Specifically, Baroness Morgan, I wanted to ask you about whether you feel that, you know, we're just never going to be able to address every area of concern. And this is a criticism

of the bill that has been raised several times before by other people that we're just never going to be across all of it. Well, it's right to say, I mean, the internet is obviously absolutely enormous. There are so many pages, we can't even think about it. So many different platforms. But I think the cultural change that that is needed, that's what's driving this bill and putting the right systems and processes in place. And I think it would be such a mistake to leave these platforms and search engines unregulated. I think governments are playing catch up. And of course, it's not just the UK government. If this bill, when it's passed, it will be world leading. But many other governments are watching to see what's happening

in the UK. And some governments, you know, the EU, for example, have got a slightly different approach to the way that they are regulating. So yes, the problem is vast, but we have to start somewhere. And I think that if we don't do this and don't impose this formal legal duty of care on the platforms we'll be letting down a whole generation of of our young people in particular but i think people generally and because of course there is some good i mean you know there are many organizations for example that rely on social media to get their positive messages out uh that reach people, to help people, support people, for example. And so we shouldn't forget that.

But I think just because of the scale of the problem, it doesn't mean the government shouldn't start to regulate. Baroness Morgan and Lord Allen, thank you both for your time here on Woman's Hour. Lots of you have been getting in touch, responding to Patricia Hodge speaking to me a little earlier. We have this message that writes, I first noticed her because of her striking beauty, but she is much more than a pretty face. Please, more mature women on Women's Hour. Their wealth of experience is so compelling.

I wish Patricia continued success. And that is from Julia. Thank you for being in touch. And another message here that writes, I so agree with Patricia about regrets once you realise that someone is ill and not just being difficult. Our son developed schizophrenia in his 20s and it took many years to fully understand the illness. But no one gives you a manual for these terrible diseases. Love to her and all of those who are caring for loved ones

with a serious mental condition. Thank you to the many of those who are caring for loved ones with a serious mental condition. Thank you to the many of you who have been getting in touch to react to what Patricia was sharing with us. There could be movement today on the Scottish Gender Reform Bill. The new rules passed by the Scottish Parliament in December lower the age that people can apply for a gender recognition certificate to 16 and removes the need for a medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria. The government has been taking advice on the implications of the reforms and any potential constitutional clash after concerns that a simplified Scottish system for changing gender

could come into conflict with UK-wide equalities law. If you want to hear more details on the bill and its possible implications, you can listen back to a previous Woman's Hour item on this. Just go to BBC Sounds, search for the Woman's Hour programme and the episode from the 22nd of December. A new drama tonight focuses on the experience a great many women will have to go through at some point during their careers. That is returning to work after maternity leave. Add to that a job in frontline NHS care and you've got the perfect storm of external pressure and internal conflict.

Maternal, which starts tonight on ITV1 and stars Parminder Nagra, Laura Pulver and Lisa MacGrillis focuses on three women going back to work at a Manchester hospital following time off to have a baby. Writer Jackie Honus-Martin went to great trouble to make the drama as true to life as possible by working with medical professionals whose lives mirrored those of the characters. And this was not only to get the medical detail right, but also to be informed by their own experiences of motherhood whilst holding down an extremely high pressured NHS job. I'm joined now on the programme by two of those very women who worked as consultants on the programme and became an inspiration for the characters on screen. Dr Kiran Rahim, a paediatrician working in London, who is also a

mother of three, and Miss Zoe Barber, a consultant oncoplastic breast surgeon in South Wales and mother of twins. Good to have you both on the programme. Zoe, let me start with you. I mean, how did you get an approach to be a part of this project? So that's a very good question. And thank you for having me on the show. One of my lovely friends as a junior doctor who was one of my housemates contacted me out of the blue via Facebook and said a friend of a friend was interested in writing a medical drama and they were looking for a senior trainee in surgery who was a mother and I'd just gone back to work after having twins and COVID had just

started so it was incredibly intense time and an experience that I felt would be a real opportunity to share the unique situation and the unique challenges that we had as doctors returning to work but also which I'm sure all women returning to work everywhere can relate to in terms of the sleepless nights, the anxieties about going back to work, both in terms of leaving your children behind, but also in terms of, am I good enough to go back to doing the job that I love? And after I'd first seen Jackie's writing, which is just outstanding, and so beautifully captures those challenges in the funniest, wittiest way, it was something that I absolutely couldn't say no to. Kieran let me bring you in here and

just picking up there on what Zoe said that question am I good enough to go back to work I mean you've got three children aged 15 months six and nine has that question come into your mind after returning to work after each child? I think I'd be lying if I said it hadn't. I'm actually preparing to return to work after my third having taken an extended leave. And I think, you know, imposter syndrome is that question, isn't it? That am I good enough? How am I going to do it all? in this show that these women are so highly skilled they're so accomplished in everything else they've done yet they still have that voice that all of us do all of us mums when we return to work when we when we're embarking a new adventure am I good enough am I going to be okay um so I think that's the thing that will resonate with a lot of working mums out there um and hopefully make them realize that they are good enough, that we're all just doing a good enough job and that has to be OK. And, you know, it's

something to think about, really. I wonder if men have these thoughts. Yeah, absolutely. Zoe, in terms of men and how they think, one, I mean, you work in a very male-dominated sector of medicine. I mean, figures from the British Medical Journal in 2020 show just 16% of surgical consultants were women. And there is a line in the programme that sees the surgeon character asked by another female surgeon and mother, why on earth she had children if her dream was to become a surgeon? I mean, is this an experience that you've had?

So I think it's important to say that this isn't autobiographical, but everything that Dati's written very much relates to lots of conversations that we've had. And the medical scenarios are based on my own experience, but anonymised to protect patients and to protect myself. But yes, you're absolutely right. I feel that I do work in a very male-dominated world. In fact, I'm married to a surgeon and people often say to me, oh, that's fantastic. You're married to a surgeon. What's that like? And I feel like replying to say, well, I am one too. So maybe you should ask my husband what it's like to be married to a surgeon. Having both come through our training at a similar time,

I know that my husband hasn't experienced many of the challenges that I have, such as being mistaken for a nurse, or if you're an assertive woman, asking for things that matter in a patient emergency, you're considered to be a certain word that I'm probably not allowed to say on the radio in the morning. Whereas if you're an assertive man, you're admired for your confidence and your bravery. And similarly, many of my trainers, many of my consultants would always ask me, well, when are you going to have children? And what are your plans? And I assume you'll come back part time as a result. Whereas my husband has never had any of those conversations. And

it's always just been assumed that his career would continue completely unhindered by his gender. Whereas as a woman, I feel that I've had to often work twice as hard as the men to be accepted and to prove myself. And in fact, my husband ended up taking six months of shared parental leave. And as far as we know, he was the first ever male plastic surgeon in the UK to do so. And I'm so incredibly proud of him for doing that and taking that step towards equality and normalising parental leave for the person who hasn't born the child. And it was the right thing for our family. It was the right thing for our children. And it was the right thing for my career. But it is considered so abnormal that I think we need to change this dialogue and say that's absolutely okay for anybody to take parental leave it doesn't just have to be the mother. Absolutely and I think

the key term there that I'm picking up on is the word assumptions there are so many made I mean Kieran you're not a surgeon you're a pediatrician and and as is the character of Dr Mariam Afridi in this drama and one of the things that is really evident is how her perspective on working with children shifts because she's become a mother. Is that something you can connect to? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've been a doctor for over a decade now, and some of that was prior to having children.

And I think the thing that really has changed for me is my appreciation of what women do and the credit we don't get. And, you know, understanding that we are all, you know, human. And one thing I've learned about having children is that they have given me skills that I never thought I'd have skills that you know multitasking prioritization working under pressure conflict resolution you have it motherhood has given me so many so many soft and important skills that I then take to my work and I'm able to able to be a better doctor and definitely a better pediatricianian for and you know for me I always say that motherhood is a double-edged sword because of the job I do I work with children who sometimes

are often very sick and that's both very humbling because I'm able to connect a parent in what is an awful time for them but at the same time use own very real, very human experience to have that empathy and have that rapport and hopefully get them through what is a really awful, awful time for them. Well, many of our listeners have been in touch to share their experiences. This one writes, becoming a mother has made me a much kinder and a much more tolerant doctor. I am a consultant in acute medicine. And on returning from mat leave, I have found myself singing lullabies to more distressed and disturbed patients. It works. This one from Alistair, who says in answer to the question, do men get imposter syndrome? I say as a father returning to work after my second child, I say yes, indeed.

Thank you to so many of you for getting in touch with your messages. I will try and read a few more towards the end of the programme. But for now, Dr Kiran Rahim and Miss Zoe Barber, thank you both for your time here on the programme. And Maternal starts tonight on ITV1. Afghan police have confirmed that a former Afghan MP and her bodyguard have been shot dead at her home in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Mursal Nabi Zada was one of nine out of 69 female MPs who chose to stay in the country

after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Former colleagues have praised Ms. Nabi Zada as, I quote, a fearless champion for Afghanistan who turned down a chance to leave the country. Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, women have been removed from nearly all areas of public life. I'm joined now by Fauzia Koufi, Afghanistan's first woman Deputy Speaker of Parliament.

Thank you for your time, Fauzia. Thank you for having me. First of all, your reaction to the very sad news of Mursal's passing. Indeed, it's heartbreaking to see one of our young colleagues who, when she was elected, called me and asked me for my advice on her political career and how should she position herself, was killed brutally. She initially chose to stay when she could fly,

but over time, recently, when there were more risks towards her, she called several times for possibility of leaving. But of course, it was not possible for me because simply many countries now don't listen anymore to the voices of Afghan women who are in Afghanistan. So it's sad. Can I just be clear then? We know that she chose to stay inside Afghanistan when the Taliban came to power. But since then, she had been trying to call you, connect with you for advice on how to leave? Yeah, she chose to stay initially because she was, you know, having several activities and projects that could support women. But in the last two, three months, she was feeling the threat and the pressure. And so she wanted to leave recently, but it was not possible for us to help her.

Right. So her initial desire was to stay and continue with her ongoing support for women, but it just felt like it was getting too much. Can you give us a sense of what she was like as a person? like many other women and girls in Afghanistan, she wanted to be part of the progress of her society. At her young age, she ran for parliament and then was elected from Kabul, where now she's killed. You could see her often going to the executive ministries and offices with her constituents, people from her constituents. She was attached to her people and that was, you know, the reason. Her passion was her people, to stay in Afghanistan. But a Taliban claimed that they have brought security to the country and they are the one who can secure Afghanistan,

of course, is a failed claim because, and a false claim, because since they have come to power, we know that Afghanistan is not safe, at least for the women, not only that they are being erased from the public sphere, but also they are being, many of them are arrested, arbitrarily arrested, they are killed. And some of those actually don't even come to the media. I should be clear that the Taliban have not claimed responsibility for her death. But what do we know about what happened? Taliban don't claim for any of the responsibilities of the killings that they have committed in the last year.

So at this stage, no one knows what happened. But because there is a culture of impunity and there is no accountability from the Taliban in terms of protecting the citizens, we know that Mursal is not the last one and she was not the first one to be killed. Many other women activists in north of the province, like for instance, Mazar-e-Sharif in Kabul, in Kandahar, were either arbitrarily arrested or killed with no one taking responsibility. So there is two points. Either the Taliban did this, or if the Taliban didn't do this,

they failed to protect the citizens. Yeah. She also worked for an NGO, I understand. We know that in recent weeks, recent months, women have been curbed in their activity when it comes to working with NGOs. In fact, told that they no longer can work for NGOs. Do you think that has to any extent made her more vulnerable? Exactly. After like, especially after the recent ban of Taliban on the 26th of December, asking women to stay home and not work,

even with NGOs and the UN, that she wanted to really leave. And she contacted me. And after she was killed, another female member of parliament from, you know, south part of Afghanistan contacted me yesterday with a very terrifying message saying that now next might be me. Can you help me get out? All of these messages are the stressful part of my life being in exile because we can't do much about our sisters who are in Pakistan or in Iran waiting to go a safer place and those who are in Afghanistan constantly, not that they are only facing security threat, but no hope and opportunity. And I think it's true that we can get 35 million people of Afghanistan out of Afghanistan, obviously. We really need to do something to change the situation on the ground, to return the power back to the people. We need to really all work for a political process,

something that the Taliban are skeptical because they believe they now got the power and it's their, you know, it's their personal kind of property. I can only imagine how concerning it is for you when you receive those phone calls. Again, for the sake of context, we know that when the Taliban came to power, only nine female MPs chose to remain in the country. That was out of a number of 69. We are 18 months on from then. What is the situation now? How many female MPs remain in the country? How are they or are they all, like you say, trying to seek an exit from the country now? Yes, almost every one of them contacted me since yesterday. I have their voice messages and their text messages asking for possible support to leave the country. And therefore, my request to the UK government is to facilitate their exit, a safe passage for them from Afghanistan to the UK.

I know you have a migration crisis. I know many countries have this problem, but I think it's a cost that worth it because they are not going to stay in any country forever. It's a temporary settlement for them to be safe and return to their country when they can and contribute. So there are some in Afghanistan. I don't want to give the number because I don't think it's safe, but there are some in Pakistan and Iran as well

who have been waiting for months now to leave and even there they are not safe so my request is to support them. Yeah and of course we don't have a response from the UK government at present on that specific comment that you have made but we will of course stay across this subject about the rights of women in Afghanistan but that is quite something that since yesterday, since the announcement that Mourazal Nabi Zardar has been shot, has been killed, you've had almost all of the women who remain in Afghanistan calling you for help. This is how desperate the situation has become for them.

Absolutely. I mean, the number of calls and messages and requests for support and emails, in fact, also, which is a good thing because people do have access to Internet and they can email me the woman that I received and other women activists and leaders received since the Taliban ban on universities and on work, which they announced in December, the number of calls have increased. But obviously, I mean, the message that I got from one of her colleagues, Mursal Nabizada's close colleague yesterday, she said, the next might be me. And she is one of those who actually lost a family member, close family member in the army fighting with Taliban. And she stayed in Afghanistan because she wanted to take care of the children of the family member that she lost. Fawzia Kufi, there is so much more I wish we could speak about at length. But for now, thank you for joining us here on Woman's Hour. Thank you. Thanks for listening. There's plenty more from Woman's Hour over at BBC Sounds.

My name is Jonathan Myerson. And two years ago, we produced Nuremberg, a dramatised reconstruction of the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. Their crimes were indisputable, but one mystery remained. Thank you. story in 16 episodes starring Tom Mothersdale, Derek Jacoby, Alexander Vlahos, Toby Stevens, and Laura Donnelly. It remains a lesson for us all. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.