Woman's Hour - Baroness Kishwer Falkner, Fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd, Sarah Pochin MP

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

In the last of our interviews about the recent Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman under the Equality Act, Nuala McGovern speaks to Baroness Kishwer Falkner, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. As the body responsible for enforcing the Act, the EHRC gave evidence in the Supreme Court case. In the first BBC interview since launching a consultation on updating their Code of Practice in light of the judgment, Baroness Falkner explains who they want to hear from and why.Five years after the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, a new BBC documentary is reflecting on the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that followed, including in the UK. Backlash: The Murder of George Floyd tells the story through the eyes of some of those who found themselves on the frontline during the spring and summer of 2020, including Khady Gueye, who made headlines after a local protest she planned in the Forest of Dean was initially cancelled. She joins Nuala, along with author, producer and speaker Nova Reid, to reflect on the impact the events of that time have had on their lives, and what has changed since then. Nuala is also joined by Sarah Pochin, the first female MP for the Reform UK Party. The Runcorn and Helsby by-election was won by just six votes - the closest result in modern history. A former Conservative Councillor and mayor for Cheshire East, Sarah was a magistrate for 20 years. During her maiden speech she focussed on immigration, the cost of living and sexual violence against women.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Andrea Kidd

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. This morning, Baroness Kishwer Faulkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, as we continue our conversations on the UK Supreme Court ruling, it decided the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex. Now if you have a question on how this ruling will affect your business, maybe your club or your

association that you run, please do get in touch. We'll try and get an answer for you. You can text the program that number is 84844 on social media or at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or a voice note the number is 03700 100 444. Also today the first female MP for the Reform UK party Sarah Pochin. Among the issues we'll discuss is the emergency releases of prisoners to deal with overcrowding, a crisis as it has been called in prisons, and also whether her party has a woman problem. Plus, five years ago, we were in the middle of the Covid pandemic. But it was also when the Black Lives Matter protests erupted globally that

followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer. There's a new documentary called Backlash, The Murder of George Floyd, and it tries to make sense of where the movement is now, including in the UK. We'll hear from two women who are here who found Mr. Floyd's death a moment of reckoning for them. And also we'll hear how they see their fight for racial justice now. Do get in touch again. 84844. Now, we have, as I've mentioned, been hearing different perspectives

on the Supreme Court ruling last month that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The judgment has implications for many organisations. The Equality and Human Rights Commission's interim update says, for example, that in workplaces and services that are open to the public, trans women, those people with gender recognition certificates and those without, should not use women's facilities such as toilets or changing rooms. We have garnered the views of the Barrister, trans woman and activist Robin Moir White, Helen Joyce from Sex Matters, Sasha Deshmukh from Amnesty International UK and Kate Barker of LGB Alliance.

Today I'm joined by Baroness Kishwer Faulkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. As the body responsible for enforcing the Equality Act, the EHRC gave evidence in the Supreme Court case. In light of the judgment, the EHRC have now launched a consultation on updating their code of practice. It's up on their website and runs until the 30th of June. Lady Faulkner, welcome to Women's Hour. Thank you for having me here. Well, why is an update to the Code of Practice for the Equality Act 2010 needed? Well, we have put a disclaimer up on our website to say that that is now out of date. It was published in 2011,

and 14 years on, we were already in process of updating it, and we did a three-month consultation last year on the updates needed. Because as time goes on, people's social attitudes change, but more than that, cases come to tribunal, tribunals rule and clarify what they think the Equality Act means. And so over a period of time, the law changes considerably.

And it seemed to us not to be helpful to have a completely out of date or in large parts out of date code of practice up on our website. So we determined about two years ago, it takes quite a while to update everything. We determined two years ago to update our code of practice. And that's why we went to consultation and put it out for updating last year.

Since then, we've been overtaken by events due to the Supreme Court judgment. And so we've launched the new consultation yesterday, as you've just described, which will be open until the 30th of June. And I mentioned that date too, but why a consultation and who will take part? So everyone is invited to take part who's interested in these matters. So it's service providers, associations, users of services. In other words, what we call in legal jargon, duty bearers, as well as the people who use the services. And it will be important that we hear from as many people as possible. Because while we have put out our consultation

as an accurate understanding of the law, it will be important to hear from people who are actually at the coalface on the frontline, both delivering the services and using the services so that we can look at areas that perhaps we haven't thought of or examples that we haven't thought of and come up with a final practice which will become law a little bit later in the summer that will reflect the most contemporary information that we have on how people use and deliver

services. I might get you to move just a tad closer to the mic there Kishwer if you don't mind so I and our listeners can hear you that little bit better. You mentioned there the code of practice that will become law. Will there be a vote in Parliament about it? There can be. It's a statutory instrument that's laid in Parliament. It's a little bit complex in terms of parliamentary procedure but there can be a vote in Parliament against it. It's called, I think it's called a fatal motion.

And that means that the government would be required to withdraw it. But that really is a matter for government. The parliamentary process is no longer owned by the EHRC. It's owned by government. So once we deliver, once we've consulted on the code, rewritten it and deliver it to government, then it will be in government's hands as to how they manage it and how they deal with it and

what methods they use to get it to become the law of the land. In terms of a code, I should emphasize here for your listeners that the Supreme Court judgment and the clarification that it provided is the law of the land, was the law of the land immediately. So all service providers should be getting their own legal advice on interpreting the judgment as of the 16th of April 2025. Well, that's really interesting. You think each service provider, if anybody that this affects, should be getting their own legal advice? Absolutely. We've always said that. It is because only providers know their own circumstances. Only they know what they're delivering and how they should deliver it. It's not for us. Ours are general principles that explain the law, but everybody should be, every service provider should be duty bearer, should be getting their own legal advice in that regard. Because some might think, let's wait for your guidance, the consultation period,

and then your guidance, and then see how to implement it. Instead, I think what I'm hearing you saying is it should be implemented immediately using their own personal legal advice. Well, this is a craft code and it may well change. The point of a consultation is that we hear from practical examples from people explaining what their circumstances are and how they're dealing with it. The law is done in dust. It is the law is not going to change. What may change is how we interpret a given situation where somebody raises to us a practical problem. So it's the practical examples that might change. The law is the law as it stands today.

Messages are coming in 84844 if you'd like to get in touch. Helen Joyce from the campaign group Sex Matters has asked us to clarify that when we quoted her in the interview with Sasha Deshmukh, CEO of Amnesty International UK, saying trans women are men, and that's what the Supreme Court confirmed, she was referring to the Equality Act and not to wider society or any other legislation. Thank you for the messages. If you want to get in touch also through our website is another way. So, Keishore, given this Supreme Court judgment relates to the Equality Act, I'd like to explore for the listeners what settings does the Equality Act apply to?

does the Equality Act apply to? Well, the Equality Act covers nine different protected characteristics. So, for example, race or religion or belief, disability, age discrimination, most of those are relatively settled thanks to our consultation last year. The sections that we're updating, the primary ones are on the understanding of sex, on the understand sex meaning a man or a woman, the meaning of how gender reassignment discrimination, the protective characteristic of gender reassignment, and also the protective characteristic of sexual orientation. So those are the ones that we will be updating most principally. There are also some updates on maternity and pregnancy and so on. So it'll cover quite a wide range, but not the whole thing.

Mainly these three areas that I've described to you. And the settings that they relate to, you mentioned workplaces for example, businesses. Yeah, well businesses, service providers, duty bearers, businesses, all of those will be covered to some extent. There will be some other specific updates that will come at later points dealing with greater detail on some of the other areas, other codes of practice, that we will be updating. We did a review of how many areas that we needed to cover after the Supreme Court judgments, and there were considerable errors that we needed to cover. But I don't want to give the impression

that people should wait until they receive every little different piece of guidance. What they should do, we've dealt with this because this is the biggest area. This covers the most circumstances. And people should be incorporating this, taking due account, getting their legal advice on this and acting on this while we continue to update and provide other areas. And, you know, we will discover as we go through the consultation exercise, we will discover that there are other areas that people want answers to and we will of course respond as quickly, as speedily and as best we can to those. So I encourage everyone to respond and not to be too concerned about whether they're sticking literally

to the parameters of the questions we ask. Women's Hour question, how does your organisation, the Equality and Human Rights Commission advice apply to churches and religious communities? Well, different organisations will have different particular circumstances and people who are interested in that should write more specifically about their concerns. But they may well be covered by associations, our guidance on associations. I can't tell with each individual case which area of our guidance would cover that. But that is the whole point of doing the consultation so that people can draw our attention to particular areas that we may have missed

or where there might still be some misunderstanding or confusion or lack of clarity on what they have to do. Is there any area that's exempt from the Equality Act? We're probably all covered by the nine protected characteristics. I don't think there is anyone really who isn't covered by one protected protected characteristics. I don't think there is anyone really who isn't covered by one protected characteristic or the other. So no, if you're talking, I want to be clear, I don't think there's any error exempt by the Equality Act in terms of who we are and the way we live our lives. If you're talking specifically about the exemptions to the meaning of now, of the fact that sex means male, female, man and woman.

Yes, there are specific exemptions. These exemptions are for separate and single sex spaces of using a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim when making the justification for separate and single sex spaces. It covers circumstances where mixed sex services may be necessary and it covers the potential legal implications of providing only mixed sex services or indeed single sex services. Also, importantly, the circumstances in which it's lawful to exclude participation in competitive sports that a lot of people would be very interested in.

Let's get into some of those examples. There have been some concerns about the ruling itself. I'm sure you've heard that. One that it could be overturned by the European Court of Human Rights, I'd be curious for your thoughts on that, and also concerns about the immediate interpretation of the ruling and that perhaps some organizations have jumped the gun by restricting services or activities to biological women but I think hearing what you're saying this morning is that you would say yes, get legal guidance and start implementing it. It is reported, for example, this is in this morning's papers, that the Houses of Parliament have not banned trans women from female toilets, that they're waiting on your statutory guidance.

Other organisations like what you mentioned there have banned trans women already at the FA at all levels of competitive football. Your reaction to those two examples? Well, the Houses of Parliament are waiting for our guidance. Our guidance is now there. We had considerable demand for answers. We had over a thousand requests for answers in the first couple of weeks since the Supreme Court judgment, we have moved at haste, but we have not moved at haste at the risk of accuracy. We are confident that this consultation document and the areas that it covers are accurate, and we would urge people to read it carefully, to also read the Supreme Court judgment, also take their own legal advice.

But I think they have to be, organizations have to be aware that they open themselves to legal action if they don't implement the law as determined by the Supreme Court on the 16th of April. So that's what I would say. Read the code of practice that we have put out and be confident that we think we're pretty accurate in what we're saying.

What we want the consultation to do is to give us other practical examples that we may not have thought of as yet. Nobody's disputing what the law of the land is. We know what the law of the land is. It's practical examples and individual circumstances that we're more interested in now. But you feel, for example, the Houses of Parliament should take a different tack than they have. They say they have not banned trans women from female toilets. Well my understanding of the rules that govern the Houses of Parliament, that the law for land applies to the Houses of Parliament, I leave it to people in higher positions than me to make a

determination of what that should be, but it would be quite extraordinary if Parliament didn't find itself covered by the laws of the land. We have heard from those who feel vindicated and relieved by what they see as a definitive judgment. You talk about it being draft guidance. I just want to read a little of what I read that you said, that this is a complex area of law which bears on the rights of people with the protected characteristics of sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. We know they are strongly held views across our society, both about how the law should be interpreted and whether it reflects the right balance between those rights. So if everybody's rights are to be protected, as the Supreme Court confirmed the law intends, service providers and their legal advisors need help to navigate these

challenges. How confident are you, also some of the examples I'm throwing out this morning, that the correct balance of rights can be achieved? It has been a challenge, I have to admit, to balance rights across nine protected characteristics. For example, sometimes you can take religion and belief and find that that comes into some conflict with rights of freedom of expression and so on, free speech. So it is that everything that we do. And sometimes when we find that they aren't, we take legal action.

So we intervene in court cases, as we have done here in the Supreme Court. Sometimes we provide funding for individuals to take action where we will come down, particularly on one side or another, where we believe duty bearers not doing what they should be doing. Race discrimination, we have a fund on race discrimination for two years that we ran to help individuals achieve their rights under race law. So it really depends, but that's what we exist for. We strive to achieve the best balance that we can. But you know, sometimes that isn't enough for some people.

All we can do is balance the law and we do a pretty good job of it, if I might say, with some pride as to where we have come to over the last five years. And of course, we're talking about sex and gender reassignment, specifically those protected characteristics in this instance. But do you believe the ruling shifted the balance that we're talking about in favour of biological women? I think what I'd like to do is just briefly explain that we felt at EHRC that the balance was in dispute as long ago as 2022. So we published a new code

on the single sex exemptions in April 2022, hoping that duty bearers would take that into account. They didn't quite take it into account as well as we hoped. So in April 2023, we gave advice to the government of the day at the time to say that they needed to consider how to make this work. And in that advice, we suggested that biological sex may be one way of defining sex, which might help. And the third thing now three years on is that we've ended up with a Supreme Court judgment. I wouldn't say that it has shifted the balance. I think I prefer to use the word, it has given clarity to what was always the law.

The law was the law, the law hasn't changed. What the statutory interpretation by the Supreme Court has done is giving clarity to the meaning of the word sex that some duty bearers were choosing to ignore and that's where the clarity has come. May I ask your thoughts? I just alluded to it briefly at the European Court on Human Rights. Do you think the ruling could be overturned there?

Well our advice and we took advice when we wrote to the to the minister because we're responsible for human rights and we're a when we wrote to the Minister because we're responsible for human rights and we're a rated human rights institution, which is the highest level you can attain. So our advice when we wrote to the government previously was that there would not be a great number of implications. But I can see that some people believe that there will be particularly under Article 8.

That's not for us. That's for the courts to determine. At the moment, we are providing this in terms of clarity on the Equality Act, not our human rights functions, although we are very conscious of those human rights functions. But we don't believe they're impacted at this particular stage.

We will have to see, you know, these are legal actions. We'll have to see what you know, these are legal actions. We'll have to see what the causes underpinning, what the arguments underpinning the legal actions are before I can give you an answer in that regard. Okay, well thank you for that. I want to also talk about some of the proposed changes, rules about when a service provider can or cannot ask for someone's birth sex and also the manner in which it is acceptable to ask. This was picked up in a number of the papers this morning as you might have seen. Can you elaborate on that for our listeners?

Well, it isn't, look, first of all, the first thing I would say to all your listeners is that we are a law-abiding, but incredibly tolerant country. We work well under the rule of law. We have a long history, going back to the Magna Carta, of being the rule of law, there is a social contract between us, between one another, to be tolerant of each other, to allow people to live as full a life as they can, and so on. So in terms of toilet police and people having to carry their birth certificates and things like that. Essentially, the key word here that we should all remember in our interactions with each other is trust. We're a society where trust is profoundly important in our interactions. So we have rules and we trust people to follow the rules.

Not everybody can carry all their documentation with them. We have a lot of other areas. If you take, for example, a driving license, you're not required in law to always carry a driving licence with you. You know, if required, you need to produce it in a certain approach. But the general approach to life is that you should be respectful, no distress or harassment or discrimination should be caused to trans people. And people should be asked respectfully, carefully and only when necessary to ascertain whether they perhaps may not be the biological sex of the service they wish to use. And that should be done in a sensitive manner. Remember the words, a proportionate

means of achieving a legitimate aim. It must be justifiable. Policies must be justifiable. And they must be done in a careful way because they can engage harassment, direct and indirect discrimination against trans people if they're not done properly and justifiably. And some might say that puts a lot of pressure on service providers, for example. The example just to be really explicit in the headlines in the paper today were that people might be asked for their birth certificate to prove what sex they are. There is an example that was given in the guidance, a reception taking a trans woman into a side room to ask their birth sex to establish which group counselling service they qualify to join, for example, a single sex or a mixed sex

session, as is in the update, I should say. I think what you're telling me, Kishwer, is that there could be a risk of discrimination or harassment if that request was made inappropriately. Exactly. And the key word is inappropriately or unjustifiably. So, yes, you can ask people for further evidence of their biological sex, but I can't imagine it happening with any frequency at all. We're looking at such, if people are sensible and sensitive and respectful of other people's rights,

there should be rare circumstances where it comes to that. You've updated the description of sexual orientation in the Code of Practice to specify that a person who is attracted to people of the same sex is either a lesbian woman or a gay man, and that will be welcomed by many. But if this change ends up in the final statutory guidance, as we've spoken about, could a lesbian support group still include trans women if they wanted to? I don't want to get into too much detail on the guidance itself, because it is complex and it will vary according to different situations. But we have got an entire section on associations and we give examples there.

From, you know, lesbian association that wishes to only be set up to accommodate lesbians can do so. A gay association that wishes to set up only to include gay people can do that. And of course heterosexual associations and mixed sex associations. So it'll vary according to the circumstances. But we have got quite a significant section that clarifies that. And I suggest people read the consultation and also refer to the Supreme Court judgment. The law is set out in the Supreme Court judgment. Lots of messages coming in, let me try and get to a couple. Lady Faulkner said service

providers should obtain their own legal advice. This is all very well for a large company but what is a small business like mine supposed to do? The type of legal advice being sought is not within the remit of ordinary high street solicitors and I would need to go to a specialist firm where I will be looking at a bill of at least £1000. Our role, I think the questioner here has a very valid point they want to raise. Our role, like other regulators, is to implement the law and to provide guidance on the law. To a large extent, I hope that our guidance will satisfy that person and make them capable of understanding what the law is. So in first instance, read what we say when we publish the final document,

read what we say carefully. And you know, there are advice services that other people that people can use that will be able to shed some light on this. But we also intend to keep our website updated as we go along. And I would suggest that people turn to our website, see what we say and if they're unclear, in that case seek specific legal advice. But what I'm not prepared to do is to say that you can interpret what we say any which way you like and then seek to say that, oh, you followed our advice. Ultimately, each duty bearer has to be responsible for their own interpretation of the law. One more. I manage a social care company. What are the rules now when delivering same-sex care from,

one, the position of a service user who has requested same-sex care, and two, when deploying trans staff, specifically any male members of staff that identify as women and may or may not have a gender recognition certificate? I suggest that people go to the specific regulator for social care and there is a regulator for social care who should be updating their own advice for specific providers who find themselves in specific situations. But again, read our consultation code carefully because it does set out some of those practical examples and how to deal with them. Bairniz, Kishore Faulkner, thank you so much. When can people expect it? I know the consultation is until the 30th of June, but actually having the statutory

guidance available? Well, that is a matter for government. We're aiming to give it to give our finalised code to government by the end of July. And then it's for government as to when they lay it in parliament and the process they use to make it the law of the land. That's really not for us. Baroness Kishnoff-Falkner is chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. My thanks to you for coming on and if you want to listen back to any of our previous interviews with barrister and trans

woman Robin Moyer-White, Sex Matters' Helen Joyce, Amnesty International UK's Sasha Dishmukh or the LBG Alliance's Kate Barker, go to BBC Sounds. They're the episodes from the 12th, 14th, 16th and 19th of May. Again, if you want to get in touch with the programme, 84844 is one way to do it. At BBC Woman's Hour is another. Now five years ago this week, in the middle of a global pandemic, George Floyd, a black man, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis. As it was captured on camera, the events of his death went viral. It sparked a wave of Black Lives Matter protests around the world, including the UK. A BBC TV documentary airs tonight.

It's called Backlash, The Murder of George Floyd, and it tells the story through the eyes of some of those that found themselves on the front line of events during the spring and summer of 2020. Heidi Guy is one of them. She was moved to organise a protest where she lives in the Forest of Dean. But as the local council requested it be postponed or cancelled, Hadi and the protest became headline news, an experience, she says, changed her life entirely.

Hadi joins me now. And I'm also joined in studio by author, producer and speaker Nova Reed, whose book The Good Ally, The Indispensable Guide to Anti-Racism, was published in 2021. Hadi, Nova, welcome to Women's Hour. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you. Good to have you both with us. Hadi, let me begin with you.

Your story features quite centrally in this very moving documentary about George Floyd's death and the events that followed. And you talk about Mr Floyd's death being a really pivotal moment for you. Tell us why. Yeah, I think across the world, I think everyone felt that, you know, we have seen countless stories of violence against people of colour. But I think given the context of the world, you world, we're in the middle of a pandemic. And I think the way in which we were consuming news was

everything was online and we were in unprecedented times. And I think what I saw probably for one of the first times was the murder of a black man playing out on national TV, on social media, day in, day out, every moment of the day. And I think for me, it was a really affronting moment you know where you are you are faced with kind of this horrendous murder playing out in front of you and it felt like the first time I kind of really acknowledged my blackness

particularly in the area that I live in and also felt kind of extremely compelled to kind of be part of kind of this racial equity, racial justice movement. Tell me a little bit then about growing up, because I was struck in the documentary that you say you were starting to realise you were a black woman, as you mentioned there. Yeah, you know, I grew up in rural Gloucestershire in the Forest of Dean, and that is a predominantly white area. My parents separated when I was quite young so I grew up with my white mum in my white family and was relatively disconnected from kind of my black heritage and black

culture so I didn't really grow up with much sense of kind of that part of my identity. You know when you're in school and you're kind of one of few black faces and kind of a sea of white faces of your counterparts and I think yeah I kind of moved through the world in this quite strange way where you know I'm mixed race so I wasn't quite black enough I wasn't quite white enough and I guess probably in hindsight struggled to figure out kind of how I was going to and did move through the world so I think yeah kind of in in reflection over the last five years it was really definitely a point where I became really aware of my did move through the world. So I think, yeah, kind of in reflection over the last five years,

it was really definitely a point where I became really aware of my blackness and what that meant for me, particularly in the context of where I live. I mentioned briefly that you went to organise a Black Lives Matter protest in the Forest of Dean. And there is the theme, of course, in the documentary of backlash. You did suffer that Locally, I understand at that time. Do you want to tell us a little about that? Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? And I can look back now and probably went into that process of wanting to organize a protest quite naively I think now I would probably say I had quite a sheltered

experience in terms of my racism when I was younger, so I guess I probably didn't quite expect the backlash that we received but you know we just wanted to do something in solidarity with the movement so you know we kind of went through the process of organising this protest and relatively quickly after that had gone public there was a lot of kind of pushback in local community, whether that was from kind of people I'd grown up with in school, people who were kind of family and friends, local council, you know, and again, kind of speaking to the world we were in then, everything was online. So, you know,

that got out of control very quickly and websites were popping up in different forums here and there, kind of really pushing back against what we wanted to do and I think a lot of that backlash became quite severe quite quickly, and that also kind of related directly to the council who cancelled the event in favour of all lives matter as I speak about in the documentary. So I think in favour of all lives matter as I speak about in the documentary. So I think, yeah, there was something really affronting with just however that racism was in Gloucestershire, but also kind of at that point for me nationally. And some people took issue with the term all lives matter because people who were against black lives matter, Hodge used that in some of their campaigning. I do want to read just a little from the Lindy Town Council.

This is at the time they apologised over the cancellation of the Black Lives Matter protest in the Forest of Dean. The mayor then, Mayor Leitch, retracted the use of the phrase All Lives Matter used in the letter to organisers claiming it was used without wider knowledge of the associated connotations, the ones I was just mentioning. The council also reversed its decision to cancel the protest after police advised that the force was legally obliged to facilitate it and a statement from Lindy Town Council added that it would like to

offer its deep regret for the insensitivity and offers a full apology for any offence caused. But when you look at it now, the protest did go ahead which I think you found really empowering at the time, Haddy. Yeah, I was really emboldened by that and I think, you know, going through that, how I would describe kind of a whirlwind two weeks from kind of never having been in that space to kind of being given a platform to speak on kind of racial justice. Yeah, it was incredible. And I think, you know, the racism that it brought out meant that we really wanted to turn that moment into kind of a recognition and celebration of black culture, particularly

in rural spaces. And how do people of colour claim back that space where people don't expect that people live, you know, and it was incredible storytelling and sharing from people in local community. And yet it just felt like a really, I guess, yeah, proud moment, but also so powerful. And of course, this was happening during Covid restrictions as well, which would have been part of the backlash, perhaps, because there was many who didn't want any groups gathering, no matter what the particular reason was for that get together. But I'm wondering, you know, you're five years on and when you look back, because this was a moment, and I'll come to you, in a moment as well, this was a moment that people expected to

be a time of reckoning globally, including in the UK for racial justice. Was it? Has it been? You know, I think in that moment, I always speak to the fact that I felt really, I guess, hopeful that this was a shift in the world and that there was an opportunity here to really kind of push a kind of racial equity agenda and I guess Yeah, and you know, maybe as I said before I was kind of naive new to that space and I think it felt like You know, there was a lot of conversation happening and there was kind of so much energy around This latest upsurge into the Black Lives Matter movement

And I guess yeah, it felt like at that moment in time there really was kind of an appetite for change. I guess looking back on that now five years later, I don't know how much of that still stands. I think, you know, as we've seen over the years, there is ebbs and flows of kind of energy that is put into kind of these racial justice uprisings. And I think, yeah, there's definitely been points of the last five years where I felt like that's disappeared and I think my experience of racism has probably got

worse since then. Really? Yeah definitely I think you know when you look at kind of the context of the world particularly politically I think we've seen kind of this uprising of the far right and I think that the way in which social media is used gives space for this kind of quite overt racial kind of discrimination that exists in the world and I think you know I've experienced significantly more hate crimes and I can attribute some of that you know to the position I've put myself in and how I kind of speak on racial justice, racial equity kind of in my work now. But definitely it's felt like the world has become, I guess, more accepting of kind of that racist ritual. And it feels like a more unsafe space for me, particularly anyway, now than it did five years ago.

Let me bring you in here, Innova. You already had an online presence at the time of George Floyd's death. I'm curious how you see it, how he's like looking back, feeling that in fact, in some ways things are worse. Well, I didn't expect them to get better. You didn't? Absolutely not. No way. What we forget when we're speaking about racism and specifically anti-blackness, we saw what I would describe as a digital lynching of a black man live, screened on our phones, on TV, over and over and over again. What

we're actually dealing with is trauma, legacies of trauma, and I treat racism as a public health issue. And so if you want to undo and really, really get to the root of the legacy for that trauma and how it is embedded, not just in bodies, but in infrastructures, that's not going to change in any meaningful way in five years. But I suppose so many people got involved, whether it was black people or allies, black people or allies to that particular cause globally. It was. I suppose, unlike many other movements that had taken place, some people calling it pivotal.

Why do you think that there hasn't been then the consequences or repercussions of that many people mobilizing? I think a number of reasons. I think our environment at the time fed into it hugely. We were in a lockdown, in a pandemic, we were glued to our devices and watching TV we had nothing much more to do to distract us. So the attention was commanded from people in ways that it wouldn't be in other situations. And I also think addressing racism and its roots, white supremacy, is incredibly inconvenient. And when people really realise what's at stake, it's not just name-calling, it's how it shows up in healthcare, in disproportionate health outcomes for black women

who are still three to four times more likely to die in childbirth. It's seeing not just in America, but black men are disproportionately stopped and searched in police still and killed in police custody. That continues. There is a disproportionate amount of black women who experience stillbirth. And the reason I'm bringing these in is because I think one of the reasons we struggle to engage with this is our lack of understanding of our history and medical racism is at the root of some of these things. I'm using these very specific examples of black women's health care outcomes because a lot of gynecological experiments were done on black women in the 1800s by somebody called J. Marion Sims. And those experiments were to solve gynecological issues in white

women. And they were done without anesthesia. And these things led to beliefs that still exist today in medicine that black people can withstand more pain, that are myths. And so when you look at these disproportionate health outcomes today, to understand some of them you have to understand the history of where gynaecology came from. And so that's why I think understanding our history is so incredibly important. And it's one of the reasons I just produced Hidden Histories with Nova Reed so that we can start to understand our history so that we can change the outcome in the present. Do you have any hope though because there was an explosion for example

of various programs to work towards racial justice for example. I know there's been a rolling back of a number of DEI initiatives particularly if we look at the United States and the election of Donald Trump within various organizations which would be diversity, equality and inclusion. I just wonder how you see the pendulum right now. Yeah the pendulum is swinging and it does this. There's histories of people seeing rises in civil rights movements and then publishing houses, publishing lots of books. I experienced that personally. I was approached to write a book in 2019, well 2018, was told that there wasn't really a market for it and then in 2020, lots of publishing houses and literary

agents were knocking on my door. And so there's a history of this whenever there is a social injustice the publishing industries want to then produce lots of books but there's no real long-term investment in how you continue that and so you get this pendulum swing. I also think that I used to work in mental health and so shame is very present culturally here. We're not very good at being truthful about our own behaviour and how we might be contributing to upholding these systems because we become more invested in defending our position than actually doing meaningful work to address how we might actually be perpetuating behaviours and outcomes in our day-to-day behaviour. Hadi, before I let you go, are you still as involved or as enthusiastic about the work

as you were five years ago? I think you have to be. I think that what Nova's speaking to, that trauma, I think, definitely is a huge part of how I probably distance myself from some of that. And I think it's ultimately not the job of people of colour to solve racism. It's not our responsibility. And I think that that has become a really big part of how I manage this but you know I still work in that space, a lot of my work is around racial equity and I guess you have to hold hope for future generations that there will be systemic change, that we will be able to kind of have a level of impact but I think that's really hard when

you're also dealing with the emotional burden and the weight that comes with being a black woman trying to yeah figure out how to do that work in the world that we're in now. Thank you both for joining us. Haddy Guy and Nova Reid, you can watch Backlash, the Murder of George Floyd. It's on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from 9pm this evening. I'm joined next by Sarah Pochon, who is the first female MP for the Reform UK party, led as you'll know by Nigel Farage. Reform now has five MPs, the newest of which is Sarah who won the Runcorn and Halsby by-election by just six votes.

The closest result in modern history. A former Conservative councillor and mayor for Cheshire East, Sarah was a magistrate for 20 years. During her maiden speech she focused on immigration, the cost of living and sexual violence against women. Sarah Pochian, welcome to the Women's Hour studio. Thank you very much, it's a pleasure to be here. Six votes, what an eye-flinger, what was that like? You know it's a night I will never forget, I mean we we really did make history, it's not just you know an exaggeration to say that because it was the closest by election result ever I think. And of course yes it was six votes but we overturned nearly 15 000 majority, labour majority, so

what a historic night. And of course it wasn't just my night, you know there was the other results across the country of the councillors and the two mayors and you know so it was an incredible night for reform. And for you, why did you decide to stand as a Member of Parliament? Well I have done 20 years in public service, 20 years as a magistrate and eight years as a borough councillor in Cheshire and a year as the Cheshire East Mayor and And when you've done so much work serving the community and you know so much about people's lives and have so much experience about how to help people, it really was something that,

I just wasn't finished with politics at the end of the day. When I left the Conservatives five years ago, I sort of thought at that point, well maybe I'll go into retirement. But you know what, if you've got it in you and the reform movement is so powerful now, it's so energetic, people are so desperate for a party that they can vote for that brings them hope, that it was something I couldn't resist. What is hopeful about reform? People feel that after 14 years of a conservative government in power that has been a total

failure on so many issues, people feel that 10 months of labour has already let them down and they feel betrayed by labour. So where I stood, the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, that's a very safe, was a very safe labour seat, the 16th safest labour seat in the country. People coming over the doorstep of our campaign office or I was meeting people on their doorstep and they wanted to tell me about how betrayed they felt about losing the winter fuel allowance, about the cost of living, you know, just diminishing money in their pocket, about having their disability benefits slashed, about their energy bills rising, feeling very, very betrayed by this Labour government very quickly. And when I say a party of hope, they won't vote Tory, you know the

Tories are finished in my view. Finished. Finished and they won't vote Labour because they feel utterly betrayed by Labour. So people are looking for a party that brings them hope, that represents British values and actually is not afraid to put their head above the parapet and talk about issues that quite frankly the Conservative Party and the Labour Party just really don't seem able or willing to talk about. When you say finished what do you mean by that? I think that the damage done to themselves by their infighting has set them back if not forever then certainly for 15 years you won't see a Conservative

Party in the foreseeable future. There's no question now that Reform is the party of opposition. We only have five members of parliament, but we have the entire will of the country behind us. I think some would disagree with your characterisation of the whole will of the country, that is your opinion. You will have been asked, I'm sure, about being the party's only female MP. You've said your career at Shell prepared you for working in any arena and that it doesn't bother you. Not at all. I genuinely don't think of myself as a woman or the first female MP. Yes, factually, I or the first female MP. Yes, factually I am the first female

MP. And listening to your earlier guest, I'm delighted that, you know, yes, I am a woman. And we can say that loud and proud. But the point is, that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I was the best candidate for the job. And the fact that we overturned that majority and won this election shows that that is in fact the case. Yes, I've always worked in fairly male-dominated environments. As you mentioned, I worked for Shell International. That's where I started my career with the bank, then for Shell International, and then went on through various PLCs.

But I've never considered it. I was brought up in a household where my parents told me I could do what I wanted to do, I could be what I wanted to be. It was never discussed about being a woman. I think there are problems being a woman and wanting a career like I've had. I've got two grown-up children who mean everything to me and I've been married for 30 years to Johnny, my husband. And yes of course it's a difficult balancing act for any woman that wants a career. But you will have heard with Reform UK that some say it has a woman problem in the sense that they have the lowest percentage of female candidates, 15% for example if you look at

Labour at 46 or the Greens at 43. And during the 2024 general election the BBC found that eight male candidates had shared extremely derogatory comments about women on social media including, modern feminism belongs in the sewer of self-hate from which it came and describing women as guttersluts or thick tarts. Are you concerned that these views have been attributed to your party? What I would say now is that reform have the highest standards of candidate vetting. Certainly for myself, you know, I went through rigorous vetting procedures and everybody else that puts themselves

in this position for reform from now on will go through those vetting procedures. So, yes, do you know what? There's plenty of examples in the Labour camp and in the Tory camp of people that have absolutely behaved in the most inappropriate ways towards women. But, so all parties will find those sort of issues. But in terms of how I feel being in reform, I've found nothing but respect from my colleagues, I've never once come across any kind of chauvinism. The team of MPs that I'm working with, the four male MPs, have been nothing but utterly supportive but treat me as an equal but

not particularly as a woman. Let me turn to an issue that I know is important to you. You wrote a piece in the Telegraph newspaper responding to the recent announcement by the government that more than a thousand inmates will be released early to free up spaces in prisons in England and Wales. Now under this move, offenders serving one to four years who are recalled to prison for breaching their licenses, for example missing their curfew, they will be released after 28 days. A senior Ministry of Justice official said the government would run out of prison places in just five months time if action wasn't taken. Why did you decide to focus on that issue?

This is a, well first of all it's my area of experience. As I say I was a magistrate for 20 years and I chaired a court for 17 of those years. So I've dealt with an awful lot of issues, you know, you name it, I've seen it. I mean, at the end of the day, everything comes through a magistrate's court, even if it goes through to a Crown Court for sentencing. So this particular ruling is really concerning with respect to domestic violence offenders because if somebody has been found guilty of an offence like that against women, they've received a prison sentence between one and four years, that is higher than a magistrate's court sentencing powers, so that offense

is going to fall into the categories of attempted strangulation, attempted rape and the fact is that if they have, they've served half the sentence and by the way on Thursday we are expected, they've served half their sentence, and by the way, on Thursday we are expected to hear that that half is going to go down to a third, which is really concerning, but they've been out on what we call out on licence. If they commit a further offence on licence, they get recalled and they're supposed to serve the rest of their sentence in full. This government has introduced this ruling of 28 days which means that

somebody could have a four-year sentence for a really nasty offense against a woman and be released on license after two and then get offend again and then get record for only 28 days, not the two years left of their sentence. Now once they're out again we know, the courts know, the evidence tells us that at that level of offending against women, it is not improbable that that person will go on to kill that woman. We need to be safeguarding women. Women that come to court and give evidence are so brave, they go through a highly traumatic experience. I've seen it endless times in the magistrates court, let alone the increased seriousness of

the offence that they're going through in a Crown Court. So the fact that they're brave enough to come to us, the fact they're brave enough to speak out against a perpetrator and then be totally let down by the justice system by that perpetrator being out within 28 days after recall, having re-offended again, is a very frightening prospect for these women. And you mentioned future announcements, of course I cannot verify those on what might be decided when it comes to this. But what do you expect the government to do? They say they're compelled to make this move? Look, we have got 10,000 plus inmates in our jails which are foreign criminals. We need to get those out of our jails. The country of origin needs to take those offenders back.

They need to be put back into those prisons abroad and free up the 10,000 spaces. Now the government could do that at a stroke of a pen. The Conservative government could have done that at a stroke of a pen. Why aren't we doing that? Because that immediately takes the pressure off the prisons and what I would add is 14 years of conservative rule. Have they planned ahead for this prison crisis? Clearly not. This doesn't come from nowhere. This has been building and building and building. We now have male prisons at 99% capacity.

That is a very frightening place to be. The Justice Department, of course, they say we inherited a prison system in crisis. Without this change, we will run out of places by November. The measure excludes, they say, all offenders serving sentences of more than four years and offenders who are subject to active risk management by multiple agencies. This ensures we have time to build new prison places and introduce long-term reforms to keep sentencing to keep the public and

victims safe. It is not right that people are released early, people who have committed serious crimes. If you get a prison sentence between one and four years you've done something very bad indeed. Now, if you're going to be let out early because the prisons are full, I mean, it totally undermines the role of the magistrates or the judges for a start. But do you think you're going to be able to make any traction on what you want? Yes, because those 10,000 people that are in there that should be abroad will be sent home. But do you really see that happening?

Yes. Why and how? Because this government could do it, the last government could do it. And you think you'll be able to persuade them? No, what I'm saying is if reform get into power next time round, that is what we will do. That is a very big if, but I do want to thank my guest, Sarah Poach, the first female MP for the Reform UK party

coming into our Woman's Hour studio. I do want to let you know that on tomorrow's program Anita will be exploring the impact of sexual violence in conflict and war and also how it has been affecting women for over the past 100 years. I do hope you'll join us again 10am right here on Radio 4. That's all for today's Woman's Hour, join us again 10 a.m. right here on Radio 4. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. From BBC Radio 4 and the History Podcast. We're not so funny people in our family. I'm Joe Dunthorn. Funny people.

And this is Half Life. She finished her job, she dropped dead. My father finished his job, he was dead within a week. I mean that's all quite a weird kind of story, you know. And so we call it like the curse of this memoir. An eight-part podcast about how the past lives on inside us. I wonder how you feel after all of this. Even when we try to ignore it. All of the bombs will detonate sooner or later.

Listen to Half Life on BBC Sounds.