Woman's Hour - Crying, Fashion disruptor Amy Powney, NHS 10-Year Plan, Novelist Esther Freud

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

The image of the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, crying in Parliament yesterday was picked up by various media. After PMQs, Ms Reeves' spokesperson said she had been dealing with a "personal matter" and Sir Keir insisted her tears had had "nothing to do with politics". Kylie Pentelow is joined by Times columnist Katy Balls and Kitty Donaldson, chief political commentator for the i Paper to discuss why her tears caused such a stir. Was it concern over political weakness and worries about political instability? Ms Reeves' very senior role in government? Or because she’s a woman and maybe people still don't understand that women cry for different reasons and in different circumstances to men?The government’s long-awaited NHS 10-year health plan is launched today. To make the NHS in England fit for the future, the plan will focus on three big shifts: moving care from hospitals to communities, making better use of technology, and preventing sickness - not just treating it. How should the NHS prioritise women’s health to achieve better results? Kylie is joined by Ranee Thakar, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Danielle Jefferies, Senior Analyst at The King’s Fund, and Lara Lewington, a technology journalist and author of a new book, Hacking Humanity.Esther Freud’s ninth novel, My Sister and Other Lovers, revisits characters from her very first book Hideous Kinky, which was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. In My Sisters and Other Lovers, the sisters come of age and try to come to terms with their past. Esther joins Kylie to talk about her writing and how despite having such famous men in her life – her father was the painter Lucien Freud and her great-grandfather was the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud - it’s the women in her family who inspire her work.Amy Powney is the fashion designer best known for being the Creative Director at Mother of Pearl for 10 years until she left to set up her own label, Akyn, earlier this year. Amy’s mission to create a sustainable clothing line was explored in the documentary Fashion Reimagined which saw her trace clothes from field to runway and cemented her as an authority on this within the wider industry. Amy joins Kylie in the Woman’s Hour studio.Presenter: Kylie Pentelow Producer: Rebecca Myatt

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. deal ratings and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one. That's cargurus.ca. Hello this is Kylie Pentelow and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Today the government reveals its 10-year plan for the NHS in England. Now one of the main changes, neighbourhood health hubs that aim to shift care out of hospitals and into the community. But what do you think could be done to make the NHS better for you as a woman? And what single change would have the biggest impact for women? I want to hear from you on this. You can of course text the programme, the number as always is 84844. And we're also on social media, we're

at BBC Woman's Hour, you can email us through our website too. Or you can send us a WhatsApp message or voice note using the number 03 700 100 444. Also coming up, do you know where the clothes you wear came from? I don't mean which shop, but where the cotton was grown or the fabric was made? I'll be speaking to a fashion designer who's made it her mission to make us really think about sustainable clothing. And also, Esther Freud, the author, will join me to talk about her new novel, which looks at the lives of the grown-up sisters who we met in her first novel, Hiddeus Kinky. But first, if you've looked at the papers this morning or indeed heard the news,

you won't have missed the image of the Chancellor Rachel Reeves crying in Parliament yesterday. Now after Prime Minister's questions, Reeves' spokesperson said that she'd been dealing with a personal matter and Sakir Starmer insisted that her tears had had nothing to do with politics. Later, he told BBC Radio 4's political thinking that he worked in lockstep with Reeves and she was doing an excellent job as Chancellor. But why have her tears caused such a stir? Is it concern over political weakness and worries about political instability, her very senior role in government? Or is it because she's a woman and maybe people still don't understand that women cry for reasons different to men and different circumstances to men?

Well to discuss all this I'm joined by Times columnist Katie Balls and Kitty Donaldson, chief political commentator for the I paper. Kitty, if I can come to you first, why do you think Rachel Reeves' tears have made all the front pages today? Well, there are three reasons really. One is that it's quite unusual to see anyone in the cabinet cry, let alone the Chancellor, let alone on the front bench, doing Prime Minister's questions. And the other reason is because it sparked a bond sell-off in the markets because the traders thought that she was about to be replaced by someone more left-wing and she was the last one standing between fiscal stability

and the spendthrift nature of the Labour Party. Katie, do you agree with that? Do you have those same thoughts about why that image is on so many newspapers? I think ultimately it comes down to the fact she is the Chancellor first and foremost and Chancellors can always cough and potentially move the markets. They have that level of impact. So of course, if you have the chance, the crying near a camera is going to make the news. And I think that would be the case, whether it is a man or a woman. Now, you can add to other specific things that female politicians get picked up on that men don't.

I think there's definitely an argument there, but I think in this case, ultimately, the context being that Labour's had a really difficult few weeks. Rachel Reeves has been at the center of that. People feel her credibility has been drained to a degree from the welfare rebellion. therefore to see her shedding tears and there's almost a vacuum where people started joining the dots before we heard there might be personal issues did mean I think that

it just fed into the sense of Labour having real problems right now and that's impacting the Chancellor. Katie from a personal point of view what did you think when you when you saw those images? Were you watching it live yesterday? I think there was just a little bit of a sense of shock when you know you saw the zoomed in pictures and you know people say oh Rachel Reeves is shedding tears in the chamber and you look closely and you see that is the case. At first you didn't you know you want to see it to believe it. And then I think just a sense of because how the past week or so has gone, you do feel some empathy, but also of course this is the Chancellor and we saw in the hours that followed it had an impact

where the cost of borrowing went up. Now that's changed again today because the markets were worried that she could be moved it seems and there's been an assurance that's not happening but it shows the impact but I don't think Rachel Reeves is going to be happy that she cried in the chamber I think she's you know she's worked very hard and she wants to be you know she's very proud to be the first female Chancellor she's worked very hard to gain respect of various figures in her career and she won't have gone into the chamber thinking she was going to shed tears. I think that would have caught her by surprise. If that was really something I think they expected to happen, another thing would have occurred. However,

had Rachael Reeves not turned up in the chamber, the trickiest thing is because really he was having such a difficult few weeks, everyone said, where is Rachael Reeves? She isn't hiding. So she probably felt that she had to, even though she was worried about some of these things. Yeah, and Kitty, I guess some people might think, why didn't she just kind of pop out, you know, and kind of see if she could recover? Because obviously, it's a very public realm, isn't it? But would that have, her leaving might have been assumed to have something different? Yes, and I was in parliament yesterday and I saw what happened. So it was in, excuse

me, in Northern Ireland questions, which was ahead of PMQs. And she had this reported altercation with the speaker and went out and gathered herself together. So she was in tears before PMQs. And then she came came back in and clearly she thought she could have handled herself but hadn't and the tears just kept coming and coming and I think we've all been in that situation where you think you've got it under control and then you're just thinking about it and mulling on it and it just all becomes a bit too much actually. She's not the first senior female politician you know to cry, is she? Margaret Thatcher, for example, when she left office. But why, Kitty, do you think it's caused so much consternation and

concern? Well, even us getting texts from Tories, you know, like hard-bitten kind of opponents of the Labour government going, this is horrific, just on a personal level, no one wants to see anyone cry. But particularly seeing, particularly when the Prime Minister was kind of oblivious to what was going on behind him, basically, it was just a kind of drama of it all. And well, I think everyone just felt deeply sorry for her. No one wants to cry in public, absolutely no one. No one wants to be seen to be crying in public, particularly for the Chancellor. And as Katie was saying, she's worked incredibly hard to be taken seriously. All those endless breakfasts with business people, so you know, to prove that Labour

was serious about the fiscal restraints she's put them under and now sort of evaporated in one afternoon. We should just say, Kitty, thank you for pushing on because I know you've got a very sore throat. So thanks for speaking to us. We really appreciate that you're pushing through to talk to us on this. Katie, I wonder what would have happened if another politician, a male politician, had cried, or indeed Zakiya Starmer. How do you think it would have been received differently? I think if Keir Starmer had cried at PMQs, I would also have made front page news across all the newspapers, I'm pretty certain. I think the context more is, I suppose, had

Labour been having a fantastic few weeks, Keir was up in the polls, the economy was booming, and Rachael Reeves was crying at PMQs. I think there would have been a sense of something, is she okay, something bad must be happening, do we want to pry? Whereas there is a real hotbed at the moment in the sense of just Labour unhappiness.

When it comes to the gender balance, I think that there are certainly some periods where the tears are focused more on. So definitely in the Theresa May years when she was prime minister, you would often get these colorful details in certain long reads saying she's shedding tears. She's also seen, you know, shedding tears, as you say, in the exit and so forth. And I think, do you think sometimes definitely those around Theresa May found the obsession with did she cry in a meeting, something that would not be asked of male politicians in

the way it was sometimes asked of senior female politicians. But that also goes to why I think Rachael Reeves will, you know, these things happen you just got to move on. It's not something that she would have wanted to happen because to Kitty's point it does just make it a bit harder unfortunately to then get the respect and to be taken seriously and have your male colleagues not say you're overly emotional so they can't say certain things to you. So it's always the thing that people want to avoid. And then I think the other thing is certainly more generally, I think female politicians,

when it comes to their wardrobe and so forth, get a bit more of a focus than men. But ultimately, if a senior Labour politician was crying this week and they were on the wrong end of the welfare rebellion in terms of who came out on top, it's gonna make front page news. Kitty, there is this kind of push for politicians to be human, isn't there? You know, I'm thinking, you know, that's often a positive that people say about Nigel Farage, for example. So does this show that Rachel Reeves is a real person, has real emotions?

Reeves is a real person, has real emotions. Of course and I think actually she's come out of this stronger for two reasons. One is she's shown the Labour Party who were frankly being absolutely vile about her in the last week or so after the welfare blaming Rachel Reeves for being the sort of original sin for the wealth of that, excuse me, so mem that she's human, but also she's shown the bond market that anyone else would be a disaster basically for UK borrowing costs. So I think she's stronger now than she ever was. And we heard Sikhiya Stama And we heard Sakiya Stama speaking and saying that she's in support of Rachel Reeves, that she is in place as the Chancellor and will be until the next election. Katie, what do you make of what he's said in support of her? Yeah, I mean, I think you do get a sense that he wasn't thinking when he didn't back her in the moment in that session, and he's had to come out and shore her up. So I do think I agree with Kitty in the sense,

Rachel Reeves' position, Labour have had a warning through the bond markets of what might happen if they really were to keep pushing. And also they aren't to make the sums add up. If you know, you now need to find this money for welfare because they're not saving the money there, so where's it going to come from? Difficult decisions are looming, and it feels as though the markets think Rachel Reeves is best place to do it even if some Labour MPs disagree. Keir Starmer's back to for many years to come. I still don't think this is the, if she could pick a way to have shored a position up, I don't think she would have picked this one. But the net result is probably better than it was a few days ago for her. Just finally, do you think there is a bit of a lack of understanding about

the way that, you know, I can speak personally from this, you know, when I get very frustrated, I get tears, you know, and do you think that there is, Katie, a bit of a lack of understanding of why women cry, the circumstances in which they cry? I don't know, it's tricky. I mean, I think you just have to sometimes, maybe I'm going to sound too sceptical for my age, you have to deal with the world you live in and unfortunately often when men can cast women off as being overly emotional, which might come down to a lack of understanding, it can make it a bit tougher to then be heard in other periods. So it's navigating the workplace, I think, does mean that maybe a lack of understanding,

but certainly crying in public rarely, I think, in the short term at least, helps women. Okay, Katie Valls and Kitty Donaldson, thank you very much. And of course, do get in touch with your thoughts on this. We're on 84844 or you can WhatsApp on 03 700 100 444. Now, how much do you think about where the clothes in your wardrobe have come from? Does the environment play on your mind when you think about your fashion choice?

I think it's fair to say that these questions are a constant concern for our next guest, perhaps even an obsession. Amy Powney is the fashion designer best known for being the creative director at Mother of Pearl for 10 years until she left to set up her own label, Akin, early this year. Well Amy's mission to create sustainable clothing line was explored in the documentary Fashion Reimagined which saw her trace clothes from field to runway and really cemented

her as an authority on this within the wider industry and I'm delighted to say that Amy is with me in the Womens Isle studio. Thanks very much for coming in Amy. Thank you for having me. So let's go back to the beginning. Where did your love of clothes initially come from? People ask me this a lot actually and I mean essentially as a child I was just super passionate about creating, I was creative, all I ever wanted to do was art and design, my favourite time was crafting with my mum. But fashion specifically, ironically came from the fact that growing up we were actually kind of incredibly, we had a very low income,

we lived in a caravan, we didn't have water electricity for a lot. So I didn't have the coolest clothes at school and it was the bane of my life at the time as a teenager. So I think it was like a fusion actually of my passion for creativity and textiles and you know kind of the love for that and actually just the obsession with subcultures and kind of your status in the world based on how you you know presented yourself and the pros and cons of that and the negativity it brought me in my in my youth actually kind of gave me my obsession with them with fashion which has changed today has gone more back to creativity but yeah that's how I ended up ended up being a designer. So you talk about the negativity what do you mean there was criticism for what you're wearing when you're a kid? Yeah I mean you know I

grew up I was different I guess and you know that's're a kid? Yeah, I mean, you know, I grew up, I was different, I guess, and you know, that's always a subject of to be, I guess, pulled out from the crowd. But yeah, you know, growing up, you know, it was Spice Girls and everybody's wearing, you know, three stripe, Adidas tracksuit bottoms and you know, and I just couldn't, we couldn't afford them, my parents couldn't afford them. So yes, it was, you know, the running joke when you're at school with kind of hand-me-downs on or kind of, you know, non-branded clothes or like the fake, but you know, the two stripes. That was the real dark moments where it was like so obvious that, you know, you were trying, but you know, you couldn't have it.

So yeah. Oh, and kids can be cruel about it. Kids are very cruel. Yeah, what all the kids were. And it was your parents and your upbringing that kind of gave you this push towards sustainability and thinking about the environment? Yeah, people also just assume, I guess, grow up in a caravan, off-grid, no water, no electricity, therefore sustainable human being. But actually, ironically at the time, it was like the bane

of my life as well. But I think it runs just so much deeper than that. Actually, it's like form from respect, because I think as a kid, you know, I worked on the farms the way my parents worked on the farms. You know, I was cutting cabbage in the field at 7am, like in my teens. And you know, we worked at the bottom of the supply chain. My father actually still runs the Monster Munch machine at Walker's Crisp Factory. And you know, so I guess it's just a deep respect of working class people and supply chains.

And the environmental side, we grew up without the water, electricity, et cetera, but it was really just the appreciation when I got it in my adult life. Even today, flicking on a switch and the lights coming on, it still hasn't left me that that's a privilege. And I know in certain countries, it's still a privilege. And so I think it's just a deep found respect for the resources that we have, that

we use and for the people that, you know, are at the bottom of supply chains or through supply chains in any form. It's just a deep found respect for them and therefore like whatever industry I got into, I think if I was to crack open the behind the scenes and uncover what you uncover in the fashion industry, I think it would have just applied the same passion and narrative. It is quite remarkable then that you ended up in the fashion industry, this very high-end luxury world and it was 2017 wasn't it that things kind of changed for you because it was then you won the British Fashion Council and Vogue Designer Fashion Fund and you used

that money to launch No Frills which was part of Mother of Pearl but really looked at sustainable fashion and you did the documentary Fashion Reimagined as I mentioned. A fascinating watch I have to say. What was that experience like for you? Yeah, I mean so the film was actually just the director Becky Hutner, she was actually filming me as I won the Vogue award, that was her job, she worked for a production company at the time, and she was kind of grappling in her own life, in her own industry, with waste and sustainability and how she could be better, and then she just met

me and was like, light bulb moment, I'm going to film you, and I sort of very naively said, sure, and had no idea it would become a feature documentary and even makes sentiments which was incredible all kind of you know due to her but you as a viewer when you're watching that documentary are watching me for the very first time on that journey trying just to get to the bottom of my supply chain I mean I thought surely how hard can this be like I want to use cotton I want to meet the cotton farmers or the pickers like and I want and we were trying to piece the chain together like like link the chain back up. And you were literally watching me in that documentary trying to do that firsthand.

It was not staged. And at the time I was learning all about sustainability and fashion and what that even meant as well. So you really, that was five, actually my daughter was born at the end of the film and she's five now. So that film was like, started 10 years ago, was filmed over the course of about five years. And then in the latter five years, apart from juggling being a parent, which is epic, I've learned obviously even more since then. And have things improved, do you think? Because it was, you know, you did in the documentaries, you said find it really hard to find out actually

where things were coming from. Yeah. There's pros and cons and things have changed a lot. The world has changed a lot. The pros are in the documentary, you actually see me go to me, there's a giant fabric fair in Paris called Premiere Vision. And it's like where all kind of raw material suppliers turn up. It's like an airplane kind of hanger style, just fabric after fabric. And in the documentary, you see us going there and just start talking to suppliers and everybody looks at us like we're completely insane. And my colleague Chloe, at the time, we just sort of drowned ourselves in a giant glass of red wine after two days thinking how on earth, if they can't tell us, how are we going to get past them? And I'm pleased to say now,

if you go and speak to many suppliers, the kind of the back end of the fashion industry has been cracked open and it is I'm here today right and the topic is now widely discussed so I'm pleased to say suppliers have kind of had to start kind of or wanted to depending on who they are kind of crack that open so it's an easier conversation. However at the moment given the climate of the industry and the world and everything that's going on, all the sustainability policies are being just pulled back. I think what was this momentum train that was going, the film came out at this perfect moment where the industry was starting to make shifts, the public knowledge was becoming

very aware of what the impact fashion has on the planet and the momentum was driving. I have to say it's kind of stopped at the moment which is slightly depressing. So you've launched your own label. What are you kind of trying to do with that? And how do you want it to be different? Because there are so many fashion brands out there. Yeah. I mean my ultimate vision essentially is... My number one, like I don't see myself

as a designer as like being about me, which is why a kin is called a kin and it's not called Amy Powney. I like, I've always seen myself as like a service to women that I just want to give women their like best final layer to go out into this world to be who they want to be and give them confidence and joy. And that remains there. But no one is doing that and celebrating, you know, kind of making incredible clothing for women in incredible quality, you know, the craftsmanship and the product and then

making sure that it's completely ethical and sustainable. There's very, very few brands marrying the two up there and we get a lot of kickback in the industry about, you know, oh but it's too hard it's too difficult you know sustainability is too hard and actually I'm just case in point I want to prove that there's absolutely no reason that we can't make women feel amazing give them what they want and do this in a way that essentially you know doesn't impact the ultimate mother earth and also all the women in the supply chain so yeah. But I mean it is it is pricey.

You know, it's not the kind of, it's not a high, you know, your normal high street, roughly 400 pounds for a jumper, 900 pounds for a coat. I mean, that's not a typical thing that, coming from your background, we know that people can't afford that. I know, and it's a really good question, one that digs very deep into my soul.

There's multiple reasons for it and the main reason I can tell you is just an economic one which essentially is if I want to use those fibers at the scale that my brand is which is small like these are the price points we have to pay so when we're buying from mills and suppliers when you buy in small quantities the price is high when we're manufacturing in such a you know atilio style we make a lot of stuff in house we do a lot of it with really independent people in Portugal you know if you're paying for quality and craft at that level where we're paying people correctly paying the farmers correctly

paying the people correct that's the price you have to pay but that must frustrate you that then you know you're most women just can't yeah just can't afford to buy that well even if they want to what i will say though is if you're a massive brand, even at high street level, I mean I'm not going down to the very very fast fashion, like you can't make a t-shirt for a pound and it'd be okay, but the ones that are kind of in the mid price point on the high street, they absolutely can be doing this because they have the power and the scale and the ability to work with the manufacturers and do this, that I'm just independent and therefore that's why the prices are high, but there is no reason that some of the bigger ones cannot change this. You should be able

to have clothes made in a better way at the prices that High Street, I wouldn't say that yeah the mid High Street can put out there. I've got, I know you've got kids, I've got a little boy, it's pretty difficult to buy clothes that are you know ethical for children because that you know he's getting through them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you do with your children? What do you buy them? Oh, just vintage. It's amazing. I actually before vintage, a couple of friends of mine launched

a kind of resale for kids work called Dota, We Are Dutta and so I used to just shop there and that ended very sadly as lots of independents are. But Vint is just like this amazing place where you can and you don't feel guilty about buying kind of high street product because obviously it's already in the system and what's really incredible about a platform like that is you know whoever bought let's say the first Zara product that's on there they bought it first Virgin and then they're putting it on there they obviously gave you know the first Zara product that's on there, they bought it first Virgin and then they're putting it on there. They obviously gave, you know, Mr. Zara the money. But once it goes down there and it stays in circular between peer to peer,

I'm just giving my money to you. And then I might sell it back on and someone's giving my money to me. It keeps it with the people and takes it away from the people at the top. So I'm really passionate about retail for kids. Yeah. And of course, we should mention there are lots of secondhand websites, charity shops, all those sorts of things where you can do... And actually as a mother I'm sure you know this too, just the community, we just pass things around all the time. So what do you think, if there was one kind of key thing that needs to change in terms of what

is happening within the industry? What would that be? It's a really multi-layered question, but I mean number one, legislation, and I'm a really real advocate for that because look, I change because I have empathy and the desire to do the right thing. There are people in power as we know that don't have the same moral compass, you know, so we need to push them by legislation. That is also very complex. And the thing I just say to everybody listening is like these people making these decisions in power across industries and specifically in ours, only here because we fund them.

And the vote that we have with our pound and our money and where you put your money is the most powerful thing that we have. And I think whilst I and lots of other people in my industry are working on change and legislative change, the best thing that you can do is just give your money to the right people. I've got to ask you why you're here about Dame Anna Wintour. She was stepping back from Vogue's editor in chief role after 37 years. She will remain publisher at Condé Nast, she'll remain as the Chief Content Officer there. What was your reaction to that news?

I think it's great. Obviously she's an icon and it's been amazing, but the industry needs change. The industry needs reform. She did that in many ways in her time, but I think we're entering an entirely new era of humanity and the world and I think it's great to shake things up. It'll be interesting to see where it goes. And also crying, we've been talking about crying and I can tell you that we have had a lot of comments in it. What do you think about kind of that, you know, when your emotion gets you might be in a public place? Are you someone who has that? I have the inability to stop crying, to not be able to cry. Actually I had, I exited Mother

of Pearl and it was a very intense process and I had quite a few traumatic things happen in my life at the same time. And also becoming a kind of, after the film, people just started like wheeling me out as the woman that was going to fix everything. And I just thought the film would be a source of inspiration for everybody. But it became very kind of quickly became very apparent to me that I was just the person that people had like earmarked as the goal that's going to save the industry. And as a new mother, having that pressure, I mean, my to do list at that time was like, you know, feed the kids, pick them up from school, sort that nursery thing out, design the next collection, make sure the stuff are

okay, sort out that VAT return, you know, like all the things, any way of juggling, and then save the world, you know. And I literally just had this like overwhelming like feeling of it's all on me, you know, how am I going to do this? How am I going to sort this out? And I got very, very emotional that time, plus watching, you know, walls roll out in the world, like it affects me very deeply. I had a tragedy in my own life.

And I remember there was a period of time where I got very angry, actually. I got very angry because I'd become this climate activist by default. I was on the stage in front of like so many people and people were asking me questions like, what are you going to do next to like fix the fashion industry? And I was like, paralyzed thinking, you thinking, how am I going to do this? And I went through this period of time actually where I just could not stop crying. And I was doing it in public places. It was often on stage.

And at one point, I remember one of them, I literally, I couldn't, you know that crying where you're like, and you couldn't even stop it. And I was like, and it's so been so demonized to show your emotions in a corporate space of some kind, because men build the world and emotions have obviously been something that we've put as a weakness. And actually, I just think, bring back the cry and bring back the emotion, women and leadership should be able to show their emotions. I think it's a superpower. I think it's a strength. I think it unites people. I think it's a form of communication that we have stopped placing in boardrooms or in professional situations. And I think we need more women in equal positions and we need to bring back crying.

Amy, that was so well said. Thank you so much for sharing that. Amy Powney, thank you very much for joining us. Well let's have a listen to some of the comments that you've been sending in about crying. This one here, personally, while it was awful to see her so upset talking about Rachel Reeves, my heart went out to her. I actually find it quite refreshing to see someone behave like a real human being in PMQs. We're so used to seeing this awful adversarial macho environment that it's easy to forget that the Commons is made up of real people with real lives and feelings.

It was such a shame that Kemi Badenok chose to use someone's clear and obvious distress to attempt to score a political point she could have handled it so differently. That's the view of that person. Obviously, Kemi Badenok isn't here to talk about what she said. This other one here says, I'm so shocked that all of your commentators this morning seem to suggest that being emotional is a bad thing. Surely the fact that Reeves has shown she has feelings and can react tells us that she is empathetic and can

understand how the actions of politicians can hurt people. Being emotional is not a bad thing this person said. Thanks very much for all your comments. Do keep them coming in. We're on 848. She was the epitome of elegance. She was the epitome of mystery, intrigue and beauty. One of the 20th century's most amazing characters, a Hollywood sex symbol whose story you might think you already know. Hedy Lamarr, the film star. But there's another side to her story. She was an inventor at heart.

Her scientific contribution, no other star has been able to match. We really should put her into the limelight she deserves. From the BBC World Service, untold legends, Hedy Lamarr. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Four four. Just time to tell you that it's listener week next month where you decide what we talk about here on Women's Hour. So have you got a question that's impacting you

and you'd like an expert to answer whether it's about family dynamics, work, relationships or anything else we want to hear from you. So get in touch all the usual ways. It's the usual text number 84844 social media at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us of course through our website. Now the government's long awaited NHS 10 year health plan is out today to make the NHS in England fit for the future, the plan focuses on three big shifts. Moving care from hospitals to communities, making better use of technology and preventing sickness, not just treating it.

Well, we want to talk this morning about what the priorities for women should be to achieve better health outcomes. We'll discuss how policy decisions, clinical expertise and technological advances could or should come together to deliver what women want and need from this plan. So to discuss all this, I'm joined by Danielle Jeffries, Senior Analyst at the King's Fund, which is an independent think tank working to improve health and care across England. Also, Lara Lewington, technology journalist and author of a new book Hacking Humanity, How Technology Can Save Your Life and Your Health and also Rani Thacker, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Thanks so much to

you all for coming in. Rani, can I start with you? So this plan, 150 pages, I'm guessing you haven't read it all. What's your initial reaction to what you've seen so far about the plan? So you're absolutely right. I haven't yet read the 150 pages but we feel as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists that this is a step in the right direction. We support the 10-year health plan which focuses, as you quite rightly said, on preventing poor health, harnessing technology and shifting care from hospitals to community. However, in the UK, we know that there's a significant gender health gap that really is costing women's

years of life and good health. And more worryingly, the progress on closing this gap has been too slow. Without really focusing on what 51% of the population needs, women may continue to be dismissed, diagnosed too slowly, wait for too long for care, something that I see in my day-to-day practice and experience outcomes. So while we welcome this and we are really happy to work with the government to ensure that this is implemented, we think there's a need to refresh the women's health strategy and move towards an NHS that supports and improves women's health throughout their life course. But with that we need a well-supported women's health workforce.

So given your experience there as you said dealing with women day in day out, what's their biggest priority for what needs to change? So, I mean if I see my patients every day they are on waiting lists as they are waiting to access care and we in fact did a survey of women and they said that almost half, 46% told us that they're finding it very difficult to access the care that they need. A study that we did showed that as women are waiting to come to secondary care, as they are sitting waiting for their appointments, their symptoms are getting worse. They are ending up going to A&E. And as healthcare professionals, from my point of view view we feel really helpless about this situation. So the waiting lists are going up, gynaecology has been

most affected of all specialties. Lara can we come to you, the role of technology is being seen as a big part of this change. The Health Secretary, Wes Streating, wrote in The Guardian today, science is on our side, revolution in genomics, AI, machine learning and big data offers a golden opportunity to deliver better care for all patients and better value for taxpayers. So is it and will technology really revolutionise the way the NHS works? I think it can, I don't think it can necessarily happen overnight. We have the science and technology as you've

just stated, emerging. Bringing them to a reality is obviously a much harder call. There are a lot of challenges in the way. But right now we have a very clear problem. In England, women are spending 25% of their lives in poor health. For men, that's 20%. And technology does hold the solution for some of this. And we're at this point where we can pull together more genetic information, lifestyle data and our understanding of disease to really understand more about risk, therefore prediction and potentially prevention. Of course people are still going to get sick.

As much as anyone might like to switch here from a sick care to a health care system, as it's often put, we can't prevent all illness, but technology is driving us to understand more about what causes it. So practically then we're talking about AI speeding up things like note-taking. Anything else that's caught your eye in the plan? So much and I suppose the important thing to acknowledge here is that AI isn't just one thing. It encapsulates a broad spectrum of ideas. So it can be for analytics, say a trial that was happening in perinatal women to assess for depression by looking at slight changes beneath the skin on the

face, blood flow, small movements that the human eye couldn't see because this is a group of people with very high rates of depression and it allows the quantifying of it. So not just asking someone how they feel, but actually really being able to quantify if they seem to be getting better or worse. So all the onset of it, of course. There's also in things like breast cancer, we can use AI as an extra set of eyes for radiologists. And I mean, later this year, there's going to be a trial that during breast cancer surgery can even look to check that all of the cancer is being removed and whether or not it's spread to the lymph nodes to potentially avoid follow-up surgery. Plus there are, like

you mentioned, platforms like note-taking, which actually just help a doctor to do the more human bit. And that's the hope here, that technology can augment the doctors. Yeah, and it seems very simple but could potentially make a big difference. Danielle, if I can bring to do the more human bit. And that's the hope here that technology can augment the doctors. Yeah, and this seems very simple, but could potentially make a big difference. Danielle, if I can bring you in, you're from the King's Fund, an independent think tank working to improve health and care across England. So we've been asking our listeners for the one thing that could really improve the NHS for women. I'll mention some of those in a moment, but I just wonder what you think is that key thing that could really make a difference here?

So I think the key thing for women in this plan is for it to enable women to feel heard and empowered. So often we hear from women and they feel like they aren't listened to when it comes to healthcare providers from clinicians. So hopefully some of the shifts in this plan will help create a bit more autonomy, a bit more control over the healthcare that women receive. So for example, shifting to care to community will help women get appointments when it's more convenient for them, able to schedule appointments around their work commitments, their childcare commitments. So often women are caregivers to elderly relatives.

So it's so important that healthcare is accessible for women. And it's also so important for technology to empower women as well. So, for example, something as simple as having your data, your appointments, your diagnostic tests available in the NHS app could help game change women's lives who have long-term conditions or unable to manage their conditions via emails or phone calls or letters which can be really burdensome for women. So it's important that anything that happens in this plan is designed with women, women in mind, patients at the front of it. It sounds like a lot of the stuff you're talking about is kind of the practical,

the minutiae almost, not the actual treatment. Yeah, it's about how the NHS communicates and works with women and communities. So it's not just about how services are received, it's how women experience those services day to day. Dani, I was just talking about the app there, Laura. There are concerns, of course, about giving our information out and of course this is the most private of information So should we be concerned about that? It is and this is the question that it always comes to in every conversation

I have about this you use the word empowerment which I think is really important here and part of that empowerment comes from Understanding how our data is protected and I think there are two sides to this as well First of all, there's mass collection of anonymised data, which we can have enormous findings from. What we can learn from that is what can truly drive transformation in healthcare. So people need to feel comfortable with who they are giving their data to and to what ends. And I know researchers showed that people are far happier to give it to the NHS than

they are to a tech company. It's not just a matter of trust. It's also who is benefiting from that data. But there's also in this case, the matter of actually your personal data because if you can have all your healthcare records in one place, it's obviously a lot easier to access. Our data is of course now being stored in hospitals and by doctors. So it's not a new idea that our data is going to be stored on any computer system and obviously any medical data is going through incredibly regulated systems and we and we would hope that it is safe. We've got so many comments coming in I just want to read a couple

out. Alexandra says the NHS must improve maternity care for women birth is one of the most important epic things women go through but too many women have terrible birth stories often including too much intervention that they don't want but they're not listened to. And another one here, why are there so few specialist clinics for women going through menopause? I'm sure if men had to go through it there would be one in every city. This person goes on to say, I lost my mum and my sister, both took their own lives. I'm so sorry to hear that. They were both 45 and suffering from gynae problems. Rani, can I bring you in here? You are

a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist yourself. This is an incredibly important issue to our listeners that these women's issues are listened to. women's issues are it listened to? You're absolutely right and we need to find solutions to this. We have the 10-year health plan but we need to think about how it's going to be implemented. So I do think the government needs to focus on bringing down waiting lists. We know that currently about three-fourth of a million women are waiting. And as I said earlier, the condition is getting worse. It is affecting their mental health as well. So you know, I agree that there is an issue.

What are the solutions? Well, one of the things that can be done is ensure that we have women's health hubs in various parts of the country. This is one of the plans. This will ensure that the right patient is seen in the right place by the right person. This will enable women to get the care they need earlier and closer to home, increase services that women can access in the community, reduce the number of appointments that women need

and this will improve the NHS efficacy and also result in fewer women needing to access emergency services. So we are out there ready to help, wanting to help. Danielle, we're talking about what our listeners have been saying and patient feedback in fact is one of the things in the plan that will be more prominent and then could impact patient outcomes. What do you think about that? Yes, so we've heard the government is going to trial patients giving feedback to maternity services and then that influencing whether or not they get full payments, which is good to hear that they're taking patient feedback really

seriously and they're going to value it. I think there's still a few questions about how they'll work in practice because we need to be careful how we incentivize payment systems. So for example if you don't do it right you have negative feedback loops where a woman has a negative experience in a maternity service, that means that hospital doesn't get the money it needs to improve, staff morale goes down and then you end up with worse services. So you're saying that the funding could directly be linked to the patient's responses? So that's one thing they're thinking about piloting, yeah.

But it is of course important that a patient can say when something's right or wrong. Absolutely, I think it's key part of quality care is having experiences, listening to women feel like they can say when they need a second opinion, they need different services. So I think that's a key part of it is just doing it the right way in a way that actually empowers women rather than disincentivising good work. Just briefly from all of you if you can, Danielle let's start with you. How hopeful are you that these changes will actually be made? So I'm hopeful with the messages in the plan. So they're all the right messages,

all the right key things. They're actually all the things we've been saying for the last few decades. My hope is that the plan actually goes far enough. So that's my main worry that this isn't enough to actually radically transform the NHS, considering how much crisis it is. Laura, to you. I am a tech optimist. I spent the last 18 months living and breathing the idea that I think we're going to see a transformation in healthcare.

But it's hard to put an exact time on that, even if you call it 10 years, because there are challenges. One of the things I often hear being very deeply embedded in the health tech community is this idea of pilotitis. Somebody referred to the fact there's more pilots in the NHS than there are for British Airways, other airlines are available. There are a lot of pilots, incredibly successful ones even, and it doesn't mean that they result in rollouts. So we've got to be realistic about how much money there is, what we can do, the technology is existing, the technology is evolving, the technology will be amazing. It doesn't mean that everyone gets their hands on it immediately, it'll take time. And Rani, for you, what's your optimism that these changes will be made? So we support the 10-year workforce, 10-year health plan but along with that

we need to remember it needs to be cross-government focus. We have seen too many plans short term which do not actually get implemented. As healthcare workers we are really supportive of this and we want to work along with the government to ensure that it is put into action. Action is what we need now. We've got to stop admiring this problem. Okay, thank you to all of you, to Rani, to Lara and to Danielle and I should just mention that the Conservative MP and Shadow Health Secretary Edward Argar said that the NHS needed reform, not just more cash, and warned that Labour's plan had

to be real and deliverable for patients. Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Ed Davies said the whole 10-year NHS strategy would be a castle built on sand unless ministers tackled what he described as a crisis in social care. Another of your comments here, this one from Carrie who says women's health care will be improved when all GPs specialise in women's health rather than having if you're lucky one GP who specialises in it she goes on to say 50% of your patients isn't a speciality, it's essential healthcare. It will also be improved when women's pain and problems are believed and not normalised and when women's health is given the same amount of research and funding as men's. Thank you very much for

your comments on that. Do keep them coming in on 84844. Now to my next guest, Esther Freud, the novelist, has just brought out her ninth work. It's called My Sister and Other Lovers and it revisits characters from Esther's first book, Hideous Kinky, which was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. Well in this latest novel, the sisters Lucy and Bea come of age and try to come to terms with their past. Esther has joined me in the studio. Thanks very much for coming in. Thank you. It's lovely to be here. So how much of this book is based on your own life? It is fiction?

Yes, it's fiction. It's a very tricky question to answer because I love to work with stories that feel as if they're my own stories. So I might take an idea that has a seed in my own life and kind of work it into a story that has enough sort of gripping elements to engage the reader. Do you know by the time I finish the process I'm actually unsure myself how much is true and how much isn't. But for this book, I think probably it's maybe drawing more on my life than certainly my last few books have. It's a very sort of compelling idea for a novel when I was finishing my last book. But when it came to it, I think this happened to a lot of writers during COVID, that the idea didn't have enough kind of energy

behind it to kind of blot out the huge story that was going on in the world. So I started to write some short stories as a way of just keeping writing without committing to any particular story I was telling. And after a little while, quite a while as it turned out, I had this collection of short stories and I was calling it Desire and Other Stories, partly because threaded through this book, there's music. And the first story, as it was then and now chapter, was based around Bob Dylan's album Desire. The two sisters are travelling hitchhiking through Ireland with their mother when they

find themselves staying in a house where the only record is Desire and they play it over and over again. Anyway I finished this book, I was reading through it, I was thinking about it and it struck me that I didn't really feel it completely held its own. Desire and other stories, what does that even mean? And I thought what's this about or what could it be about? And I sent my sister, my real life sister, Bella, a text and I said, what about my sister and other lovers? And she said, yes. And what was frustrating about being a writer is sometimes you get the idea for your novel

about two years into writing it and that's what happened to me. And then I kind of started again and I took the elements from the stories that really resonated. There are a lot of lovers through the lives of both Lucy and Bea because it runs from teenage right through to their sort of late 30s. But undercutting all these lovers is really the kind of complicated, loving and difficult relationship they have with each other. It's interesting having a sister, isn't it? I've got a sister too and now our

relationship has changed over the years, you know, do you find that it evolves and develops? Absolutely. It changes from week to week sometimes. And that's really what I wanted to show, that at the beginning of the book, Lucy is taking on the younger sister role, and I'm very interested in birth order and the way it sort of forms your character to some degree. And then we see her become the only child, the oldest child left at home, and how she sort of fills that space, even though she's dreaded it and feared it. And then she has to kind of find her way of being her own person, but also keeping both her mother and her sister onside, which is very important to her. We're talking about family. It's worth mentioning for listeners who don't know, might be wondering about your name. You have some very famous men in your family. Your father was the painter

Lucian Freud, your great-grandfather, the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. But it is the women, isn't it, in your family who have inspired your writing? Yes, I would say in the main, I think of my family as being very women-centered. People who don't know me, they think of the men, and that's the connection they make. But I was brought up with sisters, with stepsisters, half-sisters, a full sister, in a world of women. And the men, I always felt slightly sorry for the men. They were kind of hovering on the outskirts. So my conception of my family is very much this sort of powerful and inspiring women and they have definitely threaded their way through my books.

And I mentioned Hylia's Kinky, it was that that was when we kind of first met Lucy and Bea. So is this a sequel? It became a sequel. I realised quite early on that it could be one because I was using quite early on that it could be one because I was using the name B and giving the narrator no name as in the original book in the film She's Called Lucy which seemed just the right name for her. But in order to let the characters really fly and follow their own journey and have it be less autobiographical, I gave them different names. I kept changing their names and actually me and my sister became very close over the writing of this book because she is a very

good reader and when I'd finished a first full draft I showed it to her and she said, oh god, what is it with all these ridiculous flowery names? Just give them their right names. Own it as a sequel, it's fine. And at that point it was fine, whereas it might have hemmed me in before, feeling I had to stick with the expectations maybe of my readers. But by that time I'd given them full rein and then I pulled them back in and I did another draft where I really tied them in to the traumas of their childhood, the excitements and adventures of their childhood. And it really made sense of the difficulties and challenges that they face later on, when they're trying to lead maybe more conventional lives.

You mentioned Bob Dylan. There is quite a theme of music as well, isn't there, in the book? 70s music. Was that kind of important to you that that was in there? Well when I was writing the stories I found it a really useful way in and sometimes I would remember a particular incident that I'd wanted to write about and it was often something I'd tried to write about in the past and not found a way in. And then particularly in one of the early stories where I remembered a certain summer of my childhood where Elvis died and I thought, ah, I could get into that story through the death of Elvis. And then later listening to Millie Jackson singing about being in a relationship, a sort of threesome

relationship of infidelity, et cetera, and these young women lying on the floor sort of singing, if loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right. And these young women lying on the floor sort of singing, if loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right. And it just brought me right back into the moment. And I love using things like that as the sort of prompts and tools for my writing. And I want to hear a bit of the book if you want my reading some. Particularly, they're talking about music, aren't they? Listening to music. Absolutely. Yes, this section they are listening to desire. So this is quite early on in the book and it's when the narrator Lucy is 14 and her sister Bea is 16 and is about to leave home. I sat with Bea on

the daybed and we listened over and over to desire, startling when the wind rattled the house, grateful to find it wasn't Xavier, returned. When the first side of the record ended, we let the hiss and crackle of it play on, the small, regular bump as it rotated, until one of us got up and flipped it round. We ate the salmon with potatoes, and afterwards by candlelight, lay down on what were now our daybeds, to mourn the lost hopes of the boxer hurricane, languishing in jail, and the death of the gangster Joey, gunned down in a clam bar in New York. Bea and I mouthed, oh sister, to each other and sang along to one more cup of coffee, howling like hyenas rising above the wind.

The next morning the sky was clear. Small breezes shuddered, the windows and gulls called as they swept by. I stood up and stretched, and before I'd had a chance to turn, Bea clicked the record player on and let the needle drop. Hurricane began again, his story so familiar by now I could have testified on his behalf in court, and to avoid the painful unwinding of his fate, I pulled my clothes on and walked up onto the hill. The grass was short and scattered with droppings, and as I stood, eyes closed, the sun on my face, I wondered if the hurricane was still in prison and hoped to God he was not. Lucy, Lucy, be warbled as she ran towards me, and picking up speed she raced across

the field, her hair streaming, pinching me as she passed. I followed, my own hair streaming, bursting as I'd always been to catch her up." It's a fantastic part of the book. You're working, if you wouldn't mind briefly telling me you're working on something very different now though. Yes. Well, when I finished this book, and even though people say to me, oh, I just read your book, it made me laugh, it's so zipped by in a minute, it actually was a very intense period of work over about three years. And when I finished it, even though I had all sorts of other ideas planned, I started writing a children's book. Funnily enough though,

I've just realized it is about two sisters, one of them who has no voice and the other one hears what she's saying anyway and speaks for her. But that's where the similarities end because they're on a mission to save not just their father but the world. Whenever complications arise, they can just fly off to wherever they need and get help from unusual animals that help them on their way. It's been so lovely to talk to you Esther Freud. Thank you very much indeed for coming in. Thank you. I just want to bring you a couple more comments. We were talking about Rachel Reeves crying.

This one here says, why are women's tears seen as this dreadful thing? But if a man is having an emotional or angry outburst, that's seen as powerful. Feels like entrenched misogyny to me and another. As a man under huge work pressure, I sit alone, stare at the wall with a very large glass of whiskey. Crying could have been a better way of dealing with it. Thank you so much for all your comments. Don't forget to join Woman's Hour tomorrow at 10. We'll be speaking to the film director of Bend It Like Beckham

on their latest adventure. Thank you very much for listening. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, it's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of Lady Swindlers. Here we are in cell number one. I'm just shutting us in Ross. Wow! Following in the footsteps of some all new criminals. Can you take me down to the other end of Baker Street please? Certainly, jump in.

Thank you. Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men. This is a story of working class women trying to get by. This is survival. Lady Swindlers Season 2 with Lucy Worsley from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds. She was the epitome of elegance. She was the epitome of mystery, intrigue, and beauty. One of the 20th century's most amazing characters, a Hollywood sex symbol whose story you might think you already know.

Hedy Lamarr, the film star. But there's another side to her story. She was an inventor at heart. Her scientific contribution, no other star has been able to match. We really should put her into the limelight she deserves. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hedy Lamarr. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.