Woman's Hour - Disability and domestic abuse, Maternity care failings, Authors Labour MP Yuan Yang and Sanam Mahloudji, Gossiping

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to make further cuts to welfare benefits and government departments when she speaks in Parliament later. The government already announced big welfare spending reductions last week - but the Chancellor's been told by the Office For Budget Responsibility her reforms to the system won't save as much as planned. Now dozens of women’s organisations have written to Rachel Reeves urging her rethink plans for disability benefit cuts over fears it will remove a 'vital lifeline' for victims of abuse. Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson Director of the Women's Budget Group and Angie Airlie, Chief Executive of Stay Safe East speak to Clare McDonnell.In this week’s Women’s Prize discussion, Clare hears from two authors about the debut books they’ve had long-listed for this year’s prestigious literary prize. Sanam Mahloudji’s novel, The Persians, tells the story of the Valiat family from the perspective of five women from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s. And Labour MP Yuan Yang’s non-fiction book, Private Revolutions, explores the lives of four women born in China in the 1980s and 90s during a time of rapid change in society. It's emerged that an NHS trust criticised over the avoidable death of a baby was paid £2m for providing good maternity care. It's the latest in a series of developments and failings which have led to calls for a national inquiry into maternity care. It’s alleged that hospital trusts are failing to learn from past mistakes and failing to implement improvement recommendations. The BBC’s Social Affairs Correspondent Michael Buchanan tells Clare what grieving parents want to happen.Do you enjoy a bit of gossip? The thrill of being the first to hear something and sharing it, or the irresistible urge to be let into the lives of others? What’s the difference between idle gossip and hurtful criticism behind someone’s back, do women gossip as much as men and can gossip be used to keep women safe? American journalist Kelsey McKinney joins Clare from the US to discuss her new book, You Didn't Hear This From Me: Notes on the Art of Gossip.Presenter: Clare McDonnell Producer: Claire Fox

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Claire MacDonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. This morning, how did an NHS trust found to be responsible for the death of a weak old baby get paid £2 million for good maternity care? Well, just last week a coroner ruled that University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust contributed to Ida Locke's death. It's given some of the money it was awarded for claiming to have met safety standards. Back we will hear from the BBC journalist who uncovered this story.

Also it's our final discussion today with two of the finalists who've made it to the long list of the Women's Prize Literary Award. Both books are written by authors about their homeland, Iran and China respectively, exploring themes of power, family and secrets. Sanam Mellugi and Yuan Yang will join me in the studio. Here's a question. Gossip. Do you do it? Do you enjoy it? Are you thrilled when you are the first to hear a juicy titbit and can't wait to share it? Or maybe you take a different view. After all, gossip can often be weaponised and used as a way of gaining advantage and controlling others. American journalist Kelsey McKennie's book is all about gossip, so we'll

speak to her from the US and let me know this morning where you stand on gossip. Is it harmless fun or are you a little bit more Eleanor Roosevelt who once said, great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss event, small minds discuss people. You can text the programme, the number is 84844. Texts will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media we are at BBC Woman's Hour. You can of course email us through our website. Or you can send a WhatsApp message or voice note using this number, 03 700 100 444.

And that text number again, 100 444 and that text number again 8 4 8 4 4. But let's start this morning with a story related to the spring statement. The Chancellor Rachel Reeves will make that statement later and she's also set, we understand, to make further cuts to welfare benefits and government departments when she speaks in parliament later. The government already announced big welfare spending reductions last week but the Chancellor has been told by the Office for Budget Responsibility her reforms to the system won't save as much as planned and now dozens of women's organisations have written to Rachel Reeves

urging her to rethink her disability benefits cuts over fears it will remove a vital lifeline for victims of abuse. Let's talk this through with two of those people who signed that letter, Dr Mary Ann Stevenson, Director of the Women's Budget Group, welcome to the programme. Hello. And Angie Ailey, who is chief executive of Stay Safe East. It's a charity run by and for disabled people providing advocacy and support services to survivors of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and hate crime in London. Welcome to Womza. Thank you. Good morning, Claire. Now, Mary Ann,

let's start with you. There's a lot of women's organisations on this letter. We don't quite know what's going to be in the spring statement, but why have so many come forward to sign it? Well, we were really concerned about the announcements last week about cuts to disabled benefits for disabled people, and this is something that lots of disabled people's organisations have also raised concerns about. And we were concerned about rumours of further cuts to public services. These cuts will hurt disabled people, they will particularly hurt disabled women, women are the majority of disabled people, they're also the majority of people who care for disabled people and some benefits like carers allowance are linked to other people receiving disability benefits and we are concerned because these women have already been hit hardest by austerity

policies since 2010 so disabled women are about four thousand pounds a year worse off than they would have been had the system in 2010 stayed in place. So they can't afford further cuts. Yeah, I mean you say these funding cuts that you just outlined will undermine efforts to tackle child poverty, closing the gender pay gap, halving violence against women and girls. Why do you have such a pessimistic outlook? Well if you think about child poverty, there are large numbers of disabled people who have children.

Large numbers of families with disabled people in them are already living in poverty. So taking more money away from those families will make those families poorer. There's been a calculation done just today, I saw from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, that was suggesting that a family with a disabled person and a carer could lose up to a thousand pounds a month as a result of some of these changes if they're particularly badly hit. So that prevents action to tackle child poverty. But also we know that disabled women are more vulnerable to violence and abuse. It's harder for them to leave abusive relationships. If your abuser is also your carer, that makes things particularly hard.

And so taking away the money that those women receive puts them in an even more vulnerable situation. Let's bring in Angie on that point then. Angie, I know you are a charity working with and for disabled people. So tell us the broader view about what women are saying you and pick up that point from Mary Anne that if you're in that category already and then you are a victim of any kind of abuse, you're so much more vulnerable. What have you heard?

I think the overwhelming sense that I've heard since the Green Paper was published is fear, Claire. So there is an overwhelming sense that people are frightened because they don't know if they're going to get the support that they currently have in the future. And for those of our clients who are considering fleeing in the future, because as we know, it's not a simple person if somebody is disabled, it's not easy to flee domestic abuse. There is a real worry that they won't be able to cope if they don't have the financial backing to be able to support themselves going forwards. I think for both our clients and our staff there is a sense that it's disability is almost being treated as if it's a lifestyle choice. I think one of the things that's not being recognised is that very often disability actually relates to abuse.

So, for example, if you consider the proposals to limit the universal credit health top up for under 22 year olds, actually young people are the most vulnerable group for domestic abuse and often the mental health problems that they're experiencing actually relate to abuse and trauma and because there is a lack of sort of ongoing support services currently in terms of mental health support they're not able to process that trauma and therefore it becomes a damaging and debilitating condition. It's not a choice not to work. I mean I'm interested to read Angie that disabled people, disabled women rather, are nearly

twice as likely to experience economic abuse compared to non-disabled women. Why is that? Well actually disabled women are twice as likely to experience any form of domestic abuse and I think there's a multitude of reasons behind that. So for example, we know that abuse most times relates to a need for power and control by the perpetrator and unfortunately a woman with a disability is viewed as a more vulnerable victim and so therefore she's kind of seen as the perfect person to be groomed and to have control over but more than that I think that we see disabled people as people who are lacking kind of autonomy in terms of relationships often we view disabled people as sexless, so disabled people don't really receive good sex and

relationships education for example. So we're not equipping people with the tools to be able to understand that behaviours that they're experiencing in the home, whether that be from family or from a partner, are actually abusive. Mary Ann, what do you say to the government's line, and we've heard this from Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who basically says one in ten people of working age are now claiming a sickness or disability benefit. Our bill for that is going up exponentially compared to other countries and the country simply cannot afford it and that is why these cuts are being made. The system needs reform, the people who really need the money, this is what the government claim, will still get

it. What do you say to that? Well firstly, I mean one of the reasons we've got people claiming disability benefits is because of problems with the health system. So they're not able to get the treatment they need, whether that's a physical or mental health problem. You know, if you are waiting sometimes years, for example, for a hip replacement and are unable to work as a result, that's not a problem with the person waiting for the hip replacement, that's a problem with the person waiting for the hip replacement, that's a problem with the system.

If we look at the waiting list for child and adolescent mental health services and the failure to provide support for young people, those young people when they turn 18 are the people who we're seeing with the increase in claims for mental health problems. But if they had been provided support earlier on, they very well might not be in that situation. If we're thinking about ways of getting more disabled people into work, I mean, obviously that is very welcome, but you don't support people into work by cutting their benefits. Ultimately, and we can see this in the last day or so, as the Office for Budget Responsibility has suddenly said

that they don't believe Rachel Reeves' forecast in the amount of money will be saved and she's looking to save more money from Social Security. This isn't about supporting disabled people into work. This is about the government meeting its own arbitrary fiscal rules. And there are other ways to do that. You know, Tax Justice UK and the Patriotic Millionaires have made proposals for ways in which we could raise 60 billion pounds a year from wealth taxes and closing tax loopholes. You know, a 2% tax on wealth over 10 million pounds would raise 24 billion pounds a year. We don't need to make these cuts. Mary Anne, sorry, Angie, have you got examples you can give us of people

that have come to you and when we talk about people who are being abused and they are disabled who simply cannot leave or feel they cannot leave? There are many clients that we work with Claire who are trapped in abusive situations so sometimes we can't make people safe, we can only make people as safe as possible. So I've come onto the programme before to talk about the lack of accessible accommodation, but that's not the only barrier that people face. I actually carried out some research as part of my MA a few years ago into the impact of the welfare benefit reforms that the previous government made and it found decisively that fear of not being able to survive financially was a barrier to people leaving. So it does feel as though this approach by the government is out of step with their plans to halt violence

against women and girls to me. What would you say to that Mary-Anne, is that a concern of yours as well because I guess if people aren't, don't feel they are economically enfranchised, they're not economically independent, they're already in a risky situation, that could being able to support themselves and their families was a barrier to women leaving abusive relationships. If you don't know how you're going to keep a roof over your head or your children's head, if you don't know how you're going to feed your children, you are much less likely to leave an abusive relationship. And so social security benefits are a lifeline. Any one of us could need to claim disability benefits at some point in the future. When most of us only, you know, one accident, one job loss, one relationship breakdown away from needing a social security safety net, it's in all our interest to make sure it's strong enough to help those who need it.

Obviously, the spring statement has already been written, but if you could have the ear of the Chancellor ahead of that or even post that. Angie what would you say? Actually something a little bit different from what we've been discussing, please fix the access to work system. We employ disabled people primarily within our organisation and there are so many barriers at the moment towards our staff being able to flourish in work. Six months wait at minimum for an assessment by the DWP's access to work scheme, long waits to get people paid in terms of the support they are getting. So that system really is broken at the moment and it's really not in keeping with the ambition of the government

which I support to facilitate work for people where that is appropriate and suitable. Okay well and Dr Mary Ann Stevenson what would your message be? Introduce wealth tax in order to invest in our social infrastructure. The government talks as though we can't have good public services until we've got growth. We would argue that actually a strong economy requires strong social infrastructure, health, education, care services and those all need investment. Thank you both for joining us. Dr Mary Ann Stevenson, Director of the Women's Budget Group

and Angie Aireley, Chief Executive of Stay Safe East. We have to say we did approach the Treasury for comment But previously the government did not deny reports first carried by the Times newspaper that the Chancellor would make further cuts To try to make up some of the shortfall as ever We really do like to hear about your lives here on woman's hour If any of that has resonated with you do get in touch with the program you can text 8 4 8 4 4 thank you so much both of you for joining us this morning. Now it is time for our final discussion to celebrate the Women's Prize.

It's a literary award founded 30 years ago to award the best fiction written by women in English and over the past few weeks we've invited authors into our studio to discuss shared themes between their works. Today we are discussing two books from this year's long list written by authors about their homeland and exploring themes of power, family and secrets, all the good stuff. I'm delighted to say joining me in the studio Sanam Maluji who has been long listed for her debut novel The Persians. Welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. And it's also been announced this morning that Labour MP for early and Woodley Yuan Yang's book Private Revolutions has

been shortlisted for the non-fiction prize. Welcome to Womansar. So exciting to be here. Yes and exciting news this this morning. And I know Sanam, you'll find out later. Exactly, in one week. In one week from the long to the shortlist. So we wish you the best of luck with that. Congratulations both of you on your excellent books. Joanne, let's start with you. How does it feel to be shortlisted for this prize? It's tremendously exciting. And my book was published at an unusual time in my life, shall we say.

It was published just a couple of months before the general election that I stood in last year. So the last year and a half has really been a huge whirlwind of book publicity and of campaigning really. Yes, I mean that has been a busy year and we'll cover so much of the ground that you have covered in the last Year of your life and we'll look back at how you got to this point as well So now you've been as we said long listed a great accolade for a debut novel. So let's just get into the novel itself

Where is it set? What story does it tell? Okay. So yes, the Persians is the book and it tells the story of five Iranian women who once mattered as they grapple with finding themselves in one another in an epic tragic comic story that spans 70 years traveling back and forth between Iran and the United States, exploring questions of love, family, money, art, and revolution. But the story starts with a character named Auntie Shirin. She's on vacation in Aspen, Colorado with her niece Bita. And Bita bails her out of jail after Shirin spent the night there after being

arrested for attempted prostitution. Basically, she's flirted with an undercover cop in a nightclub, and I guess she's taken things a little bit too far. And the story, so that's how the story starts, and that incident breaks something open for this family. And the book is written in five points of view. So we meet Auntie Shirin, who's this flamboyant, over-the-top character. I think it was the observer that described her as someone who, she's a woman who's making

performance art out of her midlife crisis, which I really love. And then there's Bita, who's the younger niece, who's a law student. She's lost and she's attracted and at the same time repelled by her family. And then after that there's Seema, Bita's mother, who grew up in Iran, a lonely idealist and now is a housewife in Los Angeles. And then there are two women that remained in Iran. There's Elizabeth, mom and Elizabeth, who's the matriarch of the family. And then Niaz, who is Shirin's

daughter, who she left behind in Iran. And let's move on to you, Yuan. I mean, your story follows four real women from very different backgrounds, Chinese women who refuse to submit to society's expectations. These are real women. How did you choose your subjects? I had been posted in Beijing with the Financial Times as a correspondent for about five years by the time that I was writing this this book manuscript and I'd met a number of fascinating men and women in fact through all my interviews and I was trying to whittle down my kind of caste list to a smaller number of individuals

who really could exemplify the different changes in China since China's capitalist revolution from the 80s to now. And so all the women in my book are of, I suppose, in Sanam's book it would be the kind of beta generation, the daughter's generation, women born in the 80s and 90s. And they come of age as the country is also coming of age in its economic transformation. And I think it's not a coincidence that they all turned out to be women. I did interview a number of young men of that generation. And I think in the end what drew me to the female interviewees that I met was the fact that I think there was something about the

dynamic between them and myself that meant that they could open up to me as a woman of a similar age and similar cultural background to them. That meant they could open up to me as a woman of a similar age and similar cultural background to them. That meant they could disclose not just the kind of social and economic structures that had changed, but also the intimate psychology of going through those transformations. And that's what the book is really about. And they felt happy to do that. They felt safe to do that, to talk to you. I mean, I met many of these women over a number of years when I was posted in Beijing, and some of them I've known since I started my posting in Beijing.

So I think that process of building trust over time, particularly with Chinese interviewees, given the increasingly restrictive political situation in China, is really important. Yeah. You both obviously left your respective homelands. Sanam, you've all in Iran. How old were you when you left? I was a year and a half. Right, and this was post the Iranian Revolution.

We left in 1979. So just my sister was born on the day of the vote that was Islamic Republic yes or no. So we left two months after that. And how does that feed into the narrative through your fiction and the perspectives, the different perspectives the women in it have about their homeland and where they've ended up? How does the fact that I...

The fact that you left and now you've got this external perspective looking back in and some of your characters are still there, some of them aren't, living very different lives. Right, and that's a great question. I don't think I would have had to write this book if I had stayed in Iran. I think that a lot of the feelings and the questions that I have come from the fact that I didn't grow up in the country of my ancestors.

I think there's a James Baldwin quote about how, and I won't say it exactly because I don't remember it, but it's, I don't remember it word for word, but just that the feeling of deep alienation from one's past is something very American. And I think that really resonated with me. And I wanted to explore that feeling in fiction. Yeah. And do you still feel that? The deep alienation? Yes, very much so. And more so, more and more as the years go by, I have to say. And I've lived in London now for eight years.

So I think having that separation from America at the same time as being, I think giving me some freedom to write this book and having that perspective has been really helpful for my fiction. I think more and more I think of the fact that at least in my family, maybe America was just a 40 year old blip. Really? That's so interesting. That is so interesting. Yuan, you left when you were four,

your family left. Prior to that, and this is a theme I want to, it's another shared theme of the role of grandparents. So you were actually, for the first four years of your life, kind of raised by your grandparents. Explain why that was. Yeah, that's right. So before I was four, I lived with my maternal grandparents in southwest China on the mountainside of a holy Buddhist mountain in the village that they lived in. It was a very beautiful place. And I didn't feel out of the norm. There are many other children of my age who were brought up by their grandparents and whose parents would have been working as migrant workers in far flung cities. And now my parents were more lucky than

that. They were academics working at a university on the other side of China. But in terms of the kind of social status of children like me, we were called the left-behind children of our generation. Yeah, but did that give you an incredibly strong bond with your grandparents? Yes, I'm still very, very attached to my maternal grandparents and they did a lot of storytelling with me when I was growing up and I think it's partly that storytelling and for my grandfather who was born in the 1940s, you know, it was the storytelling from the communist revolution up to the cultural revolution and beyond that gave me this broad sweep of how these different

moments in Chinese history have become translated into individual family histories as well. So now the theme of grandparents, grandchildren, present in your book too, in the Persians, the matriarch Elizabeth stays in Tehran, you've mentioned, after the 79 revolution, along with her granddaughter Niyaz. There's a real focus on their dynamics. So similar question to you, Anne, what intrigued you about that? Yeah, I think that, I mean, from what I've seen and from my experiences, I think that sometimes in that the relationship between mothers and daughters can be, you know, there's a line actually in the book where Auntie Sherine tells Bita that Bita's going to therapy and

her aunt tells her that, you know, your problems don't come from, say, Wendy and Jenny not sharing her crisps with you at break, but there are thousands and thousands of years old, therapy won't help you. And I think that that kind of idea of these issues between mothers and daughters kind of going on for generations and generations was something that I really wanted to write about. And I think in a lot of ways, sometimes the relationship between a mother, sorry, a grand granddaughter and her granddaughter, a grandmother and granddaughter can be in some ways more nurturing. And so I have this character, Niaz, who is left behind and is raised by her grandmother, Elizabeth, who's quite prickly actually and maybe isn't the most, she isn't the most nurturing, but

at the same time she's the one that's there for her and she grows up with her and I think that I really wanted to explore that relationship. You were nodding during that, a theme that resonates with you. I think there are so many similar themes in Chinese culture, particularly recent post-communist revolution Chinese culture of generational trauma passed on, particularly in the women, I think, of a family. And I really identify with what Sanam was saying about how grandparents feel like they can have a more of a nurturing and almost kind of indulgent role, whereas the parents have the role of preparing you for survival

In an often really cutthroat competitive society where the your neighbor telling on you for having the wrong political ideas or Missing a promotion at work could mean the difference between a flourishing and safe life and living in the gutter essentially and that's the kind of That's the kind of stark contrast I think in Chinese society now Of the fear that I think often pervades a child rearing. And I think that, sorry, I was going to add that I think sometimes the character Elizabeth, I think that she's also kind of trying to make up for her failings as a mother with

her granddaughter, kind of what she wasn't able to give to her own daughter. Yeah, that's, I mean, I'm sure lots of people listening to this, that will completely resonate. It's such an interesting point to say that, you know, the parents are the practical ones and the grandparents maybe can be a little more emotionally nurturing because they've got their distance, but with your grandparents, I mean, how do they feel about speaking openly? Because, as you say, they are from that generation where they're not more guarded about, you know, what they passed on to you when you asked them about all of this? It's funny because I think in a lot of news reporting or in a lot of kind of

received stereotypes about about modern China and Chinese people can be seen to be docile or be seen to be kind of following the the political leader and in fact I think across different generations there are so many different characteristics of people and I think my grandparents generation is one that's kind of seen it all. They've lived through famines, they've lived through civil wars, they have seen it all. They probably went to school with the grandfather of the local police officer, you know, and if the local police officer treats them disrespectfully, they know who's the daughter to knock on. So I think in small village China there are so many different social dynamics that actually are more important than

The obvious political dynamics of the situation So that was that a parallel that you were trying to draw because obviously some of your characters go to America and they have they have Abundance and they have freedom Everybody left behind doesn't necessarily have that were you trying to kind of draw out understanding? No, that's very true. And I think and there. And there's a line that I think Shering says that we didn't come for a better life. We left a better life. Because they were very privileged in Iran.

And then in America, nobody really knows who they are. No one cares. And for a long time, I thought that she was maybe in denial about the fact that she actually left a new Islamic republic and actually was able to live a very free life in the United States. But sometimes I do wonder that maybe there is some truth to that, where she did leave an entire history and family and culture behind. And I think that that's a real loss. Is it something you want to go back and explore?

The... Just going back to Iran. Oh, would I like to go back to Iran? I mean, I have to say that I would love more than anything to go to Iran. I think during the 2022 protests that happened after Massa Amini's murder, I was actually surprised in a way at how much I felt and how I was in the process of editing the book with my publishers at the time.

And I was, even though, of course, emotions would be brought up, I was surprised at how much I felt and how desperate I felt to go back to a country that I don't remember. And I thought, I told my husband at the time that, you know, if things change, let's just move to Tehran and raise our kids there and I just you know but I do worry that with with this book and just being speaking about Iran I think that actually in a bittersweet way it might make it a little

bit more risky for me to go back unless things were to change. Final question to you, Yuan. We have to mention the fact that you recently became an MP at the last election, Labour MP for early and Woodley, and you took your seat then. I mean, why did you want to pursue this? You've gone from coming to this country at four to going back to China to being in the FT Bureau to kind of taking, you know, you are in the seat of power now. That journey is quite something, isn't it? To come from taking you know, you are in the seat of power now that that journey is quite something isn't it to come from? A communist regime to actually be in a Western government. How does that feel? It is really unusual. It's a great privilege

I think to live and be from a country which has democracy and I had the huge sense when I came back from Beijing in 2022 after my posting there when I was posted back to the UK with the FT, that it's possible just to knock on somebody's door in the UK and ask them what they think of the prime minister. And most of the time they'll give you a pretty blunt and to the point answer. And so when I started going out canvassing with my local Labour Party in early and Woodley, I just felt this immense sense of privilege of being able to have these honest conversations, these trusted conversations with people where in many years of knowing somebody in Beijing as an interviewee, it would be difficult to build up that level of trust to really ask them what they really felt about the direction

of the country. And I really wanted to take that precious thing and celebrate it and be part of it. And I think for all of those who come from backgrounds not represented in politics, including women who still make up less than half of parliament today, it's immensely important to take that precious privilege that we have and to make use of it as much as we can. It's been great having you both on.

Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for dropping by Sanam Maliji who has been long listed for her debut novel The Persians and you also heard there the voice of Labour MP for early and Woodley Yuan Yang. Her book Private Revolutions has been shortlisted for the non-fiction prize. Very best of luck Sanam for your long-listed debut novel. The shortlist will be announced next Wednesday on the 2nd of April. And here we go, the Women's Prize non-fiction shortlist has just been announced and the other authors are on the list. Here they are, Rachel Clarke

for The Story of a Heart, Chloe Dalton for Raising Hair, Helen Scales for What the Wild Sea Can Be and two authors who have spoken to us here on Woman's Hour about their books. Neneh Cherry for A Thousand Threads and Claire Mulley for Agent Zoe. And you can search on BBC Sounds for those interviews. Thank you both so much for coming in. Thank you so much. Now let us move on to a story I mentioned. Oh actually I'm just going to read some of your texts. Lots of you have been in touch about gossip.

We're going to talk about gossip later in the program. Whether you do it, there's a new book out which centers on that. Some people, says Julia, will tell you all kinds of personal things about people they know, but you don't. This is surprisingly common and makes me uncomfortable for two reasons. One, if you ever happen to meet them it's embarrassing to know so so much about

them and you have to pretend you don't. And two, if the indiscreet person is gossiping about their friends to you they are also gossiping about you to them. Julia, very very true. Frankie's been in touch in Berlin as well. Morning Frankie. I was discussing the topic of gossip with my girlfriends just the other day as one of their partners was unhappy, overhearing her and a friend gossiping about another's love life. He said, what if people like talk about us like this over their morning coffee? We concluded that the unknown part is part of gossip. People are probably doing it back without us knowing whether you give them reason to or not. So life is probably easier if we just accept

that it is a form of human conversation and let ourselves enjoy it sometimes. But we did remind ourselves that if it gets really nasty, it probably says more about us than it does about the person you are gossiping about. Frankie, thank you so much for that. The text message number 84844. We're going to be speaking to American journalist Kelsey McKinney who has written a book about gossip just a little bit later on in the hour. Let's return to a story I mentioned at the start of the program. It's emerged this morning that an NHS trust criticized by a senior coroner over the avoidable death of a baby was paid £2 million for providing good maternity care. It is the latest in a

series of developments and failings which have led to calls for a national enquiry into maternity care. The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust claimed it had met all ten standards under a scheme aimed at promoting safe treatment, but an investigation has found that that wasn't true. Well, the BBC social affairs correspondent Michael Buchanan has been investigating maternity care for several years now. He is the journalist that discovered this and he joins me in the Womens' Art Studio. Welcome to the program. Firstly, we should say the Morecambe Trust is only one of several trusts there are concerns about but let's tackle that first. How did it come to get this payment for good maternity care? Well this is a scheme called the maternity incentive scheme

and it's run by a body called NHS resolution which is basically the health insurance arm of the the insurance arm of the health service and a few years ago in about 2018 they launched this program because they wanted to try and promote good maternity care because maternity care costs over a billion pounds in clinical negligence payments according to the latest figures, despite the fact that's about 40% of all costs, despite the fact that maternity activity in a particular trust is only about 10 or 12%. So they were saying, how can we make the costs from their perspective lower?

And this launched this scheme and they encouraged every single trust with a maternity unit to self-certify that they had met these 10 standards that they had laid out. The Morecambe Bay Trust in 2018 and in 2019 and in 2020 and in a later year as well, they certified that they had scored 10 out of 10. And so because they had said they got 10 out of 10, they were then eligible for a refund of some of the insurance premium that the trust paid and they were also eligible for a refund of some of the insurance premium that the trust paid and they were also eligible for a chunk of the money that the other trusts who hadn't

made tenor, had paid into the scheme. So in 2018 they got £1.3 million and in 2019 they got £700,000, £2 million in total. Now as you mentioned at the outset, a few days ago they were criticised for the avoidable death of a baby, a little girl called Ida Lock. She died under their care in 2019, the very year that they were claiming 10 out of 10 for their maternity safety and a subsequent investigation by NHS Resolution meant that they had to repay most of that £700,000 but as we speak they've've still retained the 1.3 million. How did this come to light then? How did we discover this news? Well unfortunately as you said at the outset I've been looking into maternity care for a number of years and the sad thing about this is

that I've done this story twice before. The Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust which was the subject of a huge investigation that reported in March of 2022, it also reported 10 out of 10 in 2018. It was paid just under a million pounds and I looked at that and they had to repay it. The East Kent Maternity Unit, East Kent Hospitals University Trust, they were the focus of a maternity inquiry as well. It reported later in 2022, found significant failings there as well. They too had reported 10 out of 10 in their maternity services. And so the truth is that when I saw the criticism that was coming Markham Bay's way, because I'd been following this

inquest for a number of weeks, I thought, I wonder what they've done with this particular scheme and unfortunately they have done what the two other trusts have done previously. As you mentioned, the inquest into the death of the baby born at this Morecambe Bay trust, Ida Locke concluded at the end of last week. Let's just hear a short clip from Ida Locke's mum Sarah Robinson. The time and effort and the anxiety and the amount of days I cried because I thought I'd done something wrong. Ida was just a number to them and there's no compassion. I hope something does change. So the inquest was last week.

What specifically were the findings there, Michael? Well, the findings in this particular case is that the coroner found that Ida's death had been contributed to by the gross failures of three midwives. They had failed to notice that Ida was in distress prior to her birth because they hadn't carried out appropriate heart rate monitoring, CTG monitoring as it's called. And then when she was born, there was a botched resuscitation effort. There was three and a half minutes before they actually managed to resuscitate Ida. By that time, the little girl had developed a significant brain injury. She was transferred

to another hospital and there's no criticism of the care that she received there but unfortunately the brain injury was unsurvivable. As bad as that was what then emerged was that the hospital which was the Royal Lancaster Infirmary in Lancaster, it's part of the Morecambe Bay Trust, it failed to properly investigate what was happening and it failed to involve the family in the investigation and in being open and honest with the family. And what makes this particularly damning is that the Morecambe Bay Trust in 2015 was at the centre of arguably the first inquiry into poor maternity care.

In 2015, a guy called Bill Kirkup investigated its maternity services. It found at that time that had been the deaths of 11 babies and a mother over about a decade had been contributed to by the poor care at Morcombe Bay. He said here's 18 recommendations, follow these 18 recommendations and you will improve care and yet what the inquest showed over the course of those five weeks is that four years later many of those recommendations had simply not been enacted or are not being embedded in the systems at all where it really mattered which was on the front lines in the wards. What does

the Trust have to say about all of this? Well in relation to the payments and the money it is simply not commented. In relation to Ida Lock's death they have apologized for the distress that they caused the family and they have pointed to a number of improvements that they have made for the distress that they caused the family and they have pointed to a number of improvements that they have made. They say that they have improved their investigations, improved the way that they involve families in incident investigations as well. I mean, as the families have pointed out, these are things that they said in 2015 as well.

And so at the moment there is huge skepticism as to the extent to which this particular trust has got the ability to change. But frankly there's a lot of skepticism as to whether the entire maternity services in England have got the abilities to improve because there are significant concerns far wider than Morecambe Bay. Why do you think we're seeing that? Why are we seeing all of these incredibly serious issues about standards of maternity care? Repeatedly what these inquiries in Morecambe Bay and East Kent in Shrewsbury and Telford and emerging from perhaps the biggest one of all which is ongoing in Nottingham at the moment, it's not going to report until next year so we can't, we're slightly pre-empting

its final conclusions but consistently what theseirers have found is poor culture. There's really poor culture. So if you look at at at at Morcombe, for instance, that meant there was a push for natural birth of vaginal deliveries beyond the point where it was safe for people to, for women to give birth in that manner. There was a there was an ideology of pursuing natural birth. You then get poor team working. You don't get the midwives working with the obstetricians in a way that's safe for families. They don't listen to the women and their partners in the moment. They have a sort of we know best because we've been here before. And then when something does go wrong, they don't investigate

less, they don't investigate incidents, they don't take the family's perspective, they don't learn from lessons and so they end up repeating the same mistakes repeatedly. We did ask the Royal College of Midwives for a statement on this. Its chief executive, Jill Walton, said improving the working culture in our maternity services is one of the key factors in improving safety. The RCM wants every woman to have a safe, positive pregnancy. We know at times midwifery care has fallen short of this and that simply isn't good enough. We also know when there are too few staff the quality of the care being delivered is sometimes compromised and women may not get

the care they need or deserve. The RCM has been at the forefront of efforts to tackle this issue including producing guidance for our members on nurturing a positive culture and standing up for higher standards and we have to reassure people listening that we're talking about this is a very serious issue and clearly clearly there are many cases where it went terribly wrong we have to say that these maybe not necessarily outliers but it's it's not the common experience for any kind of birth to end up in the way that the stories that we're talking about here today have. Briefly Michael there is a call for a national maternity inquiry, isn't there? How likely is that?

Well yes, two particular groups are calling for a national maternity inquiry saying that because local inquiries haven't seen, led to the improvements that are, that everybody wants to see, there should be a national one. At the moment the sense from some of the experts and even from the Department of Health is that they're a little bit lukewarm on that. The West Streeting, the Health Secretary has said that he is going to fix maternity care. He has said, everybody is waiting for him to make an announcement. People have been waiting for about three or four months for those details. A couple of experts are saying all local inquiries essentially find similar problems and perhaps what's needed now is a national

improvement program to ensure that the learning from these local inquiries is embedded across the country and that because what's now needed are improvements. Thank you so much for joining us with that incredibly important update. That is the BBC social affairs correspondent Michael Buchanan. And thank you all for getting in touch on lots of things we're talking about on the programme today. We were talking about the Chancellor's Spring Statement and how it may affect disabled women disproportionately

earlier on in the programme. A couple of texts on this now. I'm a wheelchair dependent person with MS. I worked until 2020 when it became impossible to continue. If my PIP is reduced my local authority will pick up the shortfall as I currently contribute £400 a month towards my care costs. If my income drops I will pay less but the local authority will pay more so it will actually cost the government. And this is Helen, I'm disgusted with the proposed cuts to welfare. My view is that we cannot have a good economy without a healthy population. I fail to see how cutting the benefits of vulnerable people will help achieve this. There are so many other options. Open to the Chancellor, please stop trying to balance the books on the backs of the vulnerable people.

And Julia says this, I was young, having undiagnosed neurodiversity, suffered domestic abuse, didn't get the help I needed. And now over a decade later, I'm terrified of being made homeless and destitute by reform. I'm still not getting any care, stigma and ineptitude from the family, complete lack of appropriate health or social care. I have no trust in safety net systems. I'm now too scared and mistrustful to see how they can make things better from here. Your guests are inspiring, really inspiring. I really hope their words about changes are listened to. Thank you for everybody who's

got in touch on that this morning. We really do appreciate it. 84844 is the text number you need. On this topic as well that we're about to discuss now that lots of you have been getting in touch on, do you enjoy a bit of gossip? The thrill of being the first to hear something and sharing it? Or the irresistible urge to be let into the lives of other people? What is the difference between idle gossip and hurtful criticism behind someone's back? Do women gossip as much as men and can gossip be used to keep women safe? Lots of important questions there. American journalist Kelsey McKinney may have some of the answers. She's written a book called You Didn't Hear This From Me, Notes on the Art of Gossip.

Delighted to say Kelsey joins me now. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Hi Claire. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. What a fantastic topic. Why do you love gossip so much? You wrote a book about it. Well, I think first off, I love gossip because it's something that we all do, which I find really beautiful. Every single person in the world engages in gossip in some way. But I also think it's one of the few things that shows us the kind of people we are. You can really use it to judge your environment and the people around you. So let's have a little bit of a kind of history lesson. Where does the word gossip come from? Oh, sure. So the etymology of gossip is fascinating

for the show in particular. It comes from the old English word god-sib. It's two words and that started as a word that meant the birthing room. It was the people who would go into the birthing room with you. So like your mom's best friends. And over time, that came to mean the actual conversation happening within that birthing room. And so we're talking about a word that starts with the conversation of women and it starts with an intimacy that is like unbreakable. That's so fascinating, isn't it? What goes on in the birthing room stays in the birthing room. Or maybe it doesn't when you're talking about gossip. Why do you love it? Because there is there's a big difference, isn't there, between gossip and criticism, talking about somebody behind their back. So where's the line? Sure, yeah. So definitionally, I'm using a really broad definition for gossip. So thinking about it as kind of an umbrella term.

Gossip is anything where two people are talking to each other about someone who isn't present, which means that if you and I talk about a celebrity, that's gossip. If you and I talk about one of our friends, that's gossip. But also, if two doctors confer over an x-ray or a diagnosis, that would also be gossip. So I'm using this really broad definition. And in terms of the difference in criticism, right, criticism, I think,

comes from, can be gossip, of course, if you're talking about someone who's not there. Yeah, because it can be used as a power move, can't it? I'm sure there's plenty people listening now where gossip can take on a bit of a darker tone, can't it? It can be used to undermine, it can be used to weaponize information against people. Yeah, of course. I mean, gossip is a tool the way that a hammer is a tool. You can use it for good or evil. It's not something that in itself contains a morality.

Yeah. Why do we love to do it then? What kind of connection does it give us, do you think? Well, I mean, you don't gossip with someone you hate. That's like a pretty firm rule. You only gossip with your friends. And so there is a form of trust that is created with gossip. We know that even though if I'm gossiping in a bar, my heart rate is up, I'm really excited, I'm using a lot of gesticulation. Scientists have proven though that your heart rate lowers.

So even though you're really excited, you feel safer when you're gossiping because you know that there's a trust there between you and the person you're talking to. And that's the thing is it that we kind of, we only kind of let people in to our most intimate secrets or something we've heard when you have that level of trust. I think most people, yeah. But also people kind of trying to elicit gossip from people. You say it's not people you hate, but it may, you know, have you read Machiavelli? I mean, it's not always positive, is it?

Because you can act as if you're letting somebody into your trust or, but actually there's this sort of dark emotes underneath. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, having information about the world around you gives you power. We know that like anyone who has gone through adolescence knows that having information about other people is a power position. And so of course, you can elicit it from people and use it for nefarious reasons in the same way you could use anything. It can be used, I guess, to, for example, keep women safe. It's an exchange of information.

How do you cover that in the book? Yeah, I talk a lot about the Me Too movement and about, you know, sharing information about people who might be abusers or even just mean as a way for women to keep each other safe. You also had a man on here earlier talking about maternity safety. And that's another good example, right? That if you were to give birth and have a bad experience and told your friend,

hey, here's a place where I had a bad experience, that also keeps women safe because you are sharing an information about the world. When is it not good then? I mean, do you ever, you're somebody who loves the gossip and the tittle-tattle and it could be, as you say, it could be somebody you know, it could be showbiz, it can be completely harmless, but are there situations in your life where you actually take a step back and go, no, I don't really want to engage in this now.

Yeah, absolutely. That happens to me all the time because I have like kind of branded myself as someone who loves gossip and thinks a lot about gossip. People are constantly bringing me stuff, which I love. I love hearing crazy stories about people in the world around me. And I think it's really hard to set that boundary

for yourself of what is good and what is not good. And unfortunately, it's not like an easy fast rule. You do just kind of have to know in your body. And I think you do like, you know, when someone's talking to you and it feels icky or malicious or bad. What do you do? What do you do in that situation? Do you speak up? I usually excuse myself from the conversation or I say like, this is not fun and I don't like this. And you make that very clear to the person who's telling you? Yeah, I try to.

You don't feel uncomfortable about that? I mean, I'm an assertive person and I'm an American, so not really. Yeah, we'll take a leaf out of your book. I just want to read some text from a few people. Jamila's been in touch on gossip. It's actually forbidden in my religion, Islam. We have to avoid talking about others in a way they would dislike, even if it's true. Yes, it is hard to stick to sometimes. Do you look into that, the cultural differences of, you know, around the world of how people gossip? Yeah, I did. And I grew up evangelical, which is like a very conservative American Christian

sect. And because of that, it was also considered a sin in the culture that I was brought up in. And for me, that was something that I had to really investigate personally and figure out like, what exactly did it mean? Right? I know that Islam forbids backbiting and slander, for example. Backbiting and slander are both separate from talking about someone you work with. And I think that's the kind of nuance that I think is important here, because it's very easy for people in power to say, never ever gossip. It is bad to say, never ever gossip, it is bad, without considering that there is often forms of gossip that is not to the detriment of your neighbor, right? If you know that your neighbor is hungry and you talk to someone about that and then the two of you make them dinner and bring

it to them, that's to their advantage, that's a form of gossip that is for good. Yes, and we know institutions may well say that to kind of suppress information that they don't necessarily want to get out there. Actually, Nancy from Norfolk has picked up on the point you just raised. Nancy says, I'm absolutely all for gossip. I believe it has been redefined by the patriarchy as another way to control women. Gossip is a form of communication we use as women to spread news and awareness to protect our sisters, friends and daughters. This makes me feel empowered to use gossip to share my opinions and thoughts with my friends in a safe and secure environment which creates deeper and

more meaningful female friendships, much to the patriarchy's dismay, says Nancy and Norfolk. Can you get on board with that? Sure. I think it's interesting that women are given gossip as like a topic entirely, right? It's something I think about a lot is this gender divide that's being split in conversation where we're saying, you know, politics and sports, those aren't gossip. It's talking about reality television and celebrities and your friends that is gossip. When, you know, I watch television, I watch the Traders, I talk to my friends about the Traders, that is a form of gossip. Someone else may watch sports on television and talk to their friends about it. It's the exact same experience of the world. We just have different names for it.

And when you asked men whether they thought that they gossiped, what was the response that you got? Oh, men love to say that they don't care about gossip. They love to tell me in particular, I don't care about it. I don't do it. And then I will often for my own merriment say, oh, well, did you hear that this major sports star got traded and their jaws drop and they are suddenly very focused and you're like, well, well, well, it seems that you do care about gossip. It's just that your own definition of it limits you from your understanding. Yes, the whole kind of sports journalism industry is gossip. Yeah.

What is a trade rumour if not gossip? Absolutely. Let's squeeze in a few more texts here. Gossip feels healthy and expressive with the right people. It builds alliances and strength. Men love to gossip too, says this text out under. No names on these, but one woman I know uses gossip as currency, is skillful at extracting information from other people, then uses it selectively to make the hearer feel privileged or preferred and multiple manipulations. It's nothing to do with trust or friendship, but ape sits, weaponized, bitchery, says this one texter. That's a great phrase, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

But there's truth in that, isn't there? There can be, absolutely. I mean, people who are very, very skilled gossips and who can convince people to trust them often understand the way that people interact at a very multi-dimensional level. And so of course, if you want to use that to create chaos, you can. Well, listen, it's been absolutely fascinating talking to you. Did you enjoy writing it? Oh, I loved writing it. Well we've enjoyed reading it. It's a fascinating read. And Kelsey McKinney, thank you so much

for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining us from the States. We thank you for getting up so early as well. American journalist Kelsey McKinney, her podcast is called Normal Gossip. You might want to take a dip into that as well. And the book is called You Didn't Hear This From Me, Notes on the Art of Gossip. That is it from me today and for this week, final text, my brother always said the gossip down the gym and in sports changing rooms with men was way worse than he had ever heard from women. I think a good point to

end on. Thank you for joining me this week. Tomorrow, very special edition of Woman's Hour, Lara Lewington is going to be asking how artificial intelligence can improve women's health and what we are ready for it to do for us. But that's Woman's Hour from today. Goodbye. That's all from today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hi, I'm Izzy Judd. Have you actually breathed properly yet today? If things are a bit hectic at the moment, if you're struggling to switch off from work, or if you're generally just feeling a bit stuck in life,

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