Woman's Hour - Housing benefit discrimination; Trans-racial adoption; Fast fashion

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

In a landmark ruling handed down at York County Court, housing benefit discrimination has been judged unlawful and in breach of the Equality Act. Research carried out by the charity Shelter shows that ‘No DSS’ policies put women and disabled people at a particular disadvantage, because they are more likely to receive housing benefit. The historic hearing took place virtually on Wednesday 1 July, involving 'Jane' (not her real name) a single mother of two. After a letting agent refused to rent any properties to her because she receives housing benefit, Jane contacted Shelter’s Strategic Litigation Team to take on her case. Jane Garvey discusses the issues with solicitor Rose Arnall, and Polly Neate, Chief Executive, Shelter.Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town in the US. From childhood she was told that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice hoping that she would have a better life. She considered that she would always feel out of place as a trans-racial adoptee until she began to wonder if the story she had been told was the whole truth. All You Can Ever Know is her memoir of adoption. The writer and broadcaster Sali Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. The things we cherish aren’t always vintage, antique - or even expensive. Instead we treasure the stuff that reminds us of special people, particular times in our lives, or which stand for something important. Today it’s the turn of Rachel Eling.After the recent news of poor working conditions at a UK factory that could have helped fuel a local spike in COVID-19 cases in Leicester, we are reminded yet again of the consequences of fast fashion and the boom in online ordering. Campaigners and those in the industry are grasping the opportunity to raise awareness of the problems in global clothing production and are trying to change consumer habits. Jane is joined by Prof Dilys Williams, the founder and director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, and Aja Barber, a personal stylist and style consultant whose work focuses on sustainability and ethics.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. It is the Woman's Hour podcast from the 14th of July 2020. Today I'll be chatting to Nicole Chung, who's written a memoir about adoption called All You Can Ever Know. And we also discuss sustainable fashion. There is a price to be paid for a cheap T-shirt. Of course, deep down, we know that, don't we? But I have to say, it doesn't often stop us from buying the occasional cheap T-shirt. So more about that a little later. First, though, this morning, this is important. Blanket bans on renting properties to anybody on housing benefit are unlawful and discriminatory.

That was a landmark ruling at York County Court, which judged housing benefit discrimination unlawful and in breach of the Equality Act. Shelter, the charity, has done research showing that no DSS policies put women and disabled people at a particular disadvantage because they are more likely to be in receipt of housing benefit. Well, the case was brought in the name of Jane. It's not her real name. She's a single mother of two.

I can talk now to Shelter's solicitor, Rose Arnold, and to Polly Neate, who's the chief executive of Shelter, the homelessness charity, of course. Let's start briefly with you, Polly, if you can. This is a very significant ruling, isn't it, for everybody? It really is. It really is. So, adverts, advertising properties to rent and saying just no DSS, it's quite an archaic form. The DSS doesn't actually exist anymore, but it basically means if you're on benefits, do not apply to rent this property.

So it doesn't give people on benefits even a look in at, you know, they don't even get in the door to view this property. So it doesn't give people on benefits even a look in at, you know, they don't even get in the door to view a property. And it is actually condemning people to homelessness, or it was until today, which is brilliant. Well, you're right. It is an arcane phraseology. But nevertheless, I saw it myself in an estate agent's near me on Saturday morning. So it's still out there. It's still very much with us. Yeah, absolutely. So what we want to do, which is brilliant, this is happening now,

we really need to publicise this as much as possible because landlords and letting agents need to know that this has now been ruled unlawful. It is discrimination because it disproportionately impacts women, also disabled people actually as well, because they too are more likely to receive benefits and that it just can no longer be tolerated. The figures are actually pretty stark. Just outline for anybody who isn't sure just how much the difference is between men claiming housing benefit and women claiming housing benefit? So if you look at single women and single men in particular, there's about twice

as many single women claiming housing benefit as there are single men. And a huge proportion of those single women, of course, will be mothers with children, whereas the vast majority of those single men will be exactly what you would imagine single men to be. So what we're really talking about here is often single mothers with children who are being made homeless by this type of discrimination. Rose, tell us about the woman at the heart of this. I know Jane is not her real name and she actively isn't courting publicity, which is actually a rare thing in this day and age. But tell me a bit about her and her situation. Well, I was lucky to meet Jane two years ago now.

I can't quite believe it's been that long. And she had actually, she first heard about Shelter's involvement in challenging this type of discrimination when she read a news report about Rosie Keogh's case. Rosie was the first person to try to challenge this type of discrimination in 2016. And when she sent me an email, Jane said she'd heard about Rosie's case. She'd experienced this herself. And she just thought it was deeply, deeply unfair. Jane works part time as much as she can.

She's very responsible and has to very carefully manage her disability, which she does and has done for many years whilst also being full-time single mum to two so she's a very very responsible person and she had privately rented for 10 years always paying her rent in full and on time and whilst in receipt of housing benefit and she had great references from her former landlords. She had enough savings to pay a deposit and she could even pay rent in advance. Her parents were supportive of her to help her with that.

And she even had a UK homeowning, full-time employed guarantor, which is her brother. So she was really sort of the perfect tenant actually well seemingly um and i gather that she was offered an out-of-court settlement but didn't take it yes she's been so courageous and so brave there are lots of reasons why someone who is right um you know we we've been of this opinion that DSS discrimination is unlawful for a number of years after we've done a lot of homework, a lot of research and some deep legal analysis. We were very confident that this was the case. But there are lots of reasons why cases might

settle before they reach a hearing, as they did in Jane's case and she was just really committed to the idea of not just standing up for herself but standing up for other people and we're just so grateful to her for that. Why from a landlord's point of view Polly why might a landlord be a bit resistant to a tenant on housing benefit? I think some landlords believe that tenants who are getting housing benefits are much less likely to pay their rent. But actually, well, first of all, the whole point of housing benefit is to enable people to pay their rent. That's what housing benefit does. But also we've actually done research about this and we've found that landlords who let to people on housing benefits are just as likely to be in profit as landlords

who have no housing benefit tenants at all um and actually housing benefit tenants tend to stay in their homes for a lot longer by the average private renter okay so it you know they think it's gonna well it uh damage their pockets but it's not it's partly snobbishness isn't it that must play a part i mean far be it for me to uh you know think what is going through individual landlords minds but i think uh definitely i don't think the image of people on benefits that you get from things like benefit street for example I don't think that sort of stigma helps and actually part of why we at shelter have felt so passionate about this campaign is that we see not only discrimination but the gross stigmatization of housing benefit claimants, we see this day in and day out.

And as we said earlier, you know, a large number of these are single mums. And it just is, well, it's grossly unfair. Some of our listeners, I suspect, will be landlords. And I guess they'll be saying that they have to worry too about their mortgage lender and their mortgage lender maybe putting pressure on them isn't that the case? No so we've been working with mortgage lenders as well so we've really tried to come at this from all angles and it's now extremely unlikely there's only a couple of very small lenders who still have no DSS clauses in their mortgages and actually if a landlord does have that clause

in their mortgage I would really urge them well they'll have to now because it's discriminatory I would really urge them to go back to their mortgage lender and they will be told oh yes that doesn't apply anymore. Has this can I just ask has this only really been a significant problem since housing benefit began to be paid to the individual rather than to their landlord is that is that the issue at the heart of this polly no it isn't so um you know i can't say that hasn't caused problems for some landlords. So I do understand landlords' anxiety about that. But it really comes down to an individual's right to be able to demonstrate that they can pay their rent. Nobody's asking a landlord to let their property to somebody who is not going to pay their rent.

And actually, if people don't pay their rent, of course, landlords can evict them. So, you know, all we're saying is that the fact that you receive housing benefits shouldn't just in itself stop you from even getting a look in at renting a home, because what's happening is people are becoming homeless and you know this is one reason one reason among several I must say but it is one reason why we're seeing so many particularly mothers with children stuck in temporary accommodation at the moment. We have got tweets coming in on this it won't surprise either of you and just a brief comment from Kate who says ask why so many insurance companies refuse to insure landlords to let to

those on benefits. Any point of view? What would you say about that, Rose? Well, we actually, as Polly mentioned, when we started this campaign, you know, we really did do our homework. Just quickly to speak to your earlier point about whether or not this type of prejudice has got worse. We started looking into this years ago, 2013, and the prejudice was there before. So we know that there is something around a stigma that has been perpetuated over the years, regardless almost of what's going on with the detail

of how and when housing benefit gets paid. In terms of insurance, as Polly mentioned, we've worked with mortgage lenders, but we've also worked very carefully with industry experts in relation to insurance. And the British Insurance Brokers Association have been great partners with us and have found through their own research that they did off their own back to support us that the majority of insurance brokers can find policies that cover landlords renting to tenants receiving housing benefit at little or no extra cost so we we encourage landlords to use um biba have their own find a broker service it's a free service that landlords

can use to find the right insurance for them i mean it's just it's available so i don't know whether it's down to landlords not knowing about it or just using the same insurance that they've always done but it's there and it's affordable so it's just not an excuse to discriminate if today you are looking to rent somewhere and you are on housing benefit and you see no DSS displayed on the sign in the estate agent's window or on their website, whatever it might be. Rose, can you just go in or ring them and say you can't do this anymore? Absolutely. I mean, we've had a number of these cases and we have hundreds of people contact us about this problem. And actually, before Jane's case, I've worked on a number of other cases and often actually bring this point to the attention of the landlords or the agent.

And happily, many, as soon as they realise that this policy is having this impact, you know, that it's negatively affecting women, single mums, people with disabilities more than other people. They are willing to change their practices. So I would, my sort of top tip, I suppose, if you're a renter and you're experiencing this, is to bring this to the attention of the agent. First of all, reference this case. You know, you don't have to just take Shelter's word for it now. The courts have declared this is unlawful. So you can bring this case. You know, you don't have to just take Shelter's word for it now. The courts have declared this is unlawful. So you can bring this case to their attention. Yeah, without being cynical, won't they try to get around it, some estate agents, by unleasing agents and those

sorts of people, they'll get around it by using euphemisms like professionals, won't they? Will they try that? In fact, the ruling applies to that as well. It's not the terminology, no DSS that's been found to be unlawful. It's any blanket ban, refusing to consider someone just because they're in receipt of benefits. So really, if you're approaching a landlord or agent, and they're turning you away, the best thing to say, look, actually, if you're turning me away, because i'm in receipt of benefits that's morally wrong and unlawful here are all the reasons why and you can give them your you know we're not saying that landlords and agents shouldn't have checks to make sure that they're happy that the tenant they're renting to is suitable for the property you know but show show the landlord and the agent all the reasons why this particular property is suitable for you and then ask for a viewing

because you're entitled to um okay thank you very much indeed um shelter solicitor rose arnold and polly neat who's the chief executive of shelter i'd love to hear your experiences on this one um i can see on twitter that there's a variety of different opinions at bbc woman's hour that's on social media we We're on Instagram as well, of course, or you can email the programme via the website bbc.co.uk slash Woman's Hour. Now to a memoir about adoption called All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung, who was born very prematurely, actually, and put up for adoption by her Korean parents and raised by a white family in a pretty remote town in Oregon in

the United States. Now, Nicole was told that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice, hoping that she would have a better life. And she considered that she'd always feel slightly out of place as a transracial adoptee until she began to wonder if the story she'd been told was in fact the whole truth. Nicole, good morning to you. Welcome to the programme. How are you? I'm fine. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Well, we're very grateful to you. I know it is just after five in the morning in Washington, DC, which is where you make your home now. So we're very grateful to you. Can you tell me, first of all, about the sheltered town in Oregon where you grew up. All you say in the book is it's a five-hour drive from Portland.

So in the nicest possible way, is this the middle of nowhere, your hometown? It kind of is. It was the town that was sort of where everything was in the particular part of the middle of nowhere where I lived. When I reference it being five hours from Portland, it's just kind of a shorthand way of saying it was five hours from the closest, what was considered the closest major city. Right. So. Yeah. And it was a place where, well, you say in the book, you would look around, hoping to see another face like your own. Yes, I actually, you know, grew up there for 18 years until I went off to college. I was really the only Korean person I knew. I

didn't really start to meet anyone who shared my background until I was much older. And I think it took that long to really figure out how that affected me growing up. And your parents bringing you up, what did they tell you about the circumstances of your birth? It was very much presented to me in terms of, that were, I think, respectful of my birth parents and very well-intentioned. A lot of discussion about their sacrifice, how they hadn't probably wanted to give me up, but felt they had no choice, that it was largely due to the health problems that I was projected to have as someone who was born about two and a half months premature.

And I think they kind of said all of this and talked about the adoption being like God's will or God's plan for our family, because they wanted me to feel very secure in their love and within my adoptive family. Your childhood and your school days are, well, it seems to me that they were extremely difficult. Was every single day a struggle or you must have formed fast friendships with people? Surely there must have been good friends out there who supported you. I did find like, I would say, one or two close friends in elementary school. And I formed real bonds with like favourite teachers the way kids do. But it was a little bit lonely. I grew up going to this sort of small parochial school where I was, you know, one of very, very few non-white students, like the only one in my class for many, many years, the only one in my grade.

And the thing is, I had been raised to really think of my race as irrelevant within my adoptive family. So it was rather a shock to get to school and find that by the age of seven, eight, nine, I was encountering people who really did, of course, notice that I look different, and could sometimes be cruel about it. And I was quite isolated when this happened. When I started to experience this type of racism at school, I didn't, I didn't really have the language to call it racism and didn't know how to talk to adults about it. The difficult thing is your adoptive parents were truly decent, good people, weren't they? You make that very clear. I know they both died, sadly.

This isn't an attack on them, is it? But were they right to raise you in what we now know of as a colorblind way? It's interesting. You know, I think that's definitely how they were counseled to raise me and to approach my adoption. At the time I was adopted, they spoke with, of course, who they would have thought to be experts. So the adoption agency that did their home study, you know, to see if they were fit to adopt their adoption attorney, the judge who finalized the adoption. And every single person told them essentially, this doesn't matter. You know, all that matters is that you're going to love her, essentially like coaching them to assimilate me and to not really talk about race at all. But while it was well-intentioned, certainly telling me like, you know, how you

look doesn't matter. What's important is the kind of person you are and what parent doesn't want to believe that. Again, when I went out into the world and began to experience racism, both casual and more aggressive, I had no way to expect or process this, right? And no foundation for really talking about race or bigotry with my family. Because truthfully and unfortunately, the way you looked did matter it did at least to other people you know i i believed my parents and i still do in the sense that of course the fact that i was korean and they were white had no bearing on their love for me you know nor should it um but again like when you're out in the world race is of course very relevant to how other people see you and how you will experience the community

that you live in, and the wider world. And so when this happened, you know, I think my family and I, we were just not really prepared to have those conversations. What you make very clear in your book, and it's really well written, I should say, is that adoption, adoption doesn't end. There is no end to this story, is there? No, I think many people think of adoption as this one-time event in an adoptee's life or birth parents or adoptive parents for that matter. And it really is much more, it's a process, it's a lifelong event. And I think we can be a little more thoughtful in how we approach it and really talk about that honestly, just the fact know you're going to think about adoption differently throughout the course of your life

as an adoptee you will you will think about it differently you'll have different questions over time and that's perfectly all right and natural um and understandable you do i don't want to give away the story but you do find find your birth parents and some of what you were told isn't quite what actually happened, is it? Not exactly, no. I mean, what I was told was sort of the truth, or at least, you know, my adoptive parents told me what they believed to be, honestly, the truth, but it was just like broad sketches. And so much of my search and my reunion was sort of filling in these gaps. Yes. Again, there are some parts of the story

which people can discover for themselves when they read it, but you do meet a sister who stayed with your birth parents and had, well, is it okay to say a worse childhood than your own by some margin? Oh, I think that's definitely a fair thing to say. Yes. And, you know, another thing about adoption is I think often adoptees were raised to focus, of course, on the family we have, the family that loves us and to not look back as much. I at least feel when I was growing up at the time I was adopted, it was not so encouraging. A little bit to my shame, slightly. Like I thought I had empathy for my birth family, but it was so difficult, like especially as a child, to imagine what they might have been experiencing.

And it just had not occurred to me that the trauma could run so deep or that, you know, my sister who was raised with my birth parents could have had just such difficult experiences. Again, like it wasn't that I didn't think about what their lives must have been like after me, but it was impossible to picture. It's like picturing your life in a different, you know, in an alternate universe. Like you have no framework for that kind of consideration, especially as a child. You have your own children now, I know know and one of the most moving parts of the book is when you go for a scan and you hear your baby's heartbeat for the first time and there's a wonderful bit where you say I was going to be a mother someone would depend on me our relationship

would last for the rest of my life though it had yet to begin I couldn't imagine it ending yet that was exactly what had happened to the bond between me and my first mother. It had been broken. We'd both survived it, learned to live apart. And while I knew this, had known it for as long as I could remember, it had never struck me as unnatural until I heard my own child's heartbeat. I find that sort of devastating part of the book, actually. Yeah, I have such vivid memories still of being in that exam room and hearing the heartbeat and thinking like, and it was partly to solve the questions that I got from the midwife at the time, which were the typical questions a first time mother is asked, you know, like, about my own birth history, what was my pregnancy, my mother's pregnancy like? And of course, they met my birth mother. And I had really like no answers. And I just remember feeling keenly that there was this deep, overwhelming, almost empathy that I I hadn't been really raised to think about their perspective as much in giving me up.

I thought about mine in being given up and in being adopted. I wanted, you know, certainly answers for my child. I wanted to know, like from a practical standpoint, medical issues, health issues but I also just felt this deep overwhelming urge to like when she had questions or they had questions to have answers for them right answers that I never had I think sometimes you know as parents we can do things for our children that we're not quite brave enough to do for ourselves. Yes your children or your child certainly asks whether she is going to be adopted too yes when she's older yeah which um is a completely natural question for an intelligent little girl to ask when she knows her mother was adopted yes and somehow that question still really shocked me maybe it shocked

me to get it so young you know she was like four years old when we had that discussion um and she'd heard me talking about adoption with others and wanted to know what it meant. Of course, like practically, she already knew, like, like she knew her aunt, my sister, she knew my parents and the fact that I look different from my parents. But I had never really sat down and explained to her kind of the circumstances of what adoption really meant in my life. And, and, and now of course she's, she's older, you know, I, and I've actually read this book with her and I've always made a point, yeah, to talk with, with her about adoption. Um, and that's something my sisters talked about,

you know, with her daughter, my niece as well, about how we grew up in different families and we found each other and had to kind of put our family back together in a sense. And I think our kids realize that's not a given. You know, they might not have known each other. Our family's complicated. I think it's really important for both of us to get to share this legacy of adoption with our children. Again, like one thing adoptees talk about a lot is this multi-generational impact of adoption, this lifelong impact. It doesn't just affect you at the time of placement.

It has ramifications throughout your life and for future generations as well. Yeah, and I think that's something you make really, really clear in the book. Thank you very much for talking to us, Nicole. And have a good day. I know I keep saying this, but I'm always appreciative when people get up really, really early to do the program. So, Nicole Chong, thank you. Her memoir is called All You Can Ever Know. And it's all about her own adoption and growing up in the middle, as she says herself, pretty much the middle of nowhere in Oregon.

Now, on Friday, we start a new series of what's described here as no-nonsense how-to guides. Thank goodness Jenny is here to conduct this no-nonsense affair, which will start on Friday morning. Topics we're going to cover over the summer will include how to be a good friend, how to end your relationship well, and how to manage conflict better. Now, it all starts on Friday with how to change careers, obviously something that actually will be on the minds of many of you right now with everything else that's going on. So Jenny is going to be joined by career coaches, Samantha Clark and Sarah Ellis, as well as the FT columnist turned teacher, Lucy Kelleway.

And you can email or tweet any questions you have on the subject of career changing at BBC Women's Hour on social media. Also, we want to hear from you if you are trying to bring up your child as gender neutral. How's it going? What are you doing? And what has the reaction been from the rest of the family? You can email the programme via the website bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. Sustainable fashion in a moment or two after we've heard from the writer and broadcaster Sally Hughes,

who's been talking to women about important objects in their lives, not necessarily valuable, but stuff they treasure. And today it's the turn of the writer and blogger Rachel Elling. It's a photo card for a London transport travel card from about the year 2000, when I was 22. I mean, most people have lost many of those photo cards. I mean, they're obsolete now, of course. So why have you hung on to yours? Well, as a teenager growing up in Wales,

all I dreamt about was getting out of Wales. I lived in the countryside. So now, as an adult, it's the most beautiful setting. We had the forest on one side of the house and the river on the other side of the house. But all I wanted to do was get out. It was unbelievably claustrophobic. There was nothing to do. there wasn't even a bus so all my waking hours were spent dreaming of escape and for me escape

meant London and working in a media job or working in fashion so every month I would go to the post office and collect my magazines that I subscribed to, take them home, absolutely pour over them, tear out the pages of the models, put them up on my bedroom walls, and waiting for the day when I have to live here anymore. I just wanted to get to London. And eventually it happened, and I got an internship on Just 17 magazine, which meant that I had to go and stay with somebody who lived in London because obviously it wasn't a paid internship.

So one of my mum's best friends lived right at the very end of the Met line so it was still a fair old trek into town. But I could stay with her. I lived with her in her one-bedroom flat, sleeping on her sofa for a year, getting myself into London each morning. And I can remember really clearly that first day that I was going, and I was so, so nervous. I'd got that sort of short top-of-my-chest breath

where I didn't really know what it was going to be like. I knew that I probably wasn't going to be wearing the right thing. I didn't know if anybody was going to speak to me. But I was so excited. And I went to the station super early because I had to go into the photo booth, get my passport shot done, went to the ticket office and handed over my money so that I could get my first month's travel card.

The chap in the office filled it all out for me and handed it back to me. And I looked at it and I thought, this is it. This is the golden ticket. This is the thing that opens the door to my new life I can now roam freely in London um I suppose I mean I I suppose in my imagination the streets of London perhaps weren't paved with gold but were definitely paved with magazine pages it really did seem like the magical door had opened to the new world for me. The girl on that photo is a world away from who I am now. I looked so different, so innocent.

There was so much to come, so much promise. And it just reminds me of that time when everything seemed possible and there were just opportunities on every corner. And you did make it. You did get a job in journalism and then another job and then another job. Was it what you dreamt it to be or did you find that your priorities had shifted? I think, for the most part, it truly was what I dreamt it to be. I mean, my decade in London was the most fun.

Going to work every day was mostly like going to youth club. I had the best time, made some fantastic friends, and I've been out of London for ten years now. And the friends that I made in that period are still some of the best friends that I have. Maybe there's something that you and everybody else could learn from the girl in the picture, because she was so determined, she was so driven.

It's good not to lose all of that. It's hard sometimes, and I think the older you get, then the broader the picture, that you think, well, I'd love to follow my dreams, I'd love to do this, but there's this and there's this and there's this, and if I factor all of those in, it's probably not going to work. But having that single-minded drive, which is much easier when you're 20,

is really valuable, actually. That's actually St Vincent, if you're interested in the music, and it's Teenage Talk, the name of the track. That was Rachel Elling, the writer and blogger, talking to Sally Hughes. And I do know about the, I understand the appeal of things like that. I've got my mum's wartime identity card signed by my gran, which I'm keeping hold of. Don't tell my sister I've got it. Now, the recent rise in coronavirus cases in Leicester drew attention to the poor working conditions

and appallingly low rates of pay in some garment factories in that city. And it has, not for the first time, focused our minds on fast fashion. Some campaigners are grasping the chance to raise the problems of production around the world and to try to change consumer habits. Professor Dilys Williams is the founder and director of CSF,

the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, and Arja Barber is a personal stylist and a style consultant whose work focuses on sustainability and ethics. Welcome both, good to talk to you. Dilys, first of all, perhaps I'm being cynical but I feel as though we've been here before. Are things really going to change now? Good morning Jane yes they are they are already changing and you're right though we have been here before the Leicester example is just an amplification of what we've already seen for a very long time but I think we've got to remember that fashion is maybe the best and worst in society now fashion is something that is such an important part of our self-expression. It does create fulfilling work for huge numbers of people.

But at the same time, this exploitation is historical. Modern day slavery is prevalent in the fashion industry and there has been a lot of work for a long time to change it. But I think right now, this unprecedented pause means that we've got also an unprecedented opportunity to really re-evaluate how we represent ourselves, whether we do stand up in the things that we stand up for and actually what is important to us. Well, we'll talk about what duties we have as consumers in a moment.

But what about pressure on governments, first of all? What are you doing about that? Absolutely. I mean, I'm the SPAD, which is Special Advisor for an all-party parliamentary group that was established in 2010, Fashion Roundtable of the Secretariat, and Baroness Loli Young and Catherine West run it. And it was established to create a level playing field for fashion, because the problems for the people who are doing great things in fashion

are that they are completely outsized by the guys that are not playing the right game. So we need to eliminate modern day slavery. So a lot of work has been going on in the All Partimentary Group to do that. And as you say, we do already know this, the Environmental Audit Committee created a report and interviewed factory owners, people from brands, people from NGOs in 2018 and came up with 18 really straightforward ways in which we could do things better.

And it's not just about doing new things. It's enforcing the things that are already legislation. And the government's very good at looking at things like, you know, the hostile environment as far as people illegally living in the UK. But they're not doing enough around people who have illegal employment practices. It's right there in front of us. We've known about it for a long time. It's great that you're talking about it. And we do have to keep doing so. Right. Do you know what I really miss? I miss eye contact with guests. I really do. It would be lovely to have people back in the room with me again, and then we could have civilised conversations. Arja, government intervention is important, isn't it? Yes, I think that we need all parts moving. We need consumers to start really thinking about

these things. We need the government to intervene. So it's a multi-level sort of conversation. I don't feel like you can put the responsibility in one direction or the other. We need consumer change, but we also need regulation. And so I try and encourage my readership to really embrace all of these ideas of the conversation, because I think for so long, the fashion industry has felt very close to people. And I like to try and bring people into the fold that may not have been included before so that they can join the conversation as well and use their voice. What do you mean precisely by that, Aja? Well, for instance, I am a plus size person and I know that the conversation around, you know, plus size clothing is a nuanced one. You know, we talk about sustainable and ethical fashion,

and that is definitely the future. talk about sustainable and ethical fashion, and that is definitely the future. But if sustainable and ethical designers aren't being inclusive in their sizing, then who gets to participate and, you know, find the ethical and sustainable option. So I really rally for the fashion industry to, you know, build a future that's truly inclusive, because until we're really dressing everybody and including everybody, then we can't expect to progress forward and bring everyone along. That's a really good point, Dilys, isn't it? It's probably all right for me in a well-paid job to advise people to buy decent clothing from, well, I mean, of course, as a consumer, how can you be

sure that they're decent when you buy it? But price is everything to a lot of people. I'll get to the end of this question at some point. Dilys, intervene. Yeah, yes. You know what I'm trying to say. I can't see you. It is a shame. But I think, you know, you talking about this is really important because we need to bust the myth that cheap is good value. Yes.

There's so much evidence that, you know, we see it around us. We see the waste around us. People buy a three pound top, then they buy another and another and another. So we're being kind of, yeah, we think we're getting a good deal. But actually, if we bought less and better, we could create ways in which people could be paid properly and we could create ways in which we could feel better about what we're wearing and also to diversify what we wear how we get it there's an incredible uh rise in the number of people who are buying things uh that they know are great things they're wearing them for a while and then when their own wardrobes are not actually satisfying them they're they're passing them on the second-hand market is is incredibly buoyant and is a great way to have fun as well my kids uh have wrap up their clothes they wash them they put them online and and then um they sell them and and then they've got some money to to do something else so my kids do that

too but they're not averse to spending not very much money on something they might only wear once i mean i'm getting mixed messages from the younger generation to be honest yeah i mean it's hard because we're all tuned into novelty we all respond respond to the imagery that's in front of us. And yeah, fashion is fun. It's got to be about enjoyment. But I think it's about diversifying that enjoyment and also actually just eliminating the stuff that isn't good. There's plenty of great fashion out there.

We work with a lot of students, a lot of young designers, and they are making amazing things that actually are kind of challenging the status quo. And that's what fashion is about. It should be about challenging norms. So there's plenty of people doing that in lots of different ways. Aja, there's something really important that you know about the Pay Up campaign, hashtag Pay Up. Just explain what that is and what's going on. So it's a campaign started by a group called Remake. And basically the garment workers of the world have been sort of left holding the bag during COVID-19. When the pandemic started and the world began to go into lockdown, garment workers pretty much everywhere,

though Bangladesh has been the loudest and I understand why, but garment workers everywhere saw this thing where brands were basically going, oh, well, we're closed, so we're not going to pay for that order. And these are multi-billion dollar brands. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars who are essentially leaving some of the world's poorest workers unpaid. And as we know, there's already an issue within the fashion industry with people making fair wages. It's something like 2% of people within the industry that make garments actually make a fair wage. And so if we already have the vast majority of makers living, you know, on starvation wages, and you take away the wages, what have you got left? You have starvation. And so we, you know,

there's been this great movement online. I've amplified at times. And basically to put the pressure on the brands who have specifically not said anything about whether or not they're paying garment workers. And I think Remake has done an amazing job of bringing this conversation to the mainstream so that people could truly understand that like these brands do have power and when they choose to engage in one of these actions they um they really end up hurting and harming people yeah i think this sounds like a fantastic initiative and it has really concentrated my mind i confess i hadn't really thought about that aspect of all this so

i'm really grateful to you and fellow campaigners for doing exactly that. But Dilys, how many of us honestly do think about the women working in who knows what kind of conditions who are probably at the bottom of the bottom of the pile here? Yeah, I mean, I think more and more people are thinking about it. And certainly, you know, as a woman, I know that, you know, some of the wealthiest men in the world are men that own fashion companies. And some of the most poor women in the world are the women that are making clothes. So I think it's also for us to kind of take that on. And if you look online and I mean, Aja's campaign is really brilliant. Fashion revolution, Labour behind the label. It's not difficult to find out what the backstory is.

Just as we know the backstory about all sorts of other things in our lives, it doesn't take long and it's incredibly revealing. But it's also incredibly exciting when you find an organisation that there's some designers we're working with called Birdsong, another designer called Away From Mars, where they kind of crowdsource ideas and you can co-create the designs that you want them to be producing. There's amazing things out there now that just weren't available a few years ago. Working with students at London College of Fashion over the last 10 years, it's changed dramatically.

Oh, I just wanted to clarify and say I'm not actually a part of the pay up movement, but I do support the work. OK, I don't want to take credit for someone else's work. No, no. Heaven forbid. I've definitely amplified and I think that they're really on to something. And I want to go back to what Dilys was saying. I think right now in our society, we're having a really big shift where people are starting to look at where money flows. And it's very easy for everyone to look at Jeff Bezos and say, he's got way too much

money. But what people aren't looking at is the people that own the big fast fashion brands and realising that they're billionaires as well. But they're billionaires from a system that largely exploits a large amount of the makers. And that's something that we need to sort of start holding people accountable for. Quite. Thank you very much indeed for talking to us, Aja Barber. And you also heard from Dilys Williams, Professor Dilys Williams. Thanks to both.

Your thoughts on fast fashion and the practicality of sustainability and how it works for you and in your household, let us know. Now to your emails on our first conversation this morning. No DSS has now been outlawed in letting agents and estate agents. Kate says, this is a red herring. Most landlords and agents don't discriminate against actual tenants on benefits. It's the benefits itself. The system is so bad that both private and social landlords have lost millions due to non-payment. This won't make any difference. It isn't snobbishness. Talk to good landlords who've stopped letting to those on benefits due to huge losses.

Attacking landlords and agents instead of the system is really wrong. Denise says, I must state that as a landlord, I have mortg that, the problem with mortgage lenders, and Polly Neate from Shelter said she didn't believe that was the case any longer. Dorcas says, I'm in favour of this ruling, but I would like to offer an experience of mine. Back in 1990, my husband and I had to relocate from London, but the flat we'd just bought was worth less than we paid for it two years earlier. So we rented it out and became renters ourselves.

Our letting agent recommended having no DSS applicants, but in the end found us a tenant that was DSS. The system may well be different now, but this tenant didn't have the agreement of the DSS for the level of rent, so the rent was higher than the benefit he was getting, and within a couple of months he couldn't pay the rent. He tried to get us to lower the rent, but our mortgage was higher than the rent we were getting,

so we said no. He continued to not pay the full rent, and we had to give him notice, which ended up costing us lots of money in lost rent and legal fees. We then had the same problem a couple of years later and lost loads more money before property prices went up enough for us to sell the flat. There you go, a complicated story, but I suspect not an uncommon one. Penny says, as a single person in my early 40s, I was diagnosed with ME,

which meant that my professional career as an opera singer was interrupted for some years. Forced to move house, I will never forget the impersonal and mortifying response from estate agents when I applied with a guarantor savings and references for rental properties I was told without consideration that I was an unsuitable candidate as I was a recipient of housing benefit I was lucky to find by chance a brilliant landlord in Brighton who chose to let decent Yeah, well, good point, Penny. And hats off to your landlord. We must make it clear, not all landlords are villains here. Far from it. There are some decent people out there, as Penny's experience illustrates. Barbara says, listening to this discussion, I've got to say, Jane, that snobbery has got nothing

to do with it. It's to do with a mindless few on benefits who've left homes in various states of destruction. I have seen one that was completely destroyed inside and out. A mindless few do spoil it for the thoughtful majority with the stigma then attached to anybody on housing benefit. Maybe a more robust monitoring system when letting is needed. Yeah, it's really got people going this and I understand that there's a lot of different lot of different stories out there Maggie says I'm a landlord and I did come across an issue with insurance they wanted to charge me a higher premium because one of the tenants was on benefit I thought my case would have paid more if necessary but as you say there is already prejudice in the insurance system I don't believe that tenants on

benefits are more of a risk. And another listener draws our attention to another problem, not unconnected though. I'm a retired woman facing an unexpected divorce. I live in the southeast of England. I've only got my pensions, which sound good until I apply for accommodation. Most estate agents want 30 times my income to qualify for accommodation, which in the South East generally equates to a one-bed flat or a bedroom in a shared house, neither of which is suitable for me.

I've got savings and I know what I can afford, so I also feel discriminated against as well as people on benefits re-trying to find suitable accommodation. What is out there for us older women suddenly facing eventual homelessness once divorce has been processed? Another difficult one. Now to Nicole Chung, who was talking about her adoption story. Fiona says, our two children are adopted from Russia, and I found Nicole's take on the subject as lasting throughout life interesting. It does of course as it happened but as we've said to our children that their adoption day was like a second birthday. They were born and adopted and then they get on with life. As a child born to my mother I don't keep enmeshing birth into my journey.

We are very open about our children's story. Then they get to tell their story to others if they wish. Fiona, thank you very much for your experience. I was not adopted and I always find doing interviews about adoption a difficult thing to do because I think it's very easy to ask inane questions and make obvious mistakes so I always find the interviews very very informative and I think Nicole Chung's story was certainly a different slice of that sort of life so our thanks to her and this is from a listener called Mari who says she's a regular listener to the program and it's actually about face masks and we know that the advice has now changed again. You'll have to keep up at the back here but now from July the 24th in England wearing face masks in shops is mandatory and Mari says

there appears to be no consideration given by this government to those of us who are hearing impaired. The guidance could easily have been given to the need to wear clear view masks to enable us to enable those of us who are deaf to communicate by lip reading. At this time of concern over mental health health issues I am really worried that a whole section of our society will become even more isolated than ever. I think it would be a really interesting debate on disability issues and equal opportunities. Mari, thank you. And again, I will suggest that possibly as a topic for the programme over the next couple of weeks. It was interesting to me travelling on the underground this morning into work that there were, I would say, the overwhelming majority on my carriage were wearing masks,

but there were four people, because I did count, four people who weren't, and they were all men. Now, I'm not making that as a old harpy woman's hour point, but why is it that men think they don't have to? And I suppose it's men, it's significant, isn't it, that they probably know they won't be challenged. I wonder whether women think they might be got at if they don't wear masks, because we should wear masks on public transport in London at the moment, we're told to. Anyway, I'm just throwing that out there. Let the programme know

what you think on this one. At BBC Women's Hour on social media or you can email us, of course, via the website bbc.co.uk slash women's hour. Jenny is here tomorrow. Amongst other things things she's going to be talking to karen gibson you'll remember her and her fantastic choir at the royal wedding of megan and harry which really does seem a lifetime ago now but karen's with jenny on the program

tomorrow bbc sounds music radio podcasts blood sport is the story of how the Russian state doped the 2012 Olympics and everything that followed. 2012 was just a bit of a kick in the nuts. I don't know how to say it. A lot of us naively believed that we were through the worst of it. That had been placed here by the Kremlin to try to find Dr. Rechenkov. The city of London. They could have stopped that. They had the information.

They had the sources. I'm just clarifying. The most extraordinary sports story of all time. They could have stopped that. They had the information. They had the sources. The most extraordinary sports story of all time. How many people were working in the laboratory then, though, at that time? We were working in shifts. Russian doping control is like fake doping control. So join me, Matt Magendie, as we tell the complete story for the first time. They're incredibly brave people, aren't they?

That's Bloodsport, how Russia doped the 2012 Olympics. You can subscribe to it on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.