Woman's Hour - Jo Tongue, Universal Basic Income, Sian Norris, Childhood Obesity

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

NHS England is going to open 10 new clinics this year to deal with childhood obesity. The clinics will provide "intensive" support to thousands of children with severe obesity and their families aged between two and 18. We know that mothers are on the frontline with managing doctors' appointment and family's health issues. So are these clinics the answer? Nuala speaks to Tam Fry, the Chair of the National Obesity Forum.Jo Tongue is a sports agent who represents some of the best known sporting and broadcasting talent in the UK, including England footballer Leah Williamson. She is vocal in her push for parity of the profile and pay for women in sport - both on the pitch and in the media. For this reason, Jo earned herself a place on the Woman’s Hour Women in Sport Power List earlier this year. She joins Nuala to tell her about her career to date in a male dominated industry.With automation threatening swathes of jobs, there’s growing momentum behind the idea of a universal basic income (UBI): an unconditional payment from the state regardless of any other income. For those unable to perform or find paid work, it would provide enough to live on. For those who can work, it would allow an escape from the ‘poverty trap’, where the loss of welfare benefits makes low-paid work uneconomic. A think tank called Autonomy is planning to pilot a UBI scheme, giving a flat payment of £1600 a month to participants. Nuala McGovern speaks to Cleo Goodman from Autonomy and also Eir Nolsoe, Senior Economics Reporter at the Daily Telegraph.Investigative journalist Sian Norris believes that anti-abortion movements across the world are not so much rooted in religious belief, but in far right extremism, white male supremacy and fascism. She joins Nuala to explain why she has come to that conclusion, and written a book called Bodies Under Siege – How the far right attack on reproductive rights went global. Presented by Nuala McGovern Produced by Lucy Wai Edited by Sarah Crawley

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. Ten new child obesity clinics are to be opened by NHS England. They say the clinics will be dedicated to helping children between 2 and 18 years of age as hospital admissions of children with obesity have nearly tripled in a decade. The NHS England chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, she says, doing nothing now is not an option.

We're going to speak about what they plan to do in just a moment. And I'd also like to hear from you. I'd like to know if you have been asked to address your child being overweight and what did you do, if anything? And I'd also like to know how did it make you feel or how did your child react? Maybe you were overweight as a child. I'd also like to hear your story if so. Text the programme 84844 at BBC Woman's Hour on social media or you can email us through our website or for WhatsApp or a voice note. That number is 03700 100 444. Also today, Jo Tung,

one of the amplifiers on our Women's Hour power list, Women in Sport. She'll be with us in studio. She's worked hard to boost women in football her whole life, including during her A-level, so you'll hear that story. Another story we have for you, £1,600 a month, no strings attached. How does that sound? We're going to talk about universal

basic income and could such a proposal actually work? Plus, Sian Norris. Sian has written Bodies Under Siege. She believes far-right extremism is using the abortion debate to influence changes in legislation around the globe. So that's also coming up. But let me begin with childhood obesity. NHS England, as I mentioned, is to open 10 new clinics. That's this year to deal with it. And the clinics say they will provide intensive support to thousands of children with severe obesity and to their families and for the kids that are aged between 2 and 18. One in five kids are overweight or obese by the time they start primary school.

One in three reaches this point by the end of it. And that is the data for England that is showing. The clinics plan to offer tailored care packages. They say they'll develop them with their family. It could include diet plans, mental health care and coaching run by specialists, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers and also dietitians. So these 10 new clinics, they'll bring the number of clinics in England to 30 and it is part of an £18 million project over the next two years. We also know that mothers are often on the front line with managing doctor's appointments and also families health issues. So are these clinics the answer? Well I'm joined now on the line by the chair of the National Obesity Forum

that's Tam Fry. Welcome Tam. Welcome to you. And your reaction to these new clinics, 30 in total, 10 new ones about to go online. Well, my first reaction is not before time. We have suffered for years and years and years of the government trying to do something about obesity, but only starting at school age. They seem to have not realised that the really crucial years for developing children are between birth and five years. And now, finally, we've got some action from the government starting at two years. Yes, but why two then, do you think? Why is that the age that they're starting at and not birth? I'm sorry, I didn't understand your question. Because these clinics, they're targeting between

2 and 18 they're not going below 2 why do you not think that they should you know you know raise that or lower it should I say down to when a child is born if in fact you believe it's more from 0 to 5 well what what what you've been talking about is an entity which is multidisciplinary. And at the moment, childcare is basically down to the parents going to the GP, and the GP may not be very much of a specialist. Now we're going to have a facility whereby people can go to what is called a hub, invented, if you will, by Angela Leesom about seven years ago, where you can go and learn about cooking and about all the things that you need to be doing in order to raise your child properly from the age of two. My wish is that it should start at

the age of birth, because from birth onwards, the first year of a child's life in terms of weight gain is really, really crucial. And if you miss that window of opportunity, already you're starting to lead the child into being overweight as a toddler. So that's what you would like to see ideally. But let's talk about what is on the table today. What level of obesity do you think they're talking about for children that would attend clinics like this? There are a number already in force, of course. What level did you say? Yes. Well, I mean, it is, excuse me, it is far too high. Back in 2003, the chief medical officer for England required that all health professionals identify children who were putting on too much weight, concerning weight. And if you didn't act then, then the whole process of becoming obese would start. But that has not been followed.

We don't have enough nurses. We don't have enough doctors who know what they're doing. And we need something like the government is looking at now, which has got all the other disciplines coming in to actually inform the mother about how to raise their children. But do you think, Tam, that there's like it's different when it comes to weight as opposed to other childhood ailments, that there's still a sense of stigma or shame perhaps around that? And do you think that is addressed because we're talking about it very um in kind of a

clinical manner shall we say instead of really those relationships that parents have with children that they might have with weight or you know thinking about the kids self-esteem as well yes all that is missing at the moment. And these hubs will not replace everything. My particular wish is that, in fact, we start much earlier, because we have about 50% of short in this country, needs to be addressed. And hopefully the ultimate outcome of the government's action today will be they bring the whole thing forward. So all issues to do with child care

can be raised, not just about weight. I see a message coming in, 84844, if you want to get in touch. Told by letter, my son is very overweight. Ticked off and given a leaflet saying, swap deep pan pizza for thin crust.

No mention of vegetables or activity. Nonsense, says Lizzie in Croydon. Another, let me see coming in. My son was stated to be obese a few years ago in spite of clearly not being because the system was so automated. Why can't the nurse taking a child's height and weight

also record some notes on appearance? The letter we received was patronising and useless as well as upsetting. Notes about eating healthily, which he already did. Body weight is so variable and down to so many factors.

Tackling obesity surely needs to be more about diet, health, etc. Thank you, Chloe, for getting in touch on that aspect uh but there's you know underlining there the shortcomings that there are in the system at the moment as they feel before you would get to a clinic that is helping a child with obesity i think why is that still that shortfall that I'm hearing from listeners? Search me. I have no idea. We really have taken our eye off the ball about how we provide facilities for parents to bring up their children properly. And that education has to start, in my view, in school, because from school onwards, particularly, I don't want to be sexist about that, but from school onwards, a whole quantity of young girls growing into women

will be thinking about having children. And they get no information, really, about what to do. Most of them don't know how to cook because cooking was taken out of the... But you know, I know you're talking about girls not knowing how to cook, but my listeners are also bringing up, you know, what about the men in all of this? And what about the fathers? Because they are part of the equation when it comes to making a child as well. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole issue has not been addressed properly from 1992 when I started doing what I'm doing now. And there is a great chunk of knowledge and information which does not exist to help parents, particularly with the firstborn.

And the facilities are not there, and hopefully they will be put there. Back about 20 years ago, we had what was called the Children's Sure Start Centres, and they were wonderful because it allowed everybody to come together, share their experiences, learn about raising children, and they were very, very successful. Unfortunately, when the Conservative administration came in in 2010, they started to be run down. And so we've gone through the last decade without anything in place to help people. Now, Angela Leedsom is starting to revive that by having these children's hubs.

But coming back again to this issue, because this is Women's Hour, I do feel that mothers are often put in this position of being expected to work if their child is overweight on that particular aspect, unfairly burdened. I mean, do you see that, that you feel the women or indeed you were talking about girls, if they're thinking about becoming pregnant, that there's that proper outreach to boys and men as well? Absolutely. And everybody has to be involved. Fathers are really very, very important in this issue. The problem has been is that the traditional job of the mother is to raise the children while

the fathers go out to work. That is appalling because the fathers really need to have as much input into child raising as the mothers. And that is particularly when it comes to breastfeeding. Mothers relying on who want to breastfeed find it in many instances absolutely exhausting. But the fathers don't realize exactly what is going on. They need to be trained at school. So what I would like to see in secondary school is both genders being given proper advice about raising children, particularly, of course, when it comes to the firstborn. A lot of parents also now are single parents, and they need all this help given to them,

whereas in the old days where there were traditional couples and grandparents on hand, that was not such a problem. But now grandparents don't arrive and we have single parent families trying to struggle and cope. And that is, of course, hugely awful for the baby. Tam Fry, Chair of the National Obesity Forum. Thank you so much.

And we'll continue, of course, covering this. We're expecting those announcements to come today from NHS England. We did also approach NHS England for a comment. We'll bring you a statement when we get it. Let me move on now on Women's Hour. And thank you for your comments coming in at 84844 as well. When we were working away behind the scenes, putting together the Women's Hour Women in Sport Power List,

we decided to include a category for amplifiers. we're working away, behind the scenes, putting together the Women's Hour, Women in Sport Power List. We decided to include a category for amplifiers. We wanted to recognise those women working to elevate the status of women's sport in our society. And my next guest is an embodiment of that. Jo Tong represents some of the best sporting and broadcasting talent in the UK, including the woman who topped our power list,

England player Leah Williamson. And with the highly anticipated Women's World Cup just around the corner and news this week that the Women's Super League wages and club revenues are on the rise, a little on that later, Jo has seen the evolution of the women's game firsthand and joins me now in the studio. Welcome, Jo. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Great to have you with us. Let's start with how you got into the football industry. A very sporty family, I believe. Yeah, so I think it's just what we did. My dad worked in the industry.

He was a journalist and my mother grew up in a very sporting family. So they just took us to football or tennis or cricket. We lived, our house backed onto a park. So we just played out the whole time. So football was just what we did. And if you didn't talk about football or other sports at the dinner table, you didn't really get involved in the conversation. So you had to, yeah, pick up your game and get involved. And so you definitely did.

You know, a lot of families will be going through A-levels at the moment or have somebody at home doing them. Your A-level exam kind of got in the way of you wanting to work in the football industry in a way. Why don't you tell our listeners that story? So I don't know why I did this, but when I was 16, 17, we had the home Euros. So this is 1996, which shows my age.

And I wrote to the FA and I just wanted to work at the Euros. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just knew I wanted to work in football. It was my passion. It was what I loved. So I wrote to the FA and said, please, could I have a job? I'll be finishing my A-levels that summer. Please, could I just, I'll do anything. Please, could I have a job? And somehow my letter got passed on to UEFA and UEFA got in touch and they gave me a job at the Euros, which was amazing. So I was 17 years old, but the Euros tournament started while my a-level exams were still going on which was fine and um my parents were so supportive bless them but there was one afternoon exam where we had a night game and I obviously had to be at Wembley I can't remember say it was four o'clock and we didn't

have the tube in those days so it was quite a long journey to Wembley from my house in South London. So, yeah, I remember finishing my A-level paper and sticking my hand up and going, I'm done. And they were like, are you really done? Yeah, definitely done. And so I could leave. And I just remember running down to the station and starting the journey across London to get to Wembley for one of the games. Worth it? It turned out all right, didn't it? Completely worth it.

Sorry, Mum. Sorry, Dad. But, you know, maybe it'll give also some people going through the A-levels today a bit of a smile as well. But you began your media career at the BBC, starting as a reporter, moving into TV and radio and editing Five Lives flagship football programme 606 for 10 years. But I think you must have been the only woman in the room at times. So often the only woman in the room.

And it's one of the reasons that we set up Women in Football, which I'm a director and board member of, so many years ago, because, you know, I was 21 years old and you'd be going to a press conference or going to a game and I didn't know anyone. So everyone's, you know, there's a press pack and, you know, they work very closely together and it's an amazing thing to be part of. But when you're not part of it, it can be really

daunting. So you'd walk into a room and often you'd be mistaken for the tea lady or you'd be asked where, you know, the team sheets were or you just weren't included. What did you do in those instances? I think I'd just say, oh, I'm actually here to work for BBC Sport or just sort of sometimes I'd laugh it off and sometimes I'd be sort of adamant and say

oh no sorry I'm not here for that but let me find you the person who is but it did make you feel uncomfortable and just things as a woman that you know

men don't have to think about like what you wear What did you wear? I always used to wear a black polo neck just never used to like you just don't want to draw attention to yourself which is awful whereas now I'm very I'm much in really bright colors always yeah and you know I do my hair I do my makeup but I think when I was when

I was growing up and less sure of myself I almost didn't want to draw attention to myself and I'd be like I'm just gonna be really good at my job and then hopefully that will do the talking for me and people almost won't notice me, but they'll notice my work. I feel I have to say to radio because they'll always be like, what is she wearing? OK, she's a white jacket on, she's kind of a lime green top and emerald green trousers. Sunny, fun. So, yeah, we set up Women in Football because it was exactly that. You'd get to a press room and you just almost needed someone who looked like you or who was going through the same thing as you just to give the nod to go, you all right?

You all right you're all right um and like our first um sort of meeting there was only 30 people and it was just i think essentially the the eight founders of women in football it's kind of who they knew who it was literally who do we know right quick get them to this event so we had a sort of event at tottenham um all sort of underground and then now we're a network of 8 000 women women. And essentially... Did you think that would ever happen? Never. I mean, imagine 8,000 women working in football. You know, it's amazing. But at the same time, you know, I can sit here and say there's 8,000 women who work in football, but we're still severely underrepresented at board level, exec level. We've got a scheme actually

in women in football where it's an apprentice board scheme because, you know, talking about going through A-levels and what I wanted to do when I grew up. Would you ever grow up and think, I want to be on a board? How do you know? Like, you know, boards are where decisions are made. So we can't change the industry unless we're part of the decision-making process. But how do you know how to be on a board? So we have an apprentice scheme where you join our board for a year and effectively you come to board meetings and you learn how much work it takes outside of board meetings. It's just schemes like that that I think are so important.

You're reminding me, we had the architect Yasmeen Lowry, who has this incredible career, on the other day. And she said also, of course, working in a male-dominated field, that the network wasn't there. Exactly that. Because, you know, 20 years ago when I entered the industry, the network was the golf course and the pub. And often as a woman, you know, I didn't grow up going playing golf. So I wouldn't be confident enough to necessarily go to a golf day. So then you miss out on that whole networking thing. And then the other thing is, you know, lots of lots of women are mothers.

So we just don't have the hours to put into all that networking um so there's all there's sort of all these contributing factors that mean your network is automatically reduced and as women in football you know you have women in football and i did i hear that you call somebody from women in football every day oh we've got a whatsapp group and mean, you know. Have they done it this morning? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, she's on Women's Hour. She's on Women's Hour, exactly. But that's what I mean.

It's about supporting each other and championing each other. And when women are representing, you know, like, as you said, I'm used to being behind the other side of the glass because I was a producer for so long. This isn't my natural environment, but I really believe passionately and I have to speak about what I do because I want young women to think, oh, I could do that. And you've helped it happen as well.

As we talk about you as an amplifier from our power list, you became an agent switching from media and former England and Chelsea footballer, Annie Aluko, was the first female player you represented and then under your management, she became the first ever female pundit on, of course, Match of the Day. That was in 2014. I went having a look at some of those articles this morning and I was like, woman! Isn't it mad?

I know. What do you think looking back on that time? I just think it's crazy because every time you watch a football game now, you will see some sort of female representation more often than not in front of the camera but also there's a lot more representation with directors, camera women, producers, co-ords etc but I mean at the time there was such a fuss about it and it had actually taken me two or three years to make that happen so

I started working with Eni just before the home olympics because we thought oh we've got home olympics there's going to be you know the the women's football team will be visible um you know this is where women's football is going to take over there's some massive opportunities for them the game was starting to turn professional so Eni and I were like this is a really exciting time for women's football and I um approached the BBC and and other broadcasters and basically said, we should have a female pundit. You know, any, for example, so articulate. I think she had 88 caps for England at the time.

She was playing for Chelsea. Why not? And essentially was told, well, she's never played in the Premier League. So why could she comment on the Premier League? And it took about two and a half years of meetings and then you know hats off mark cole who um is now at whisper who make lots of the women's football programs he was the editor of match of the day at the time and i just remember him calling and saying right we're on and i think it was i think we had about 10 days notice

and i was like hey we're going to salford i I still, you know, it was nerve wracking because there was so much pressure on Eni because ultimately if it didn't work, then it was on the rest of us for another two years to fight the battle for another two years to get another opportunity. When I looked at the newspaper articles, they had printed every comment that she had made on the match

of like whether it stood up to scrutiny. Imagine the scrutiny, like imagine your first show ever. Yes. Or, you know, like my first show that I'm producing and someone is literally scrutinising you. And that's where they're at. And, you know, and he did brilliantly and paved the way for the rest of us.

Let's talk about some of the things that are happening today then. Last month, for example, the Telegraph reported that the big six Premier League football clubs spent more on agents fees in men's football last season alone than they've collectively spent on their women's football programme since the Women's Super League began in 2011. I mean, it's insanity, isn't it? I'm in the wrong side, aren't I, on that? But yeah, I think, I mean, the money just wasn't in the women's game to pay agents fees. They're starting to trickle in. But at at the same time you have to think percentage wise so the men's average the average wage in the premier league for example i think is

2.8 million the average wage in the women's super league is 30 grand so where are you getting an agent's fee if so if you know if one of my clients is earning 30 grand a year it's pretty outrageous to take a huge agent's fee on that isn isn't it? Because that's the living wage. So, yeah, it's a really interesting time. And don't get me wrong, you know, we're in the middle of a transfer window at the moment. It's really busy and things are changing, but it's not changing that quickly. You know, the average is not going to jump up much from 30 grand a year, trust me. We heard Sue Campbell on who was talking about that they're different games and maybe it's not

helpful to compare them in the exact same way and I don't want to paraphrase her too much without looking at her exact words but basically that we shouldn't always be thinking about those two figures side by side that it's not always helpful. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, you've got to remember, women's football was banned for 50 years. So, you know, the FA Cup winners money, for example, men's, if you win the FA Cup in the men's game, there's a £2 million winners fee. If you win the FA Cup as a women's team, it's 100 grand. But the men's FA Cup started in 1871. The women's FA Cup started in 1971 so we're you know we've got 100 years on that but also we didn't have a game for 50 years so we are behind but at the same time the argument could be the the FA Cup final was sold out I was at both it was sold out

for the men's it was sold out for the women's it was on BBC One terrestrial you know prime time it was on BBC One terrestrial prime time where's the difference and if you know from my point of view i think you've got to start looking at the sponsorship of those things so same for a club you know my concern is that the wsl lots of clubs are not sustainable because they're trying to pay more wages so i'm saying the average wage is 30 grand but you know everyone's pushing i'm an agent i'm pushing for my players to earn more of course they're all push push push sponsors push. Sponsors are trying to get involved. But the clubs as a business will say, well, the women's side actually loses. You know, we're a lost leader.

We're losing five million pounds a year, for example, or four million pounds a year. What I would say is, right, the next time you do a sponsor deal, they're sponsoring the brand. So they're sponsoring Man United or they're sponsoring Chelsea. It's not they're sponsoring men's and women's. It's almost don't have those two parallels on your Excel spreadsheet. You know, if they're sponsoring the club, they're sponsoring the club. And so they're putting money in the pot for the brand. So the brand of the club, you want the women's team

because you want to show that, you know, you've got a women's team and that's the right thing to do and isn't this exciting? It's such a growth area. But then the minute that it's running as a lost leader, say oh but that side of the business loses money well you can look at the figures there and say to sponsors you're sponsoring the brand you're sponsoring the club brands and that is men and women yeah i think i think that's you know that's an obvious same with the fa cup sponsorship i'd be saying you're sponsoring the fa cup so let's not look at what the women's FA Cup brings in

versus what the men's FA Cup brings in. Let's talk about sponsorship for a moment though. You know I was seeing Ian Wright who's an ally to very much women's football. He was talking about what would never happen

in the men's game. He's basically blasting broadcasters over the lack of publicity around the women's World Cup saying that England's Euro winning stars have lost out on

lucrative sponsorship deals across Europe and this this is because, you know, basically they can't decide on the broadcast rights. What do you think in that? Oh, it's impossible. This would never happen in the men's game. We can't do commercial deals because we don't know where the Women's World Cup is going to be broadcast.'s still not signed you know the it starts in a month we have no deal signed it's it's the most ludicrous situation you know the on the men's side and i hate to use the comparison but we have to um they were announcing the broadcast rights for the 2026 world cup it's already done and dusted 2023 so three years out the men's deal is done and dusted and we have a month we

have a month we don't even know where we can watch the world cup it also brings me to there's so many aspects we can talk about joe right um you are i mentioned leah williamson's agent captain of the england team um and she has that acl injury which means she won't be competing how is she doing she's great she's um she's great, you know, it's a really hard time and ACLs are such, they're such a problem, especially in the women's game at the moment. But she's got an amazing sort of set of teammates who, you know, it's well documented. Beth, Viv, Leah, who are all going through the same thing together. So yeah, she's got the support of the team. Leah's the most sort of, you know, she guest edited this programme.

She's a very down-to-earth, sensible, balanced young woman. And, yeah, she's doing brilliantly. I think, look, it's and um ACLs are devastating for women and we we need we need to look into that um that situation for for all women playing uh will she go down or she'll stay here uh I think it's undecided but I think yeah I think she's hoping to go out and support the team yeah yeah it's been terrific having you on Jo just before I let you go how did it feel to be on the power list oh do you know what do you know what it was the maddest thing so i um bizarrely when it was announced i'd actually just had a baby and my baby congratulations bless you but the baby was in intensive care so i was sitting alongside this ink sitting just staring

at this he's absolutely fine by the way um staring at this incubator my phone just started going mad and i just thought this is the most crazy thing i'm on this power list like the word power just sort of yeah it's just a bit odd isn't it when it's about yourself and I was like if anyone could see me now I'm in like my three day old pyjamas my poor baby's like on tubes in an incubator

I don't feel very powerful right now but yeah it was amazing We love that you were there and you know in your power

taking care of your baby and thank you so much for coming into us it's been a real pleasure Thank you for having me Jo Tong one of the women, our amplifier on the Women's Hour Power List,

which of course you can find more about on our website. Now, I want to turn to another issue. Automation is threatening numerous jobs. We've talked about that. There's lots of discussions around the idea of universal basic income, UBI, and unconditional payment from the state

regardless of any other income. So for those unable to perform or find paid work, it would provide enough to live on. And for those who can work, it would allow an escape from the poverty trap where the loss of welfare benefits makes low paid work uneconomic. A think tank called Autonomy

is planning to pilot a UBI scheme, giving a flat payment of £1,600 a month to participants. I'm joined now by Cleo Goodman, who set up the Basic Income Conversation Project at Autonomy, and also by Ayr Nolsa, who's a senior economics reporter at The Telegraph. Great to have you both with us. Cleo, first to you.

How would this actually work? A basic income at a national level? Yes. Well, let's talk about, you're going to pilot it, right? In Jarrow and Sunderland and also in Finchley in London. This is the proposal. Yes.

So we worked with the communities there for a couple of years to discuss the idea of basic income, how they thought it would work in their communities. And it became very clear that they thought it would be a good idea to test it and that they thought that Jarrow and Grange and East Finchley were the right places to test it. So we put together these proposals in collaboration with the community.

The £1,600 payment is higher than it would be at a national level. And that's partly just to make sure that we're safeguarding the people that would participate in that pilot. And it also matches the pilot that's happening in Wales. So we'd be able to compare results there. But yeah, so it's an exciting time.

We're looking for investment for the pilots and we hope to see them go ahead. That's what we're talking about, money. Aya, what about this? Do you think it could possibly work? I think, I mean, it's a nice idea. I think rolling it out on a national level would be very, very expensive and would create a lot of losers. So it becomes a lot more tricky on that level. I mean, has it worked anywhere?

So as far as I know, there's been loads of pilots, but it's not really been tested on a national level. So I think the problem is obviously you have a benefit system at the moment that targets support to the people that the government thinks need it the most. If you give free money to everyone, then you either have to reduce the amount of money that you give out or you have to put up taxes. So in one, some assimilation from Scotland showed that taxes would have to rise by as much as eight percentage points. And obviously the trials or pilots like the ones we're talking about, you can test the winners.

And I'm sure for a lot of people having financial security would bring immense benefits to their lives. But how do you test for the people who stand to lose by it, either because the universal basic income that they receive would be lower than what they already get from the state or by their taxes going up? So I think therein lies the difficulty of role now on a broader scale. So what about that, Cleo? There's a lot of negatives that do come to the surface with it. Yeah, I mean, it is possible to build a fiscally neutral model so that the increases in taxes only affect people that can afford it

and the benefits really are concentrated for people that need those that increase to their income the most we've published models last year that showed that even a low-level fiscally neutral model would half child poverty overnight and reduce working-age poverty by over a quarter and yes there would losers, but we are in the privileged position that we're looking at a universal basic income as part of the future. So we can hone those models as much as possible to reduce those on paper. And they can be avoided completely by including a package of transitional protection alongside the basic income when you're implementing it to ensure that no one is worse off. But yeah, the important thing to note here is that even with

people that are losing out or those imperfections, the impacts on reducing poverty are massive. And there will be a cost associated with, you know, solving or addressing such a massive social issue as poverty. And I think that's an important thing to look in the eye and invest in. The DWP, Department of Work and Pensions, they aren't interested in collaborating on this pilot. Did that surprise you? And is it something you've spoken about with the Labour Party? It didn't surprise us at all. Unfortunately, the work that happened in Scotland was published, you know, nearly four years ago now. And even that Scottish government funded and led project, well, it was led by four local authorities and funded by Scottish Government,

didn't receive that collaboration from central government and the pilots that were proposed in Scotland weren't possible to take forward because of that lack of collaboration. But we have seen the Welsh Government push forward with a basic income pilot. There are, over the next couple of years, going to be 500 care leavers receiving a basic income, which is fantastic commitment to this

policy so it is possible and it is possible to work around without that support and we haven't spoken to the Labour Party about it it's something that we're hoping this work at the grassroots is going to demonstrate the impacts and and sort of make it unavoidable as an election issue as a political issue and a policy that people need to be addressing and hopefully supporting. This is Woman's Hour. Let's talk about it in respect to women. You know, some say it could be beneficial for women, particularly if they were at home with children or caring responsibilities. Has that been seen or proven anywhere? So I think the thing that comes back to again is just, you know,

what would the size of the payment be? So, for example, the benefits caps for a single parent, which would, I mean, a lot of time be women. In the UK at the moment for someone in London is around £2,200. Outside London, I think it's around £1,800. And obviously, as Cleo said, if you roll universal basic income out on a national level, it wouldn't be possible to have it at a level of £1,600. So actually, it sounds like quite a few single m moms would be losing out in that scenario. They'd be worse off and taxes across the board would presumably go up.

And they would be worse off also because you're then giving money to bank directors and other it to people who need it, then it isn't really universal basic income anymore. It's not universal. It then becomes closer to what we already have sort of within the benefits system. I think one point to highlight as well is that the OECD, so a group of rich countries, they did some modelling back in 2017 and they found that at that time around 10% of people receiving benefits were sort of classes being in poverty and if you took the cost of the benefit system, replaced that big universal income from for everyone, then that number rose to 15% as being in relative poverty. So I do think there are

some huge drawbacks, unfortunately. Yeah, with that, some of the points you bring up there are, but also, Cleo, I saw there was a UN report that pointed out while the UBI kind of, I suppose, echoing a little

of what Ira was saying, could possibly lead to a, could lead to a drop in targeted benefits so they could lose out. So a 2021 UN Women report wrote, in a climate of fiscal tightening and austerity, UBI could be used to justify the rollback of state responsibility and funding for other essential support measures, including care services, housing, education and health care. What about that, the unintended consequences i mean that's a political issue and i think i would certainly never support the reduction of very important targeted benefits or services such as the health service and well you know an expansion of things like child care which is something that i think is essential but those are political issues and

we're seeing them playing out every single day a policy being implemented is not going to be the primary cause of other policies being railed back or um you know not invested in so i think the investment in people in the form of universal basic income would represent a shift in the way that we are treating um public services in in the benefit system and making it more generous. And I think it's an essential part of certainly our work campaigning and speaking to people to think about the other components of our social security system that need to, you know, absolutely need to accompany a basic income. And yeah, like I say, it's a political issue that we'd need to keep our eye on in the future. Interesting, interesting food for

thought though cleo goodman and ire nolsa thank you both so much for joining us on women's hour and the dwp did get we reached out to them and they did provide a statement saying the government has no plans to introduce a universal basic income it would not target the most vulnerable or work for those who need more support such as disabled people and those with caring responsibilities. Now I want to move on to something we've been speaking about on Women's Hour. We've been talking about narcissistic mothers. We've heard from lots of daughters and last week if you were with us we heard the story of a mother we called Bethany. Her daughter has labelled her a narcissist and she has not seen her daughter or her grandchildren since January. Bethany spoke to our reporter, Anna Miller, and we had her words voiced up by an actor.

According to Bethany, her relationship with her daughter had been strained for some time. The more effort I made, the worse it got. I was walking a tightrope all the time. So while you're having a chat, your brain is working at the same time. What can I say that's not going to offend? So I was having these dual conversations, the one I'm having out loud with my daughter and the internal one telling me what I had to not say, what I should say to make sure I didn't hack her off. Because always at the back of my mind, I thought, I wonder if she'll ever stop me seeing my grandchildren.

She'll just withdraw completely. And lo and behold, she did. I understand it's very raw for you because it actually wasn't that long ago. No, no, things were really going downhill. They were spiralling out of control and I just couldn't find a solution. And she would start saying things

whereas perhaps before she'd just been suppressing them, she was starting to raise issues like, you once did this and you once did that. And that really bothers me because I don't want my daughter being affected by these things. And I'm, you know, I'm worried about the things you're going to say to her, which made me even more terrified about talking to her. My grandson came along and our relationship really did seem to massively improve. I was useful. I wanted to be useful for her. I thought, this is good, this is good, because I'm showing her that I can be. I'm sorry.

No, it's okay. It's okay. I wanted to show her. I wanted to show her that I'd been a bit of a crap mum. I knew I had. But I was going to be a really good mum for her, but also be a wonderful grandmother because I didn't have anything like that. I thanked her, I think, once in a text saying, you've made me a grandmother and it's the greatest thing. And I also thought being a mum might help her understand no mum is perfect. Then she had her daughter. And then she had my beautiful granddaughter. And it never occurred to me that she might have a bit of postnatal depression.

I did know she was grieving about her dad. Her dad died while she was pregnant. But I was still doing what I thought were the right things to support her. I didn't really understand that, actually, she didn't want me there. Things went really bad when, in the new year, we had a friend come and visit who's known her since she was a little girl and is very fond of her, and we were going to drop by and see her. But I got this very frosty reception from my son-in-law at the door, and it became obvious he wasn't going to let us come in and when I got home my husband had spotted my phone go off and he saw it was a text he read it and then he deleted it

he said you don't need to read that and he was cross with her because he could see this deteriorating behavior and this vilification of me as her mum. And when you say vilification, do you think any of that vilification was justified? Now I can look back and think I was such a remote mum in some ways. And I'm talking about physically remote rather than emotionally remote. I was a selfish mum. It takes years, age and hindsight to look back and go, I didn't do a very good job of that, did I? You've said thoughtless and you've said selfish and you've said absent quite a few times.

Can you give me an example? Her dad and I, he always felt couples need to have time together. He insisted that we have at least 10 days, sometimes two weeks, but it was usually 10 days because funnily enough, I always missed them after 10 days. I was desperate to get back to them. But we'd travel the world and do different things. And sometimes we'd thoughtlessly book them without thinking, is it the children's birthdays? He had quite a high flying job and it was difficult for him to know when to take time off. And I think she resented the fact that I didn't point out to him, why are we going away now? We should be here.

Why didn't you? We just didn't register. Thought him, why are we going away now? We should be here. Why didn't you? We just didn't register. Thoughtless. And did it matter to her? I think it did. Yeah, I think it did. And I can see why it did now. I mean, we'd come back with some beautiful gift or something. She'd go and spend time with her grandparents who loved and adored her. Would I do it now, if they were that age now? No, I wouldn't. But we did then. We both did. But I can understand why she's perhaps more angry with me about it. It's this expectation that mothers are more thoughtful, I think.

Well, if you'd like to hear that interview in full and the others in the series, there are details on today's episode page on our website about where to find them and you will also find an article about Bethany's experiences there too Thanks for all your comments coming in also on obesity and childhood obesity Here's one

I know many people who refuse to let their children be measured in school because the emphasis is on telling parents off and singling out children. I'll come back to some more a little later. But I want to turn next to my guest, who is the investigative journalist, Sian Norris. Her new book is called Bodies Under Siege,

How the Far Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global. Sian has concluded that the anti-abortion movements across the world are not so much rooted in religious belief as in far right extremism, white male supremacy and fascism. And she joins me now in studio. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Well, it's a year next week that Roe v. Wade was overturned in the United States, ending the nationwide right to abortion for women. And it came as a surprise to Manny, but not to you. Why? So I'd spent the sort of years up to the reversal of Roe looking at anti-abortion movements and the structures and the networks that were campaigning to overrule abortion in the US.

I think it's really important to understand that the backlash against Roe started even before Roe was passed. You know, in the early 1970s, the anti-abortion movement could see the writing on the wall and they started organising, they started setting up networks, they started putting out emotional messaging about abortion in order to try and undermine it and undermine a woman's right to her bodily autonomy. I think a lot of people were shocked by the Dobbs decision because under Trump, perhaps we expected abortion to be undermined,

to even be, you know, the laws to be changed. But then Biden came in, it's like, oh, it's a Democrat. They support abortion, they support women's rights. But of course, what happened under Trump was a takeover of the Supreme Court and the judicial system by anti-abortion conservative judges. And so across the country, we saw the appointment of anti-abortion judges, of anti-abortion lawyers being trained up to take these cases to the state, state and federal courts. Until eventually we got to the Supreme Court, where Trump promoted free anti-abortion judges and gave the court an anti-abortion majority.

And so by the time the Dobbs ruling had kind of made its way up. And let's explain the Dobbs ruling very briefly. So the Dobbs ruling was the case that overruled Roe. So we often talk about it as overruling Roe, but it is actually a decision that was made by the Supreme Court to recognise that states could make up their own abortion laws and that there would no longer be this nationwide protection. And so I think the reason I wasn't surprised by the overruling of Roe was because I could see how these networks were funding lawyers, funding training, putting out amicus briefs to courts to undermine abortion, getting their judges into positions of power so that when it came to it, there was a majority in the judicial system to make this happen. So that is you know legal that is what people had decided to do no doubt also on the pro-choice side they were very much fighting for theirs we've heard those voices also on the program about how they're trying to file their lawsuits at the moment to try and chip away at the decision as it stands at the moment but the premise of your book, as I mentioned, is that the anti-abortion rhetoric is really closely linked to the far right, even the materials of some of the kind of local UK

anti-abortion groups. And what I found was that they were connected to very well-known far-right activists. In fact, one of the big anti-abortion groups at the time was founded by a known far-right activist. Where? In the UK. And the group also in the UK? Yeah, so it was called the UK Life League. So the clue is in the name on the UK side of it. And what I was discovering was looking at their literature, seeing this language of far right conspiracy about great replacement theory. And this is a sort of unfounded idea that white people are being replaced in the global north by migrant people from the global south, and replacement is being aided by abortion. And the language I was seeing in this literature was very much like, you know, white children or native children are being replaced by aliens in the classroom. And so suddenly I could see... Aliens meaning children that have come from a different country. Yeah, like extremely, you know, offensive and racist language

that I was seeing in this anti-abortion literature and also kind of praising far-right authoritarian leaders elsewhere in Europe. And so what I was kind of learning was how far from being something that was perhaps a moral issue or a religious issue, increasingly, the anti-abortion movement was looking at far-right conspiracies to kind of drum up support and to explain its opposition to abortion. And that was really a wake-up call to me. But do you feel it's had any traction in the UK? I know we have heard those discussions, definitely in the United States. So the anti-abortion movement in the UK is small. You know, it's very noisy. They like to make a lot

of noise. They can be very vocal and put out their posters and have protests outside abortion clinics. But they are kind of a minority. We know that public support for abortion across the UK is the majority and that we're generally a pro-choice country. But I think what's becoming interesting is that as we're seeing more and more kind of war on woke, cultural issues coming to the surface in politics, we're seeing the kind of messaging that has been popularised in far right corners on issues around migration, on issues around LGBT rights, moving further and further into the mainstream. And I think my concern is that there

is a potential for that to happen with abortion rights, particularly when we have flashpoints where abortion becomes a news story, which has obviously happened this week. But also last year, when we saw these changes to telemedicine, there was a lot of noise from the anti-abortion movement on that issue. Luckily, the pro-choice side won. But, you know, there's always this kind of push. And luckily, you say there'll be lots of my listeners that would be disappointed with the fact that the pro-choice side won.

But, you know, there would be lots of people that are against abortion for whatever reasons, but would not agree with a lot of the sentiments or the policies that are being pushed by more far-right organisations, perhaps with some of the language that you talk about, whether it's the Great Replacement or whether it's anti-immigration, whatever it might be, you know, abortion is their issue

and they don't affiliate themselves with those ideas. So I think it's really important to recognise that everybody has a right to their own views on any issue, of course. You know, people have a right to be anti-abortion for themselves, to choose not to have an abortion for themselves, or to choose, you know, not to support it. The issue comes when that opposition starts to impact on the rights of women who need and want abortions. We can have our private opinions, but if you are then using your opposition to try and take away rights from other women and to try and undermine them.

To move it away, though, from abortion, Sian, to be honest, because what I think you're saying, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, a tool to bring many people into the fold of those other ideas of the far right, including conspiracy theories, whatever it may be. So I think that's one tactic. I think it's there's a lot of the things I look at in the book is kind of trying to understand a different context where this is happening in different countries where it's happening. We know that in the US, abortion was a successful issue to kind of galvanise sort of far right support, to take abortion issues out into the streets and to get people on side with these kind of darker, you know, anti-immigration, racist, white supremacist politics. What we see in some other countries is LGBT issues is the kind of the wedge issue that the far right uses to recruit support.

We've seen that a lot in the UK in terms of the Drag Queen Story Hour protests. You know, I've looked at far right telegram groups saying that they've been heartened by the support of the general public, not just and I'm using air quotes, ethno nationalist. So I think that's where we're seeing far right messaging kind of mainstreaming in the UK and in other countries in Europe to try and win that support. And in other contexts, it's migration, it's the people coming over on boats, it's people being housed in hotels. So the far right is very good at finding these kind of wedge issues and looking at where they are in different countries to get that support. It hasn't been abortion overly in the UK. That's not to say it couldn't happen in the future. Still on the UK, tell me about the crisis pregnancy centres and how you found they operate because you went undercover. Yes. So both for Open Democracy 5050 and then for the book itself, I undertook training for crisis pregnancy centres. centers so these are spaces where um that are anti-abortion spaces and they are designed to

kind of you know give women information about reproductive health that is anti-abortion and to put them off having abortion what we have in the uk is um various crisis pregnancy centers some of which are affiliated to this us organization which is where i did the training webinars and it was a fascinating experience I mean one of the big things that they really push is trying to delay women in accessing reproductive health care they're very clear in the training that you can't tell a woman that you can provide abortions if you can't you know that would be dishonest but they're like we want to meet women with truth and love and hope and they talk about things that are medically dubious, if not wholly

debunked, for example, linking abortion to mental health problems later in life, to physical health problems later in life. There was one training webinar that I did, which ended up being removed from this organisation's website, because it said that abortion could cause sexual dysfunction in your male partner, including homosexuality. So I mean, it was bizarre levels of disinformation. But I think one of the things that I was finding in my research is that crisis pregnancy services are kind of getting more of a foothold around the world, particularly in the global south. And when I was researching abortion rights in East Africa, a lot of the women I was speaking to were saying we're really concerned that we're seeing more crisis pregnancy centres appearing in our region

and that they're kind of getting a foothold in health ministries. We've only got a couple of minutes, Sian, a little less than that. I mean, what do you want to happen? What are you trying to do? Raise awareness of the links? Yes. I think what I was really interested in doing with this book and with my journalism in general is to try and understand abortion as a political issue rather than the sort of moral issue or a religious issue. To recognise that there are religious objections to abortion, but actually what we're seeing in the anti-abortion movement now is a very politicised, you know, anti-rights, anti-human rights, anti-women movement that is trying to sort of push a very dangerous agenda.

And I wanted it to be a wake up call. You know, I wanted to say, like, we have to talk about this. We have to understand what we're dealing with and then we can fight for women's rights. OK, let me see one more minute. I have to just mention the woman who was sentenced to 28 months for inducing an abortion after the legal limit. We talked about it yesterday. The barrister, Harriet Johnson, on the programme suggested if abortion were decriminalised here, that under a regulatory regime, perhaps the provider could be sanctioned instead of the woman. Very briefly, what do you think of that?

I think, again, this case is a wake-up call to lots of people about the fact that we do have very unusual abortion laws in this country. It's still governed by criminal law, a Victorian criminal law, and that if we are going to protect women's rights and recognise women's human rights, we need to decriminalise abortion sooner rather than later. But do you think that'll really happen? There's already pushback this morning. I think it was in the 2019 Labour Party manifesto to decriminalise abortion. It's MPs like Diana Johnson who've been working really hard on this issue and there is popular support for decriminalisation.

I mean it depends when you look at it it didn't go through though when she had her last not to be tabled the amendment that she put forward the last time talking about this. That was a 28 weeks abortion for any reason. It's really interesting stuff. Thanks so much for joining us Sian.

Sian Norris, if you want to find out more about conspiracy theories, including The Great Replacement, then you might want to look at the episodes of Mariana in Conspiracy Land. They're available on BBC Sounds. The reporter Mariana Spring

explores what happened to the people who fell down the rabbit hole into a world of conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Also want to thank you for your messages. Somebody got in touch saying they were obese

from the age of four. They just, they're in their 60s. They had the pain of daily abuse when they were a kid. Being last to be picked for sports teams

and excluded from playground games and it left a legacy. Her words, she says there were three of us fatties in the same class and we all suffered the same.

I'm happy to see that overweight children are now more accepted and can receive help. Thanks so much for all of your messages. Krupa will be with you tomorrow. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, my name is Michelle De Swalt. And I'm Laura Smith.

And we have a new podcast from BBC Radio 4. Bang On It is a weekly podcast where we curate, recommend, cherry pick through the week and just go, have a look at that, basically. We're going highbrow, we're going lowbrow, right? We're doing the legs. We're doing the hard yards so you don't have to. Oh, I like that. Listen, like all podcasts, we're talking about stuff we've done,

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