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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
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Right, I'm still in the tent at Hay. There's a whole load of newscasters here, all kind of. They're looking a bit hot. I mean, in the temperature sense. Are you all doing you well? Yes. And also joining me in the hot seat today is Alex Forsyth. Hello, Alex.
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C
Hello, Adam.
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A
Where have you traveled from? From? Any questions this week?
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C
So not so far. The West Midlands. Yeah. So always out and about this week I've come from the West Midlands to be here at Hay today and next week we're going to be in Lincolnshire.
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A
Okay. Always on the road, always. So we will get on with the classic episode of Newscast in a second, but I just wanted to read out a message I got from Instagram. If you want to follow me on Instagram, it's Radom Fleming, because my first name's Robert and Adam Fleming was taken and it is from Rosalia and she was listening to yesterday's episode and she said, I'm writing because, frankly, I got a bit upset at the newscast episode you recorded at the hey Festival. Being a proud member of the hugely misunderstood Gen Z, I did not appreciate the references to Gen Zers as kids. These kids are busy seeking jobs that are not made available by over 60s that are still lingering in the workforce. We don't have the youngest audience in this. Personally, I'm 24 and I do not feel like a kid, especially because I'm being blamed on a daily basis by boomers in society that call us slackers and snowflakes. I am none of the above. So please next time defend us Gen zers from being called kids. And I thought that's a valid response because we're having a big debate about youth unemployment and skills in the age of AI. And then Rosalia ends her message in the best possible way. She says to me, adam, you're one of us.
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C
After all, just to be clear, Adam is definitely not a Gen Z unc. Absolutely not. Like some way off it.
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A
I reckon I'm not in the.
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C
Neither am I.
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A
To be fair, I'm definitely not in the under 30 age bracket, but I'm very pleased that Rosalia thought that I was. And I did check. It's not Rosalia the singer. It's just somebody with the same name. But yeah. So, I mean, if you've got any feedback about any of the stories we're discussing on Newscast, any time of day or the year, it's newscastbc.co.uk or. Or you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-239480. Alex, what are we going to do now?
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C
We're going to get on with this episode of Newscast. Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
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Humanity's next great voyage begins.
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We are in the midst of a rupture.
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Nostalgia will not bring back the old order. Six, seven.
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A
Yeah, it's supposed to be me as a doctor.
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Daddy has. Has also a special connotation o la.
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E
Thinking about it like a panto helped.
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C
Do we play music now or what
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E
do
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that Is the crowd of newscasters here at. Hey, it's Adam in the newscast tent at the Hay Festival, and it's Alex
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C
in the newscast tent at the Hay Festival.
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A
And we're gonna do what you usually hear on a Sunday, which is just without Laura and Paddy, where we talk about some of the news that's been on the political programs today and talk about some of the issues that are gonna come up in the next week. And it won't just be me and Alex and the newscasters doing it, because we're joined by a special guest. She's been on Newscast a couple of times before. We've certainly talked about her work quite a lot because she's been involved in some big important stuff for our country. Please welcome to the stage Baroness Casey. Louise Casey. Right, so we've sorted out Louise's microphone. She's got a huge bottle of water, which I'm quite jealous of. And let's get into today's news. And I should just say that one of the stories that we're going to be discussing, in fact, the first. The first story that we're going to discuss involves a very serious crime and the concept of sexual violence. So just to warn you that that is the first issue we're going to be discussing. We won't get into any details of it, but we will be talking about some of the implications of a quite difficult to hear court case, which is a massive news story today. So, Alex, first of all, just before we came on the stage, we were re watching Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and there was two very powerful interviews on there. The first one was with a young girl, a teenager, and her parents who had been raped. But the teenage boys who this week were found guilty of raping her had not been sentenced to a prison sentence. And then straight after that, Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, was responding for the government and he's a dad and you could see he was very, very moved by what he'd been hearing. So just sort of bring us up to date with that story.
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C
Yeah, I mean, this story was about, as you say, a conviction where three teenage boys had been convicted of rape against two girls, but they'd been given youth rehabilitation orders instead of a custodial sentence. Now, since this sentencing happened towards the end of last week, there's just been some increasing traction around this with a lot of people saying they don't think that that sentence was sufficient.
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A
So.
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C
So at the moment, the Attorney General is going to review that and see whether or not it needs to be referred to the Court of Appeal to be looked at again. Laura. Laura Kunsberg had spoken to one of the girls at the heart of this, as you say, with her parents, and it was just one of those interviews that I watched and listened to, and I don't think anybody really could have listened to it without being quite personally moved because she gave a very brave and honest account of what she'd been through and the impact that had consequently had on her life. And her parents also spoke very movingly about how they felt, not just about what had happened, but also about the decision by the judge not to impose a custodial sentence on the teenage boys involved. Immediately after that, Darren Jones has sat in the studio and it is rare, I think it's fair to say, that you see a very senior member of the government kind of just react in quite a human way. He was very clearly choked up, very clearly emotional. He said that himself. He said he couldn't comment on the sentence as a minister, but I think he made it pretty clear that from his own personal perspective as a dad, that he felt pretty strongly about this as well.
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I was just remembering watching Darren Jones there, like a happier interview he'd done when he got the job and he was saying, oh, one of the first things he did when he went to go and help Starmer number 10 was to move the number 10 morning meeting from 8:30 to 8,45. So he had time to take his children to school. And so I was thinking of, like, oh, yeah, this is the two sides of Darren Jones, the minister who's also a dad.
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C
Yeah. And a minister that quite often when he comes across, I think, quite deliberately tries to be very efficient and very on the case and he likes to talk a lot about the detail of things and they show that he's across policy. And today you saw the human side of him. And I think whatever you think about politicians, whatever your politics are, and people are always going to fundamentally disagree with some of what politicians say or do, they're people too. And it was a genuine moment where you got some sort of insight into that this morning.
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A
Louise, you've done a lot of work with victims and survivors of sexual crimes, also about how the system, whether it's the courts or the police or other authorities, deal with it. What's your take on just how this case has played out this week?
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E
So, well, the first thing to say is, sadly, I'm not completely surprised. I think that still, throughout the criminal justice system, which is essentially, you know, when people have to. You're a victim of crime, you have to go to court, you have to make statements, you have to go to court if it's rape or a sexual offence. Sorry, this is. Charges. Carry on. It's quite so, you know, you have to have a rape kit done, which is pretty rough, to say the least.
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A
Very intrusive.
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E
Yeah, very intrusive. It's the way that we can collect evidence about what has been done to a victim. It's really challenging for both a person that is doing it, but primarily for the. For the victim on the whole. Adam, throughout history, we haven't believed women and we certainly don't believe girls because we think that they are in love with older men and in love, and therefore anything they say somehow doesn't have the same weight as if somebody has punched somebody in the face. And I can see a bruise. So there's a long history in the run up to cases like that. And when I did a audit last year, which was a decade on from when I was in Rotherham, where I did an inspection of the council into child sexual exploitation, I, at that point thought, we are getting something very, very wrong here. And a decade later, I did an audit, different word for review, just because there were lots of reviews. And so we had to find another word for it. That's a light joke in the middle of a very serious conversation.
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A
Remember, the government did not want to have an inquiry at the time because their opponents were telling them to have one and they didn't want to submit to it.
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E
Everybody had their heads in the sand. And essentially what I found then is that we're really confused about what rape is and we shouldn't be. And if it was anybody's child in this room that A, that young woman had experience that we're talking about today. But B, the women now, girls before that I was interviewed, viewing in Rotherham, we would see that sexual intercourse with a 12 year old is automatically rape. Sexual intercourse with a 13 year old is not automatically rape. Why not? Why not? Because that's when puberty started. Is that why? I mean, this sort of lunacy around it and it's trying to push that in a different direction and then what happens. Sorry, I'll shut up in a second. But then what happens is you have a court case like last week and quite rightly that's why victims can appeal to the Attorney General. I just wish the family didn't have to go through that. And I think when the word rape, bang is what is found in a sentence, people need to know they're going to face custody.
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C
Just so a bit of context. The judge in this case said that he was taking into account the ages of the boys that were involved. He didn't want to overly criminalize them, but he did point to the seriousness of the offense. But in your mind, you think if someone's convicted of rape, they should be in jail?
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E
I'm really straightforward about these things. I think if you're convicted of rape, no matter how old you are, I'd have to be, you know, that's why we have criminal age responsibility. That's why I think very clear messages about if somebody says no, what that is, they go through all of that in a courtroom. I can't tell you how long these cases are to try and really, really, really get under the sound of whether she did or didn't consent. What did that look like? They're young boys, they'll have gone through their social media, they'd have tracked everything down, it would have been a very, very. And they found them guilty of rape. And I think there are certain things where actually, because the public would expect the judges to, in my view, impose a criminal custodial conviction, doesn't have to be for very long. I have a view on how long it should be for rape, certainly for over 18 year olds. But I think we need very clear signals to people in a world that feels very media, very gray, very confusing. Should you have a phone. Shouldn't you have a phone? What's sex, texting, all of that stuff. Rape is rape. And we should have, we should, we should be really clear what happens if you rape somebody.
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A
So the judge was wrong in this case. You're not, you're nodding, you're nodding.
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E
Yes. I, I mean, I. Look, I have no power in this at all. I am no more powerful in this than anybody else sat in the room. And yes, I think the judge got it wrong in this case. And I think it's okay sometimes to say judges get things wrong. You know, they're not saints, no more than anybody else in this room is. People make mistakes and a mistake was made last week for that family and those girls.
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A
And just acknowledging for people here who are here in the tent with us and people listening at home, this is quite heavy stuff. But I've always thought one of the good things about doing newscasts is that you can have a conversation about heavy stuff and it still be heavy stuff, but having a conversation with it in this way makes it not easier to deal with, but like dealable with. Just to acknowledge that it's quite a sort of intense moment we're all having here. Right. In terms of other stories that are cropping up in the news today, Alan Milburn, who we were talking about in previous episodes, he's done this review about youth unemployment and the number of young people who are neets not in employment, education or training. And he was talking to Laura today, giving a bit of a preview of his report. And we are getting every day now more of a sense of where Alan Milburn is going to land when he publishes this thing this week.
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C
Yeah, and it sounds like he's going to be quite, I think, strong in what he says in this report from what he's given us an indication of already. So there is almost a million people who are not in employment, education or training young people up to the age of 24. And Alan Milburn told Laura Kunzberg that that is shameful. He was very critical of successive governments and broader society failing to tackle this issue. And he was talking about it needing a sort of whole societal approach. So he was critical of the education system, of the skills provision and training of job opportunities. He was talking about a reduction in the number of those kind of entry level or first stage jobs that there are out there and the impact then this consequently has on those young people that find themselves out of work at a young age. The knock on it can have for them and their experience, but also society More broadly, he was. So the other interesting bit, politically, it's worth noting, is that he was very clear he thinks welfare reform has to be part of this because he came out with a stat which he said the government is spending 25 times as much on welfare benefits for young people as it is on support to help them find work. And he. In his perspective, that's widely out of kilter.
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A
And do we have a clue yet of what sort of welfare reform he would propose?
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C
Well, now there is the key question, right, because cast your mind back not very long and you remember the government did try to reform the welfare system and met a lot of resistance from its own backbenches, particularly when it came to changes to personal independence payments, because the concern among Labour backbenches was that that support would be removed from some of the most vulnerable in society. So they pushed back hard on it. Now the government is working up, it tells us, a package of welfare reform. And I should say ministers would point to some stuff they're doing already to try and get young people in work. But when you're talking about wholesale welfare reform, that wasn't mentioned in the King's Speech, which is when the Government sets out the plans that it's going to come forward with legislation for. For the next year. So I think what that welfare reform needs to look like is going to be the absolute key. And then can the government enact it? Is the second part of that.
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A
And, Louise, I know your back catalog of investigations into thorny issues quite well. I can't remember if you've done one into neets and unemployment.
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E
No, just wait.
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A
Not yet. Not yet.
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E
Yeah, we'll see how Alan gets on. And, you know, whether I'm any teasing, he'll do a brilliant job. Brilliant job. Brilliant job.
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A
Well, a few things, though. So you did that Radio 4 series in 2020, was it 2024 or 2023?
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E
2024, yeah.
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A
About how to fix Britain. Fixing Britain did some of your solutions in that series, which is still available to listen to on BBC Sounds, touch on this.
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E
So we did look, sorry, just answer yes. And also when I was responsible for homelessness or. Sorry, solving homelessness or doing our best to solve homelessness, really. I'm not very good live at all, am I? This is a car crash so far. Although, to be fair, nobody is minding me here. I don't have anybody with me from my team and they're like, we're never letting you go anywhere on your own.
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A
Don't let her go to the countryside.
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E
Don't Let her go anywhere.
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A
You actually did solve homelessness, this during the COVID pandemic and since, well we've
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E
done it twice actually. So first time round in 1999 we reduced the number of human beings sleeping out on the streets. Basically our Last number was 354, I remember like it was yesterday. And it was the target was to to reduce by two thirds over a three year period and in it the most because the only reason I got into homelessness because I was working down the Department of Health and Social Security in Brixton and I was there in 1988 when they changed the benefit rules to something called income support. So I am old and essentially what the then major government did was enact welfare reform that removed benefit or support entirely for 16 to 18 year olds. And that seems quite attractive, doesn't it? Because the theory behind that is that you then encourage kids to stay in education or to go and get a job. What it did was start to rise the number of kids out on the street. So I've done homelessness as like with older age groups like, you know, you know, used to call them bag ladies. They're my specialty. I'm very good with older women that are very, very vulnerable on the streets. I'm not very good. They put up with me, let's put it that way, whereas many others don't. And we started to see the numbers of homeless young people go up. And so Centre Point Night Shelter in London became a place people came to all over London and they queued. So when I became the homelessness star, it became absolutely clear to me we had to do something about youth homelessness. And one of the things which the then government agreed to was something called Educational Maintenance Allowance, which essentially we got it for homeless people first, it was little known fact. So persuaded Blair and company to basically allow us to give extra money to families whose kids stayed in education between 16 and 18 and it kept them at home. It was absolutely interesting and the evaluation of it, it was a small thing and then they kind of put that across the whole of young people to essentially encourage people to stay at home and to stay in education. It was called Educational Maintenance Allowance. So that is a better use of money than it is to essentially give universal credit or other forms of benefits to young people where there's no expectation in return. I think that's the thing which I think Alan Milburn will be all over. I am all over it in every bit of welfare that I'm responsible for, is that if you use taxpayers money to Support people through benefits, then you need something back in return. It's the benefit. You know, the Welfare State in 1948 was set up on this issue of reciprocity you can only get away with, I assume on Radio 4, but basically something for something we.
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A
At least you didn't say quid pro quo. That would have been really for extra.
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E
And I never went to Oxford or Cambridge, so quid pro quo wouldn't come back out of my mouth. But anyway, I was actually making a radio. Where did you go?
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A
I was making a Radio 4 joke.
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E
Oh, sorry. I was living the civil service used Latin every so often to just punctuate their sentences. And I've always felt inferior on those moments, but not that inferior.
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A
The point. The point though was. Yeah, so. So the, so the read across from that period to now. Yes, this idea of like, you don't get something for nothing and you've got to make sure the incentives are right and you're not just shoveling money out the door. That means people are surviving. You're using money strategically so that people are like thriving.
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E
So you've got to flip it from being a handout to a hand up. You know, it's the great John Byrd big issue expression. You want a hand up, not a handout. And that's essentially where I think Alan Milburn is totally on the money in every way. The other thing I've been thinking about to do this million needs, is a third. They're not in receipt of benefit and they're not in education. And I don't think they're students on a gap year. And I wonder how those kids are or young people are. I wonder how those 18 to 25 year olds are. So where are they and who are they? What bedroom are they in? Staring at a mobile phone and what's going on in their lives. I worry for them from a slightly different perspective, a sort of loneliness, lack of, you know, contact with humanity. So it's quite a big number. Out of that million needs, you've got a third that aren't taking anybody's money.
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A
Right.
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E
They're not working and they're not an education. That's a lot of. That's a lot of young people.
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A
They're almost like ghosts in society, almost.
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E
And I, Yeah, I worry about what's, you know, what's going on in their heads and are they okay and are we supporting the parents to have those conversations with those young people? Basically.
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A
And I'm thinking, when Alan Milburn's report lands later this week, and who knows maybe he'll come on newscast and talk about it and we can go through paragraph 57.2 and the technical annex that proves his point about whatever. But when you come up with a piece of work like that and you spent ages looking into a complicated issue and the report comes out and you're doing all the interviews and you're even going on the news agents, apparently that's out there. How do you make sure that that big bang of the launch and the big ideas then turn into actual policies or tips to make sure it works the well.
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E
So the ones I've been responsible for. So apart from doing work, I've done various reviews and inspections and I would say some you're asked to do because there's a crisis and you're called in to deal with something big that nobody has dealt with or is a big news issue. And so somebody like me is asked to come and look at that. So grooming gangs. Last year, when obviously we had Elon Musk, made it an existential issue, but it was a huge issue anyway that we should have done something about. So some are reactive and some, like Alan Milburns and my Social Care Commission, are proactive. So they're looking at something and thinking we haven't solved it. What do we do about. And I would say the frustrations, because that's the only way to describe it, of whether you've looked at something in a sort of crisis situation and made some very significant recommendations that you want enacted, that's one thing. And then ones going forward are slightly different because. Because normally you're more sort of campaign and lobbying the government. Whereas if somebody's asked me to look at, like, girls who've been sexually exploitated and we as a society haven't seen it, haven't we done anything about it? That's good enough. Then I'm. It's like a war of attrition. So I found myself last Thursday with the taxis minister. I. No responsibility for taxis. No responsibility for this at all. It's a Home Office responsibility. But the reason I'm so concerned about taxis is because we put vulnerable people in taxis with people that sometimes have criminal convictions for paedophile offences. And that made no sense to me a decade ago. It made no sense to me 12 months ago. And I'm like a dog with a bloody bone until I see that there's going to be change. And I just never stop, Adam. You just never give up on it.
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C
But that's what I mean. That's one of the criticisms of Sometimes of inquiries or reviews is the time it takes for anything to change as a consequence. Because your first look at what happened in Rotherham with child sexual exploitation was what, 2015. So it has been 10 years and you're now 10 years on. You did that short, sharp audit last year. We're still awaiting another inquiry into what's going on with this. You know, when do the people who are potential victims in this case see the change? It's going to prevent it. Do you find it frustrating? And whose fault is it?
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A
I think Alex in the audience has got a question along these lines and if we get a microphone to Alex, we can then hear it in Alex's own words and that can add to your question. Alex, other Alex, do you really think that governments or other organizations commit, really commit to the findings that you and other people identify? Or in some people's eyes, is it a checkbox item?
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E
So I would say, Alex, it varies. So, you know, I've been around for a long time, I've done a number of these for different Prime Ministers. I'm on my sixth Prime Minister at the moment and I would say it varies. No comment. And I'd say it varies. I think the thing for me is I rarely accept a brief or somebody asked me a question about something that viscerally I don't care about. It will be, I don't know, something about poor people, it'll be about victims of crime, it'll be about domestic violence, it'll be something. It'll be about older people not having good enough social care. And so it's very personal. And I find it probably. I don't often do newscasts, I've never been to Hay, but perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I find it really, really, really hard when they, whichever government is, don't enact perfectly sensible, good recommendations. And so I don't give up on the grooming gang ones from last year. I went to Rotherham a decade ago to do a very specific job. We essentially took out the local authority, the democratic elected members, we took out the leadership of the local authority and by we, the government of the day did that. That wasn't a Labour government, it was a Conservative government and replaced them with commissioners that over a period of time improved Rotherham. What I personally regret is that I then on the back of Rotherham, a colleague of mine, Sarah Kincaid, wrote, these are 10 other things that every local authority in the country could do and nothing really happened on the back of that. I moved on to sort out vulnerable families and supporting families and I moved on to other things. And last year, Alex, I felt a bit upset with myself, annoyed with myself that I'd let a ball drop and that perhaps I should have done more to follow up those recommendations. Whether you have a team or don't have a team, I just. And so on the audit, I am literally determined. So we've got a deal now on taxis. They've agreed to change the rape laws, which is a huge deal. I think the legal profession don't like it at all because essentially it makes it really straightforward. You know, have penetrative sex with a girl who's 13, job done, mate. It's rape and there's no excuse for it. So we're making progress. But it takes. I think it takes, you know, the integration review I did in for Theresa May and David Cameron, after a huge extremism problem sat on the shelf, and then you fast forward to things that have happened subsequently and thought maybe they made a few of those recommendations and put them into practice. We might be a better nation. And. And you have to live with that, I think, actually.
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A
Oh, so David Cameron and Theresa May effectively made Britain a less safe place because they didn't follow up your. Your recommendation.
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E
I think that's too harsh a description for it. The world in all serious. I think that's too hard a description for it. I think that what happened after Brexit was that. I mean, Brexit doing that integration review. And actually, I think Tracy Paul is in the audience today who did that with me. We knew from going around the country and listening to the sort of agonizing call of pain that actually Brexit was going to go where it went.
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A
Yeah, because this is pre the referendum.
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E
Pre the referendum. And so by the time we came to publish it, where I was saying, you know, wouldn't it be good if we all spoke the same language? Perhaps we should actually have English classes for everybody of working age. Somehow what was completely obvious to anyone is you have to have a common language in society. Everybody has to be able to go to the GP on their own and not have somebody mind them and be able to say to their doctor, this bruising you can't see, but if I show you, you will be able to see it. It's been done by my husband and they have to be able to do that in a common language. And so the things that were obvious at the time that I think would have been protective factors. We didn't move on, and I wish we had.
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A
You're being very candid. It's great that you're talking like this. But if we sort of flash. No, I didn't mean that. Journalistic Trade for Trustee.
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E
Are you in the audience? Because she could create some sort of nightmare. She is. So she could just literally faint and I'll run over and do cpr and
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A
then if any of the questions.
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E
I'm still a first aider, so if anybody needs help, get me out now.
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A
Get your green lanyard on.
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E
Love Milanyard.
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A
But if we could sort of fast forward back to where we're going to be this week with Alan Milburn. So would your advice to Alan Milburn be that, okay, he's done the work on the report, he's going to publish the report. It sounds like it's going to be really interesting. He'll do loads of interviews, there'll be loads of fanfare in it, but he then has to become, as you said, like a dog with a bone. Maybe for a couple of years or a decade. In fact, you're talking back a decade to make sure it happens. You can't just, like, print it off and leave?
- [30:10]
E
No, you can't print it off and leave, particularly if you care about it and it's an important public policy area. You shouldn't. The second thing, though, that I find interesting is you have to get the recommendations so people can hear them. And I think when we did the integration review about extremism, I've wondered in retrospect whether perhaps we should have thought at the final furlong, like, maybe we should have thought about what recommendations they could have heard and do something about. So I think I'm very conscious of that. So I was beside myself about the grooming gangs because of the decade, and I realized that I had some really calibrate it so that it was very clear. That's partly why some of these later reports are so bloody long. I mean, the audit is. Isn't an order. It's like, I don't know, it's at least 200 pages and it's got so much evidence in it. That's the other trick. The other trick is to really make sure you let the evidence take you to the conclusion. So if Alan, for example, Milburn, decided he just thinks we should be doing welfare reform, and so you write a report that backs up your view on welfare reform, it's going to fail. If the evidence takes you to a point where you can see that something needs to change, I think you have more chance of getting your recommendations heard. So I think it is a really strong use of evidence. It's like I wasn't going to say we needed a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs. A year ago, I wasn't convinced of the need for it. And during the time that I was doing the audit, I became more and more convinced that we needed a different type of inquiry. It's not a normal inquiry, but I was convinced in partly, actually. Andy Burnham at the time was the Manchester. Is the Manchester Mayor still. But he was for a statutory inquiry. And I was like, you're just trying to blame the entire thing on somebody else. And I was quite, okay, why do you want a statutory inquiry? And he said, I have people that are called. He got these reviews done. And I know this feeling. And people would not give the whole truth and why he wanted a statutory inquiry so that people would have to tell the truth under oath. And I thought to myself, halfway through that audit, I was so frustrated with people not being completely truthful with me, I thought, I tell you what, we're going to do a different type of national inquiry.
- [32:48]
A
Well, that's what I took away from that period. And especially hearing you talk about it in this way now is that. And thinking about the audience through your inquiry report, basically being the Prime Minister and maybe the Home Secretary that you gave Keir Starmer a way of pressing the button on a statutory ish inquiry, but in a way where he could not be accused of. Of u turning because actually that would have been.
- [33:11]
C
I mean, he was still accused of using.
- [33:13]
A
Oh, no, no, of course. But he had an argument for why he wasn't. And because if you wanted him to do this, you had to give him a way of doing it that was politically feasible or came at the lowest political cost for him to be able to do it, otherwise he wouldn't have done it.
- [33:26]
E
So I spent 45 minutes in his study discussing why we needed. He is a lawyer. And so what happens is you have to almost prosecute your case.
- [33:36]
A
Is he a good lawyer?
- [33:37]
E
I have no idea. I've never had to ask him to be a lawyer. He's Prime Minister. And so I basically had to go through the evidence why I felt that we needed it, why I wanted it and why I was going to say it publicly, come what may. And we got to a point where he agreed with it and that's fine, you know, he didn't want to do one in the same way I didn't. I became convinced that it was the right thing to do. But I think the other thing about it, though, and actually the other thing of course is I've decided and they have all agreed that I would stay involved with the statutory inquiry so I could make sure that I felt that we were heading in the right direction with it. But I also feel that we needed an inquiry that wasn't going to take years, therefore wasn't necessarily judge led. That would actually be a different way of doing.
- [34:31]
A
It wasn't like the COVID inquiry, not like what people were kind of calling
- [34:36]
E
for, some of them, but it had statutory powers. So it's a statutory inquiry and that it will go to the areas where the evidence is so overwhelming that people. It will start there where people can see that justice wasn't done and the system didn't learn from its mistakes. So it'll be a different type of inquiry, which I think might also help us in public life as well. It's like the answer can't always be there's been a problem. It's pretty awful. Let's go and get a judge led inquiry. For some, like Southport, oh boy, do you need a judge led inquiry. But for others, I think there are different models. So I think I'm trying to sort of see whether this is a model of how we can do inquiries in a different way.
- [35:20]
C
Presumably also then needs the political will to enact whatever the inquiry finds. And sometimes that is the point at which it runs out of steam. Right. I mean, do politicians need to commit to delivering what it is that people like you tell them they need to do to solve some of these really significant social issues?
- [35:37]
E
Well, of course the answer to that is yes, Alex, but no, seriously, I think part of the problem has been in the last couple of years is that we've had a lot of reviews and pieces of work. Now I understand why that's the case, because when people have been out of power for a long time, you want to be able to stocktake when you arrive in power and you want to be able to get pieces of work done so you can consider them. And I think the other thing that has happened after 15 years is a lot of that work is outsourced. This started to happen before the Labour government arrived. Under the last government you saw the use of people being outsourced. And I don't think you can outsource government and you can't outsource the civil service. And I think in a way we need a bit of a shift into government and the civil service doing what it should do best, which is governing. And you only ask for reviews and inquiries when either you can't figure something out like social care or something really has happened. That is a bit. What do we do about it? We need a stocktake and a review. It's not a sort of default position every time you have a thought.
- [36:52]
C
That has been one of the criticisms of this government is that they've, they have had a lot of reviews into things. Do you think that they should have done more of the work in opposition?
- [37:00]
E
Well, I mean, I haven't done a look at what they did in opposition and I haven't.
- [37:06]
A
I don't think it would have taken long judging from some people's views.
- [37:14]
E
Thank God it's Radio Louise just there. I mean, look, in a way there's no point going over the last few years, is there? We are where we are and it's time to get a grip and get on with some things. And I think that the culture has to shift more into getting stuff done and that would be my response to that. But I do think when people don't know what to do, it's probably all right sometimes to pause and check you're doing the right thing. It's like if you just said to me about grooming gangs, do you need a statutory inquiry? I said, nope, nope, nope, move on, employ some police officers, get some stuff done. Actually, no, I was wrong. At the beginning of that grooming gang thing, I thought people would cooperate. You know, you had local authorities lawyering up. So somebody comes along and says, you know, what's happened in your local authority, what's happened in your police force? We've got these victims, this is their account. What did you do? If that means that both sides essentially lawyer up with barristers, refuse to share data and don't cooperate, then someone like me is going to go on behalf of the public. If I can be so bold, you would go, you know, you either need a shit hot investigative journalist or you need statutory inquiry. And frankly, a bit of both.
- [38:37]
A
Yeah. Right. You mentioned social care and we've had a question from someone in the audience who didn't want to go on mic, but they said, please can you tell us a bit more about this inquiry you're doing into social care and what the next steps will be?
- [38:50]
E
Nice question. Have you got an hour or.
- [38:53]
A
I'd say we've got about 14 minutes.
- [38:55]
E
Okay. So essentially the social, the Independent Commission on Social Care is trying to look at, if you think of post 1948 onwards, post war Britain, we created the National Health Service. Essentially we re engaged the fact that there would be education for all children and that that would be to 18 years of age. There was a Massive push on housing. There was a welfare state insofar as we were prepared to give benefits to people for limited periods of time when they were sick or when they were destitute. And obviously the aim was for full employment at that time.
- [39:39]
A
I see everyone having a job we
- [39:41]
E
want, everybody should have a job. And I remain of the view that if we have everybody working who was working age and contributing, it would shift some of the problems in society. I'm a great believer in everybody go to school and everybody work. But that could be either my mother or Sister Eater, probably both of them very important women in my lives. No longer with us. But it sort of got deep into me this sense that then you contribute and when you contribute, you're able to. Then when you fall on hard times, take. And that for me is the whole thing. But in 1948, essentially the average life expectancy of gentlemen was about 30 years less than it is now. And it was 28 years less for us women. So we are living fantastically for so much longer than when the welfare state was created. And I think in my mind we've never really had a reckoning moment that says the welfare state didn't miss social care out. It didn't need social care in the same way. Also women, we now let men live for longer. Sorry, I laugh at my own jokes. It's a terrible thing. Somebody has to laugh at them. I do love men. Don't worry, it's all fine. You're welcome. I'm very good with homeless men as well, or they allow me to help them. But essentially the other thing, the dynamic was a we lived for so much longer than we did. But when we live for so much longer, we're often poorly for a longer time towards the end. And that has complications. It's not live, die. It's more complicated than that. And that's a good thing. The other dynamic is, you know, and I say this because I did. I am lapsed Catholic, but I'm a Catholic. When I was growing up, we had kids with down syndrome in every family and in every school in my neighborhood and childhood. And the average age for somebody with down syndrome then was 12. Now it's 60. So that's a huge difference between 1948 and now. And it's a wonderful difference that children born with disabilities, in many cases, they live for so much longer. And then the other one, I think that is really interesting, of course, is women didn't work outside the home. Now we work outside the home. And we can thank the war and Emancipation for other things, for that. But we are no longer on tap all day, every day to look after unpaid carers. So these huge things basically, I think, are not straightforward for us to sort out. And that's the genesis of the Social Care Commission.
- [42:24]
A
Now, what is interesting about that amazing story you told there about the history of Britain is that makes me think instinctively, oh, Louise is going to do a review of social care that is going to come up with some huge suggestions because she's going back to the origins of the nhs. But then another part of my brain is thinking, oh, no, that's the first chapter of the report and it just explains where we come from. And then maybe what you're going to suggest is some, some tweaks to the current system. Which half of my brain is correct?
- [42:52]
E
Both.
- [42:54]
A
That's my favorite answer to that question.
- [42:56]
E
I think that we'll, we're, we'll do the analysis that we'll put out the evidence that I've just described and more in this year. Absolutely. This year, before the summer, probably around the summer, I think, if we can, I think it's time to get on with it. The other thing is that I'm not waiting. So we recommended and asked the government to do three things. I think it was March, April time. I think that we need a new deal for people with motor neurone disease. Only 5,000 people, interestingly, have motor neurone disease any one time. It's one of those interesting and very sad one statistics, but it is quite a manageable number. And should a young family, often the man in that family get diagnosed with motor neurone disease, they enter this world of social care and it is utterly horrendous
- [43:51]
A
because.
- [43:52]
E
Horrendous because a, the disease is horrendous. Your life expectancy is an average of 22 months. So they live for less than on average two years once they get the diagnosis. So it's about a pretty rough one. And of course, they sit in this world of social care and health, which means it's multiple forms, multiple assessments, multiple, multiple, multiple. We know when you have motor neurone disease, what is going to happen to you. And we don't need to put those families through some horrendous. Oh, now she needs a wheelchair. Six months ago she didn't. We're going to make her reapply. And so we treat those families and those individuals the same as. What's the lowest common denominator of the most bureaucratic and least we can do for people. So I'm trying To drive that forward. I also think that dementia is sitting there like this massive elephant in the room in the world of health and social care. A million of us have dementia and many, many more of us will get it as we get older. It's a wonderful thing that we are living for longer, but with that comes Alzheimer's and dementia. And yet we don't really do many clinical trials into dementia. We don't really see it as a disease, even though it's called Alzheimer's disease. There was a man I met in Newcastle when his wife, they were in their early 60s, his wife was diagnosed with dementia. He was given a blue folder. One was how his council tax could be reduced and the piece of paper he had to fill out, and the other was how he could apply for personal independence payments. He needed neither. They had. They were fine for money. What he wanted to know was what was going to happen, how it would happen and what help he could have. Really simple, straightforward request. We couldn't manage it. So I think, you know, I'm trying to press on with some things in the meantime and is the answer to that there? Sorry, I'm glad.
- [45:56]
A
No, no, no, no.
- [45:57]
E
I know way too, too much in my head on it.
- [45:59]
A
I wish we were going to do a three hour long episode, like a sort of Christopher Nolan film length. But with the dementia thing, is the answer to that that the NHS takes on more responsibilities for actually looking after people who have dementia in more aspects of their lives? Or is it, I'm thinking that conversations me and Alex have had about local authorities, is it that local authorities need to be better at dealing with things that look a bit more like health issues and as opposed to council tax
- [46:25]
C
issues, it's just worth giving the context on that, which I'm sure Louise would anyway. But a big issue for local authorities is that on average they spend about two thirds of their budgets on children's and adult social care across the board. So there is just a very real capacity issue for councils when it comes to the level of social care they can provide, which is why there's been a very active conversation and I'm guessing your inquiry might feed into this, about whether the split that there currently is between the NHS and social care, where they're quite not often seen on board, par with each other, and it can sometimes be sort of a competition between the two in terms of service provision as opposed to a more holistic service. The challenge, I guess, is that when there have been attempts for like national care services in the past, like in Scotland, Made an attempt to do it, but it's just run into challenge after challenge after challenge. So do you think it's A, the right approach and B, a practical one?
- [47:12]
E
So I think that one of the obvious fault lines in is government has to create silos in order to run systems. And so for something like social care in inverted commas, it's the Department of Health and Social Care that run the policy on it. But really the Department of Health is the Department of Hospitals. I've said publicly that the NHS is really the National Hospital Service. Everything gets all of the money, all of the attention gets swooped up into hospitals and so, like, gps don't get as much of a look in, but neither does social care. So there's an inequality there between sort of various parts of the nhs. And the second thing I think is that Ministry for Housing and Local Government actually are the people that run local government. But so who is then responsible for the people in the room that need social care? As far as I can see, it doesn't have a clear enough accountability and I think for the public, like, you go into hospital, right, and you can actually, you have a fall, but prior to the fall and prior to going to hospital, you could go to the toilet yourself. You can probably even make a staircase. You have one fall, right, going to hospital. Some people are catheterized so that we don't have ie, you're helped to go to the loo in your bed rather than you walk to the toilet. Just put it in plain English, at which point they use expressions like deconditioning. So we admit people into hospital because
- [48:41]
A
you're then put them in a bed as well.
- [48:43]
E
You then don't get them out of bed because it's not a medical need for them to get out of bed. So we then end up having to discharge people either into their own home, where they can no longer walk to the toilet, or into care homes. So we don't. Just looking at somebody as a medical condition isn't psychologically where we need to be. And it wasn't where we were when we set up the National Health Service. I mean, it just wasn't.
- [49:11]
A
Sounds like you're thinking some big thoughts on this, which is very, very heartening. I'm not going to get you to comment on the current political situation, because I know you wouldn't want to. Actually, maybe you will on current, current evidence, but don't worry. But I'm looking at it the other way around. It's like we've talked about how you can Do a review that gets, uses good evidence to come up with good recommendations that then are the most implementable things by the government at the time. Do you have a backup plan for if there is a new Prime Minister in a year's time, there's already a new Health Secretary compared to when you started the social care review. Do you have a backup plan to make sure your review survives all sorts of political turbulence, whatever that turbulence is, and it may actually be end up no change at all?
- [49:54]
E
Yes, yeah, I have, we have. So I mean essentially I think that what's been good about the last last 12 months is we've been able to assemble a fairly robust, fairly robust amount of evidence about what is going on, where the spend is. You know, we have got a. As much as we possibly can. We've gone into every single, when you do bits of work like this, you go, and you, you go as broad as you possibly can and you look at every single cupboard and you try and pick out whatever's in that cupboard and make, make sense of it. And we've had a bloody good go at this in the last 12 months. So I defy anybody this time round to try and stop us reforming social care. I think we've just got to make sure, regardless of who is in Downing street or number 11, that this time round it's a no fail operation. And because I looked at 22 different commissions, white papers, green papers, all proper
- [50:59]
A
Dill not and all that.
- [51:00]
E
Yeah, Andrew Dillnott There have been 22 just since 1997 and we've gone into every single one of them and we've looked at the politics of why they were commissioned, what they found and why they weren't implemented. Because I think they were good people. And so if they couldn't get it over the line, then why would we be able to get it over the line? And I think we're just assembling the whys of that. And I also think it's time for us to recognize the fact that we have a growing elderly population. That is a good thing. But we as a society have to think differently.
- [51:37]
A
And just on the Andrew Dillnot report, for me, pretty much my whole life as a political journalist, he's been the blueprint for what the ideals solution would be. And it's all about the level of the means test at which you get help from the government, the cap on the total amount of money you might have to spend, whatever your condition over your life, and creating a new market for insurance products so that people can kind of pay their own way through their life so that they're going to be okay towards the end of their life. And that for ages have been. People said, oh, if only we could just enact that, or a version of that. Should we actually just say thanks, thanks, Andrew, that was great then. But we have to do something quite different from that.
- [52:17]
E
So I have taken Andrew's work. We are more than dusting it down and looking at it in terms of, on the financial side, what would you do about it? And he identified a problem. He came up with what he thought were some solutions at the time. They might well still be the solutions. But the thing about this is that the person I met that had been left in bed and deconditioned, that is, could no longer walk themselves to the toilet and nobody was going to provide them with occupational therapy or physiotherapy when they were discharged and they were called bed blockers. That isn't solved by charging reform the same way. I think that dementia. We know from the Alzheimer's Research Society, from Patrick Valance, who's the minister, was Minister for Science. Patrick and I are united on the fact that if we did more clinical trials around dementia, we might actually make some headway. We made headway in cancer, we've made headway in other medical areas. If we saw dementia and Alzheimer's as a disease that we could try and do something about, wouldn't it be better that people could live fully? All right, compos mentis. If they could live at least compos mentis for as long as possible, then I think that would be a good thing. And again, that wouldn't be solved by charging reform. So the beauty of having a commission is being able to look at something at the breadth. It doesn't mean to say that where politicians want to do things sooner, like they have done on MND and on dementia, I recommend. I said to Wes Streeting, I think we need to do this. I don't want to wait. We do it now. If anybody else comes to me and says, what do you want to do? I will have an answer.
- [54:14]
A
Right, well, thank you very much for answering all our.
- [54:16]
E
Too long.
- [54:17]
A
No, no. It's like we need to say thank
- [54:19]
C
you to you,
- [54:26]
A
Louise. Thank you. Sorry, Bar. Yes, Casey, thank you very much. That big glug of water is well deserved because you've told us so much interesting stuff today and too long. No, not at all. We could have gone for, as I said, another two hours.
- [54:38]
E
Thank you, you mad people. Thank you very much for having me and also I rarely do this and when I do I get quite nervous and I could feel warmth in the room. So even if you disagree with me, thank you.
- [54:59]
B
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- [55:14]
E
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D
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- [55:53]
C
Visit your nearby Lowe's.
- [55:58]
A
Yes you can. A five minute quick and easy calorie burning workout. Give it a try. Come join our sweat sesh on TikTok. Now. I thought we could revive the remoter voter gimmick from election cast.
- [56:18]
C
You know, there are no elections right now.
- [56:21]
A
Rarely, rarely for the politicals. Like, I'm sure they're in like Papua New guinea or something like that. But I thought we could do remoter visitor with the newscasters in the tent.
- [56:32]
C
Great plan.
- [56:32]
A
So the goal is we will start with the person who has come the shortest distance to be here at Hay, and we're gonna end with the person who's come the furthest distance. But you know that game you used to play at like Cub camp before you went to bed, where you had to count from like 1 to 100 but without colluding with anyone, you know what I mean? Where you had to like sort of work out when was the best time to shout out your answer so you didn't ruin the sequence. So many puzzled faces. This is my game show hosting career has ended already before it even began. So. But do you see what I mean? We basically want to get from somebody who lives like next door to somebody who's come from like Auckland and New Zealand. Okay, but you just have to collectively work out when to shout out when where you've come from. So basically, if somebody shouts out Newcastle and you've come from Exeter, then you've missed your chance. I'm trying to think of how many more ways I can explain this? Let's just.
- [57:31]
C
I think just give it a go. I think it's gonna be okay.
- [57:34]
A
Let's just do it. Right, so let's play remoter Newscaster. Who's come to Hay? Who's gonna go first?
- [57:41]
E
Manchester. Oh, right.
- [57:43]
A
Well, somebody's gone several hundred miles. Okay, so somebody. I was hoping we're gonna get, like, Broad street in Hay on Wye, but we've gone straight to Manchester. Who can give me an advance on Manchester? Hull. Who can give me an advance on Hull? Shrewsbury. Is that. Is that Shrewsbury in Ghana by any chance? Just so that we can strike Shrewsbury? That's too close. Who can give me an advance on Hull? Enniskillen. Did that involve. Did that involve a flight or a boat? A flight. Okay. Who can do further than Ennisgillen? Hobart. Hobart, yeah. Hobart. Is that the capital of Tasmania? Okay, so basically, has anyone come from Antarctica who can raise Hobart? Hobart is the winner, sir. Also, I'm hoping you've come from Hobart and you're here at. Hey. For, like, the whole two weeks. You haven't just come just for this episode of Newscast. Oh, maybe you have. Great. Thanks. Thanks. Right. I promise we will be trying to arrange an episode of Newscast in Hobart in the coming decades, but thank you very much. And that is it for this episode of Newscast. Alex, thanks for being here.
- [59:04]
C
Pleasure as ever.
- [59:04]
A
See you again tomorrow.
- [59:06]
C
You will.
- [59:06]
A
And thanks to everyone here for joining us in this very hot tent.
- [59:09]
C
Thank you.
- [59:13]
A
Newscast.
- [59:14]
C
Newscast from the BBC.
- [59:16]
E
Well, thank you for making it to the end of another newscast. You clearly ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? And then, without having to do anything else, our meandering chat will miraculously make its way to your phone.
- [59:44]
D
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- [60:07]
C
Visit your nearby Lowe's.