it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. women are still fighting for equality all over the world. even in long established democracies like the uk, plenty of evidence suggests that from the workplace to the law courts, there is an awful long way to go. my guest today, baroness helena kennedy, has been trying to loosen the grip of the patriarchy in the british legal system for five decades. is she winning the battles that really matter? baroness helena kennedy, welcome to hardtalk. nice to be here. it's great to have you. you have had a pretty extraordinary legal career spanning some five decades. yes, i know. you used to talk about a system that smelled of the patriarchy, a man's world. do you still see britain's legal system like that today? oh, yes. i mean, i think that we haven't yet managed to remove that power imbalance. it's still there. and, of course, a lot of work has been done and we've, you know, reformed certain areas of law and we've seen women in many more positions of authority and power. but there's still an authority gap. there's still those problems of the ways in which women are treated and the issue of violence against women is still a serious problem even in a country like the united kingdom. we'll definitely get to that very quickly. butjust on the look of the system, in that chair not so long ago, we had the then head of the supreme court, baroness hale. we also look at statistics which show that the majority, a clear majority of young trainee lawyers in the uk today are female. so, at the very top and at the bottom, there does appear to be real change. stephen, i always remember that when i started to some extent in broadcasting and writing about these issues, which was back in the �*70s, i always rememberjudges and people saying to me, "it's only a question of evolution." you know, "many more women are coming into the law "and they'll work their way through the system "and then the system will be wonderfully equal and fair." and it's sort of denial of the fact that women's lives usually are rather different by virtue of the fact that they are child bearers, and although there's been a great sort of renegotiation of family life and women now are much more likely to have careers as well as families, there is still a great deal of hurdle that women have to surmount in order to get up through the system. but there's also all the other stuff which menjust don't experience, which is the business of sexual harassment or discriminations because of assumptions that are made about women. and i love the fact that recently one of our great writers on political policy, mary ann sieghart, wrote a book called the authority gap, which actually talks about the ways in which even when you are a successful woman, you still face those things where perhaps your opinion has gone to second, or you make a suggestion about something and when it's repeated by a man, it's taken more seriously. so there are lots of areas where women still have a problem about progressing within our institutions generally and the law particularly. and is there a direct correlation between that continuing fact, as you see it, and one of the most shocking pieces of data to come from the uk legal system? that is that roughly 1.5% of reported rapes ever end up in a successful conviction. that number seems staggeringly low, horrifyingly low. do you connect it to what you've just described in the system? i think you have to really dig down to understand all of this. it's partly because law was man—made, and that's not saying there's some great conspiracy by men thoughtfully deciding to make the rules so that they didn't fit women's lives. it was just the nature of things. men were the people who had power. they made the rules, therefore, they made the laws. and that's how it's been, and in oursystem, a common law system, that meant in the seniorjudiciary, it meant in parliament and so on. so the answer, you know, when i started writing about this in the �*70s and �*80s was, well, we need more women in those places of power. we need more women in parliament and particularly in the higher courts. and so let's do something about that. that was the �*70s and �*80s, and here we sit today with the extraordinary statistic that of 52,000 and more rapes recorded by police in england and wales in 2020, fewer than 850 resulted in charge or summons. what's going wrong? you can fiddle with the numbers. you can start getting more women in positions. but the problem is that if attitudes haven't changed, if the sort of way in which law has been structured has been around sort of male agency and the rules tend to be about, you know, the reasonable man test is now called the reasonable person test, but it's still based around what we assume is reasonable from the life experience of a man. and it seems that many women who have reported or reported to friends, if not to the authorities, rape, feel that they cannot go through the procedures that would be required to go through a formal police investigation because it is, in theirview, dehumanising, it robs them of agency, and they choose not to do it. stephen, the real problem is that we've just had a great shock to the system recently in the sarah everard case, and then it was followed by another. just, if i interruptjust for a second, just to say the sarah everard case concerns the horrifying murder of a young woman in south london last year, and it turns out she was murdered by a serving police officer. a serving police officer who used his authority by, you know, being a policeman to stop her under covid, as though she were committing some offence by being out in the evening and then used his authority and power and arresting capacity in order to rape and then kill her. and then, you know, i mean, really defile her body. so, i mean, that brought up, for women, a conversation about how policing is not trusted. the levels of, for example, serving police officers who commit offences of a minor nature and where no consequence comes of them, that particular policeman exposing himself to women and nothing being done about it. it turns out that policeman was actually known, i sayjokingly, bizarrely known to colleagues as �*the rapist�*. absolutely. but we know that high levels of domestic violence are present in our male police force. i mean, there are women in the police as well who speak about the way in which misogyny operates within policing circles, so... as a woman and a top lawyer, are you telling me that you cannot feel you can place your trust in the police today? well, i think, like most institutions, it's is a variable feast, but there are sufficient numbers of people who still harbour strongly misogynistic attitudes towards women, think that things are quite acceptable. we've normalised a lot of behaviours and that's one of the things that women in this country are now really being very vocal about. it used to be that you didn't talk about it, the stuff that happens at the bus stop where, you know, somebody comes, tries to chat a young woman up. she expresses no interest and then offence is taken by the man, and then it starts turning ugly and the woman is afraid, and she's afraid because little girls in all of our societies are told from as soon as they reach puberty, "you must watch yourself. you've got to guard yourself. "you mustn't walk in streets alone. "be with your friends, don't go to the park "and don't speak to strangers." but if there is a toxic culture in which men simply refuse to accept their responsibility to change their behaviours and attitudes toward women, how do you fix that? well, you fix it in a number of different ways. and i, of course, am a lawyer, and i do believe that law has a role to play in all of this because there's something symbolic about saying, "these behaviours "are what are accepted in society and these are not." and that's what the law does — it sets the bar on certain kinds of behaviour. so you have to have law that is protective of women and which is basically pointing the finger at those who. .. well, where are the limits of what the law can actually achieve? and i ask that advisedly, because you now head up a scottish government working, sort of, reporting committee that's about to publish a report on the possibility of making misogyny a hate crime. now, this is particular to scotland, but i dare say people listening and watching around the world will be interested in this notion that you can criminalise misogyny. do you believe you can? let me be very clear. hate itself is not a crime. we don't have thought crime. we say that people should be allowed, inside ourforum internum, inside our minds, we can think what we want and we don't criminalise that. it's only in authoritarian states and totalitarian states that they try to punish our thoughts. so you can't criminalise someone for having misogynistic attitudes towards women. what you can do is criminalise the behaviours and the verbal assault and so on that comes from that belief system, because misogyny is a belief system. now, let's be very clear, not all men, you know, abuse women. they don't. in fact, you know, we all know good men. i'm sure you're one of them, stephen. but the problem about it is that it's hard to find a woman who hasn't had a bad experience with men behaving inappropriately. so, let's go back to misogyny. can you make misogyny a hate crime? you can make the behaviours that flow from misogyny a hate crime because they emanate from misogyny. but you can only do that if it's possible to have some sort of clarity about where the lines are. i'm just very mindful that, perhaps a generation ago, men would have routinely wolf whistled at women, maybe made some smart aleck comments about women's appearance, thinking that was their right, that was ok. are you suggesting that there is a way to design a law which would tell men that is not ok, and if they do it, they could face the force of the law? we already have laws here in the united kingdom, both in scotland and in england. and of course, i'm a lawyer who practises in the english courts and in international courts, but i... ..my experience of this is that threatening behaviour laws exist. threatening and abusive words or conduct, those...those, you know, offences are already on the statute books. the problem is that women don't know it's available for them, and police officers don't think about it when a woman says, "i was at the bus stop and a man started abusing me "and talking about my body in an unacceptable way." i mean, i can't repeat on camera the things that we heard in taking evidence before my working group in scotland. horrible, horrible stuff that women are expected to listen to, which are of a sexual nature, usually, and which are humiliating and degrading, and which leave women feeling, particularly those who are young, feeling a...a kind of assault upon their being. and so it's an issue of human rights, really. and so... what you've just said is interesting, �*cause the westminster government, led by boris johnson, as they've considered the notion of misogyny becoming a defined crime, they've said, "no, that's absolutely the wrong way to go. "what we have to do is "to train and educate the police and others to ensure "that the current laws are properly executed "when it comes to protecting women and women's security. "we don't need new laws. "we just need to enforce the ones we've got properly." it doesn't work. and it's so interesting that the johnson government is saying that about women. they've just introduced, they're just in the process of introducing a new crime concerning the theft of dogs. and the theft of dogs is going to be introduced on the basis that... we have theft legislation. you can prosecute somebody who steals a dog as much as stealing your watch. however, they feel that this is very important because during lockdown, lots of people became very attached to dogs and...and they pay a lot of money for dogs, so they're very valuable now. and so they're saying, there should be a special crime created about the theft of dogs. if you want to hone in on something, like what's happening to women, then you can, even if you've got some laws around that you can dig around and find, then i think that you have an obligation as a government to do something about it. but there's another potential problem with misogyny as a crime, and it was outlined by the former equalities minister, a conservative female politician, victoria atkins. she said we should be very careful about creating laws that inadvertently conflict with the basic principle of equality. she said, if we're to have a hate crime in relation to gender, we need to think very carefully about whether that would apply to the entire population orjust to the half of it that is female, �*cause, ultimately, she says, remember, women are not a minority and shouldn�*t be treated as such. that... but she�*s really, really falling down that great well, that even women who are trained in the law can fall down, which is, you know, we argued for equality. all right, so we want equality between men and women. you don�*t achieve it byjust saying, "let�*s have equality." you actually have to be very active in trying to ameliorate the terrible things that have happened in the past, which have prevented there being equality. so announcing, "let�*s have equality, "and let�*s tomorrow say that all the laws that apply to men "should apply to women too, like threatening behaviour," doesn�*t do it because women�*s experience is different, of life is different. men do not, late at night, say to theirfriend, as they�*re coming out of the pub, they don�*t say, "charlie, text me when you get home "so that i can know that you�*re safe." women say it to each other all the time. women�*s experience is different. a quick thought on your own personal experience, a rather bizarre one you had some 30 years ago when you hosted a tv show. the ratherfamous, or infamous, actor 0liver reed was on the show. he... ..appeared to be drunk, and at some point during that live broadcast, he physically... assaulted a woman. ..assaulted a woman who was a guest on your show. kate m illett. yes, i mean, she was a very, very well—known feminist, and that was a serious example of...of misogynistic conduct where he was...he was... ..he was really degrading a woman in front of a viewing public. right, and ultimately, he left the show. it was clear the other guests would not tolerate his actions. well, i invited the other guests, i said to them, "do you think this is acceptable behaviour?" and they all said "no." but my point... and i said... ..helena kennedy, is this. do you believe that 0liver reed should have been prosecuted? and if there was a specific crime about misogyny, would he have offended and therefore been liable to prosecution under that new criminal offence? i suppose we would have arguments about whether a television studio is a public place, but since you�*re putting this out to the general public, i think he should have been prosecuted, yeah. let me ask you about a different aspect of the way culture is changing, and that is, i suppose you could encapsulate it in the metoo movement. many women, partly, i think, because of things you�*ve said about their scepticism about the way policing works, the judicial system works, some women are taking to social media and are naming men, sometimes anonymously, not giving away their own identities, but naming men and accusing them of sometimes egregious sexual abuse. do you believe that is legitimate? you�*re a lawyer. you believe in process, court of law and... due process, absolutely. ..evidence. yeah. so do you believe that that approach is legitimate or not? i think that�*s civil disobedience, and let me tell you why. it�*s a bit like the suffragettes throwing bricks through windows. you�*ll get that kind of behaviour when the law, when the legal system and the system that�*s operating in our democracy is not delivering to half the population. and so women are basically throwing a brick through the system�*s windows, saying, "you tell us that when people do bad things to us, "we should take it to law. "and when we do take it to law, "it is not prosecuted, it... "we�*re not listened to. "we�*re treated also as second class citizens "and there�*s disbelief...everywhere we go." but there is still, as you would, as a lawyer, acknowledge the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty. and even some sort of traditionalfeminists like germaine greer think that metoo has now gone too far. is there a part of you that sees that argument? totally. i mean, i�*vejust written a book on this, misjustice, which is... ..which is, in which i express my real concern that this is not about due process, that people will suffer the consequences of being named by anonymous persons and their...and their lives being deeply affected by that. however, you�*ll get more of that when the system is failing so many people. so that�*s why the system has to address the fact that women do not feel that they�*re getting justice within our systems. let me ask you a question which takes us far from the courtrooms in the uk to an international perspective that you�*ve long had. how on earth do you prioritise the time, the effort, the energy you give to all of these causes and legal issues in the uk, when at the same time you�*re doing an awful lot of work for human rights overseas, in particular, right now, you�*ve spent an awful lot of time trying to help female judges in afghanistan, who for many months, even before the taliban finally took over, faced life—threatening insecurity inside afghanistan and still do today. how do you prioritise? breaking news, scott morrison, the australian prime minister. what is it, that all these measures are designed to achieve? that was set up very clearly in the national plan, that objective in this phase of dealing with the pandemic. i5 dealing with the pandemic. is to minimise serious illness, hospitalisations and mortalities. and to maintain those baseline restrictions to support that goal, so the idea that our measures as governments across the country, commonwealth and at state and territory level, is to everyone in the country from being infected with the virus. that is not the objective. it is not a realistic objective, it is not a practical objective. nowhere in the world are they trying to achieve that virtually. and that is not something that we are trying to achieve stop what we�*re trying to achieve is to ensure that we can keep our hospitals under the lease pressure that can possibly be put on them, that we can maintain the strength of our hospitals through this pandemic and we recognise that of course our hospitals and our health systems are under significant strain at present. when you have this latest variant of the virus. the pressures on the hospital system is things that we have been working to ensure that we can cope with for a very long time. the pressures of air, and i thank all the staff who are working in those hospitals who are under significant strain, but we are at this stage continuing to manage the number of cases coming in to hospitals within those tolerances. it�*s not easy, it�*s putting a lot of pressure on people, but it is being achieved and that remains a very important objective for all of us as we continue to manage this pandemic. irate all of us as we continue to manage this pandemic. we are auoin to manage this pandemic. we are going to stay — manage this pandemic. we are going to stay with _ manage this pandemic. we are going to stay with scott - going to stay with scott morrison because we think he may go on and talk about the status of novak djokovic of course and whether he will be allowed to play at the australian open which starts on monday. let�*s stick with this a little longer and see what the australian prime minister has to say. it australian prime minister has to sa . , , , australian prime minister has to sa . , ,, , to say. it is less severe. both of these _ to say. it is less severe. both of these facts, _ to say. it is less severe. both of these facts, particularly i of these facts, particularly the latter one, it wasn�*t until several weeks ago that was able to be confirmed to the suggestion that somehow restrictions may have been lessened earlier when we had no clear evidence that the severity was less would have been a very, very unwise decision and that�*s not the decision and that�*s not the decision we took. 0nce decision and that�*s not the decision we took. once we became aware that the severity was less then that has enabled us to move to ensure we can relax some of the restrictions in critical workforces. and so this is a constant daily process of balancing the need to keep people at work and to protect our hospitals. and that�*s why it changes almost daily. because this balance changes daily. we will go through a period where this peaks and then we will be into another phase about how we are managing it from thereon. and different states and territories will enter those peaks at different times, but they will enter that peak, and they will enter that peak, and they all understand that. some sooner than others. it is possible that new south wales may have already passed it, but we�*ll see, as the weeks unfold over the next little while. so, the key point we wanted to stress today, and that i want to stress today, is this is a constantly moving target. we know what we have to hit, keep our hospitals going, keeping our hospitals going, keeping our health system strong and keeping as many people at work stop the less restrictions you put on people to get them at work, the more pressure that can pick —— potentially put on your hospital system, and vice—versa. the more you try to protect your hospital system, the more you are taking out of work which disrupts supply chains. so this is a very delicate balance that needs to be constantly recalibrated and so today i think was a very good discussion in getting those trade—offs right and making sure we get those trade—offs in place. the workforce implications was a discussion today and i will make some further announcements about what was agreed, but let me remind people about the decisions we have already taken. the redefinition of close contacts is still only quite recent and through the meetings of the national co—ordinator nev —— mechanism with the support oversight minister of karen andrews, we will —— we are already getting feedback that those measures, particularly in the supermarket distribution systems, are already having a positive impact. but we need to go further. the close contact rule, remember, is that you are a close contact if you have someone in your own accommodation setting that has the virus. 0k? accommodation setting that has the virus. ok? that is when you are a close contact. you are not a close contact because you happened to be here today and one of you might have to. you are not a close contact if you have gone to a bar or a restaurant or another venue and there happened to be a case there. this notion of exposure sites which means you are a close contact, that�*s delta, that�*s in the past. close contact is if you are living with someone in an accommodation type environment and you are in that situation for that protracted time. that is if you are a close contact stop and of course the other one is you are symptomatic and if you are symptomatic or you are a close contact, you should get tested and you go to the testing centre and they will either give you a rapid antigen test or they will give you a pcr test depending on what is necessary in both of those cases. the biggest armoury we have to fight the virus is vaccination and as frewen will outline, we had the best day on dose since i think it was the fifth of october. we had 16,000 349,000 doses fifth of october. we had 46,000 349,000 doses administered yesterday. of those, 200 feet will thousand ii2 yesterday. of those, 200 feet will thousand 112 were boosters and that is tremendous. —— 254,112. with 5-11 year and that is tremendous. —— 254,112. with 5—11 year old, we have got 254,112. with 5—11 year old, we have got 141,587 doses admitted to children aged 5—11. that is, those doses continue to roll out. on shelves, infringers, in those more than 6000 points of presence where people can access those vaccines. can i also remind parents with children aged in the secondary school age, to go and get there, so the 12—15 —year—olds, we have a ready past the 80% first dose for that group. we need to get to the second dose. we are over 75% so we are closing in on it. a reminder, it is notjust five to ii —year—olds that are on the back—to—school list. make sure for the 12—15 �*s, back—to—school list. make sure forthe 12—15 �*s, if back—to—school list. make sure for the 12—15 �*s, if they haven�*t had their second dose, to go and get those as well. i also want to note that reinfection on 0micron can occur. so all this nonsense about covid parties, it�*s ridiculous. 0k? reinfection can occur with 0micron. so if you think you can go out there, get the virus and get it over with? that�*s not how it works. that�*s not how the virus is writing the rules. so continue to take the rules. so continue to take the precautions, continue to exercise common sense, continue to be responsible in managing your own health and the baseline measures that are in place to support you and the health of others. today we agreed the concessional access to rapid antigen tests which will commence on the 24th of january after discussions with the pharmacy guild and it will be done on a 50—50 basis with pharmacies sourcing those supplies and you will be able to get in all of the terms announced last week and i rank the states and territories. they will be funded 50—50 under the covid health agreement, partnership agreement. that is just to be clear again, ten tests in total over three months with a maximum of five months with a maximum of five months and you go to the pharmacy, you present your relevant concession card which we have announced before and they can process that and provide you with that test from the 24th of january stop obviously supply�*s unlimited just like they are for the rest of the community and that is those arrangements. we also discussed the key priorities for the rapid antigen tests, particularly those provided publicly and they are, firstly, the health and aged care workforce, commonwealth of because it looks after aged care and states and territories look after the health workforce, and for symptomatic and close contacts which is provided through the state testing centres, and thirdly, for vulnerable communities so thatis for vulnerable communities so that is particularly indigenous communities and a good note there, 12—15 —year—olds, the double dose vaccination rates for indigenous communities has now gone over 75%. our first doseis now gone over 75%. our first dose is also an 80%, and that is a tremendous result in the indigenous communities and i�*d like to thank particularly those in the indigenous communities and the indigenous leaders for the work they have been doing right across the country. to further ease the pressure on supply chains, we extended the easing of restrictions for close contacts, so that is the one which enables someone who may be a close contact and get a negative rat test and then they can go back to work. and also to all freight and logistics employees, notjust those employees, not just those directly employees, notjust those directly involved in food this tribute in, but all of this freight and logistics sector, and that will also include those who work at service stations to ensure that they continue to be staffed and people can get access to those services. we will also be extending it, if it hasn�*t already been done, and in many cases it has, it will cover all health welfare care and support, emergency services which includes law enforcement, correctional services, energy resources and water and waste management, food, beverage and other critical goods supplies, so that is the food distribution system and production system, i�*m not talking about hospitality there, communications data,