YouSaid · the spoken record

Kishwer Falkner

lines on the record: 39
first: 2023-11-17
most recent: 2023-11-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Here, my siblings live in the US, I go there frequently and I see what's happening there. And hell no, I wouldn't want to be there in a million years.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think it is partly that I arrived at a very lucky time when generally the atmosphere among young people and I was pretty young people was that they were embracing off others of foreigners, of foreign cultures and things, and that has been my experience through my time, my forty something years here. I think we're an incredibly, especially as I look at Germany and France and Italy, the three European countries I know best, we are in a very different way, we're a more open society. We are non conformist, we almost seem to take a pride in our non conformism, yet that dressing, the globe that binds us are a sort of wry smile down the par, a bit of rolling of the eyes when people say inappropriate things, but just getting on with it. And that is what is so attractive.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indeed, and the liberal use of derogatory expressions and terms. But I came here from a family where my other siblings went to the US, and I also had the privilege subsequently of living in France, Germany and Italy every time I reflect on my life I try and work out what it is that is so attractive about this country rather than any of those I've mentioned.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's a very sobering thought, but in general, when one looks back at life, I think so much of success in life is luck rather than effort. I came here at a difficult time for Pakistanis in the UK in the late nineteen seventies when I arrived here”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, I mean, I don't think it's so much just British. It's not about the nationality of the people who are making the decision for me. Rather, it is the use of the law and the legal instruments that are available here with advice and support that is available here that would not be available to those people in a third country.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have throughout had a very consistent policy through the illegal migration act when it was a bill going through Parliament. Till today, that we have expressed exactly the concerns that have now been found to be the unlawful act of the UK government in this legislation. So I suppose in a way, if I were putting it into shorthand, there would be a bit of Schadenfreude, a bit of, we told you so, sending people to another country isn't the issue. I think Italy is just doing a deal with Albania, so in Italy's deal with Albania it appears that Italian officials will be taking the decisions. They will actually be working in Albania to take the decisions. In Rwanda, the process of determining would have been in the hands of another government. I think our concerns were rarely about whether we could have been guaranteed the”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have huge regard for the Constitution, the Constitutional Settlement we have here in the UK, and the separation of powers is absolutely critical to a thriving democracy. You only need to look at what's been happening in Hungary and Poland in recent years in terms of political interference with the judiciary, to understand that we have three different domains and areas of decision making. There's the executive, the legislator, and the judiciary, and it's a set of checks and balances, which is what makes us do so well without a written constitution.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stowaways and trains and cars it's been going on for a very long time. So the issue isn't the route by which you arrive here so much. In the public's concern about this, it is about whether you have arrived here fairly and squarely through the routes we all recognise in terms of our obligations as a law abiding internationalist country, and I think that's where the problem lies”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a big difference Yes I was an economic migrant I was lucky enough to be for the skills that I had to be offered a job here and I came that way and that is I think goes to the heart of a small boats matters The issue is that we, as a country, let in fairly significant numbers of people into our country through legal routes. I think last year it was something in the region of six hundred thousand people Hong Kong Chinese and other dispensation for Syrian. Iraqis and so on The issue arises what your root of arrival is and of course economic migrants are not a new phenomenon they're not the first time coming on street”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would hate to express anything in any positive sense that has to do with intolerance, but I think rubbing together just rubbing along together is sometimes not enough. Sometimes we have to put our best foot forward and we don't do that often enough. We shrug our shoulders a little bit too much for my liking.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's because I had very relevant direct experience in Pakistan if you try to go into public building or a bank or a government building. And if you're wearing a full burqa, you are searched. You are not allowed to do that. It is very well known that in Muslim countries there is far more regard to being able to see the identity of a person, to be able to look at identity documents and to be able to identify things. It's not unreasonable for a state to say if you're going on a demonstration, you should show who you are. We're a democratic country.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again we come back to thinking more seriously about these matters on the face of it it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been an article that I would have written, but then I was very insignificant minor person trying to pass a few bills and make them bit better. I still stand by the fact that sometimes we are excessively liberal in our perspectives on allowing people to live too much of the lives that they are accustomed to living which don't take into account the cultures of the country they have come to I say to you here I mean I think I'm correct in saying that early on when face masks were made mandatory during COVID I expressed concerns back then in the Lords about the security implications of allowing masked people”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't There is very little, I think, that in recent terms that I would find that is helpful to that debate and that's not a helpful way of phrasing it. I don't subscribe to that and I wouldn't go along with it.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of being the overall binding ingredient in the salad, and that dressing in this context is our values, our common values, and I think that we're failing a little bit in integration if there are people who don't sign up to those values and that we kind of take that in a liberal shrug of the shoulders whereby oh it's fine, it's all diversity, different people live different lives and we'll just let it go No, I don't believe we can let it go. I think the more diverse our country gets more we have to work as a society with the resources provided by government by the way starting from schools to ensure that there is a common vision of our society the British values Gordon Brown I think unsuccessfully on the whole try to define what they are. But we all know what they are.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, sociologists sometimes refer to different models of multiculturalism. And one of them is this sort of sociologist referred to a mixed salad. So you have a lot of different components in your salad. My argument is that the best thing about a mixed salad is its dressing. On the dressing has to be capable of”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of the protests themselves, of course, those people should be arrested and the full force of the law should apply to them, but I think there's an anterior step that you haven't addressed, and that is integration. That is the path that concerns me the most What is it about people who gain refuge in our country, who are born in our country, who voluntarily came to the country and decided like me that this was the best place in the world to live? What is it about those people whereby they think it is acceptable to not then conform to the values of our country?”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my intervention with the Metropolitan Police in my letter to Sir Mark We offered to give advice, and we stand ready to give advice, so clearly we acknowledge there is a role for us there. That's clearly acknowledged, yes, there is a role for us there. But you've mentioned parts of the Equality Act to do with areas where the courts have objective tests, and we're confident that if the law is used effectively and proportionately, that all the defences that are necessary are there. Now, if there are other errors of law in other proposals that are there for the government to look at, we stand ready to engage for them and to advise Parliament on them. But the existing law as it stands, in terms of the defences that are there, we're comfortable with.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, alongside that freedom of expression is part of protesting. So we do feel ourselves obliged to ensure that everyone remembers at a time when other organizations, by the way, are under pressure, that everyone remembers that a democratic society is only as good as its minorities, and by that I mean dissenting minorities in terms of opinions. You can't have democracy without dissenting opinions, and we have to hear them.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can I just disaggregate thatch a little bit to remind your listeners that we're the people who did over a year long investigation into the Labour Party in anti Semitism. We're the organization that stood up for Jewish people at a time when it was very politically difficult for us to do so, and we did so without fear of favour. That's a different matter. Antisemitism is a different matter, and we know how to deal with that. We've dealt with it and we know how to deal with that, and we will do so again if we find it necessary to do so. But having come as an adult to a country where for the first time in my life I've had the freedom to express myself, I have the utmost utmost regard for defending free speech.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I grew up in Pakistan, we were, you know, all we thought of in terms of Israel was that it was a country that wasn't recognized on the Pakistani passport. You were allowed to travel to every country in the world but South Africa and Israel. So we didn't know very much about Israel's history. But I taught myself when I came here, and I was enormously privileged to actually be able to go to Auschwitz and the camps in nineteen ninety nine. For me understanding Jewish people's concerns is almost intrinsic to my personality.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conformity outside, and that is always very difficult to navigate. So it's instructive that five of us, there were five siblings we all voted with our feet. We've all left the country.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was incredibly painful my contemporaries, the children of my parents' friends, who was Shia were murdered in areas like Balochistan, so people that we grew up with broke bread with, played with. And we ourselves as a family were incredibly secular Muslims in the sense that we had a very, my parents had a very modern interpretation of Islam, very conscious that in modernity religions have to give, you don't interpret them literally, you interpret them according to circumstances and the context in which you find yourselves. So we had Bertrand Russell on the bookshelves. We had feminist authors, Gloria Steinem and people like that on the bookshelves. We grew up in a atmosphere of liberalism at home.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh I have to say that I think, as I said, that My analogy of the flag jacket, I think there were very few occasions when that flack jacket was so thin that I was tempted to walk away. I had a duty to stay, I had a duty to my board to stay, I had let them into this I had a duty to people, our stakeholders. I had a duty to the people that we were trying to advise Parliament and government. So no, I'm absolutely clear I had to stay, and I'm absolutely clear now would be a time, frankly, where it would be quite nice to actually go on a holiday for a change and not be inundated by WhatsApp messages and emails. Now would be the time to walk away. Not then.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Gender Recognition Act is nearly twenty years old. It has never gone through that. Neither of those two acts have been re examined, and society and society's understanding of itself and people who are more diverse has enormously changed in those twenty years since the Gender Recognition Act was agreed.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it needn't be toxic, I think that's the first thing we need to say because there is always in all the things that society navigates as ordinary people going about their life there is always a balance of rights and we do believe that it is possible to find that balance whereby in certain limited categories people might be affected by this, by the change that we propose is that there should be a clearer definition of the meaning of biological sex in the equality act. So all we've asked government to do is to have a look at the wording of the act. Normally Nick in any other novel legislation what happens is that you have something called post legislative scrutiny five years later, eight years later, ten years later the quality act is thirty.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because I think you have to look at how sex is defined in the Equality Act, and the definition of sex in the Equality Act is less clear than it might be. Sex and gender are used imprecisely as alternatives for one another in the Equality Act. That leads to tribunals sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong. We had found litigation going all the way up into the higher courts regularly on this basis. You know, you have to scratch your head and say why is it that there's so much litigation around this area? Could it possibly be that the legislation itself is wrong? I'm afraid to say as someone who spent twenty years in Parliament as a legislator, I think we would all have a wry smile every now and then as legislators. About things we might get wrong.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that isn't the law. The law is it stands at the moment, that there is a category of people who once they get a gender recognition certificate are classified as legal men and legal women. For shorthand we accept to respect their dignity and to have due respect to them.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think looking back, of course I have regrets about perhaps my manner, perhaps my directness, perhaps an intemperate emails, it would be extraordinary if one weren't self reflective. But I don't think that early, that was, I think, in the spring of twenty twenty one, I don't think that early that any of us on the board thought this was anything other than the correct direction to go on. Did we at that point imagine that we would get sucked into how toxic the issue would become? No, I don't believe we did. We were following the law. That's what we expect most regulators to do. It was uncontroversial.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't believe we did because you follow the evidence you follow rationality you follow the law and it was seemed clear to us as a board that the law was sending us in a certain direction. Either we protect all protected characteristics and take an engagement with all of them or we don't, even the ones that are difficult, even the ones where there are loud voices.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Precisely so by the time I came along the case was going into appeal tribunal, and I asked for a paper on it because I wanted to understand the issues more clearly. And we all were finding our way into these debates. And once we got a paper on it, it became increasingly, I mean, I don't think we had much of a discussion because it was so self-evident that we should support the case, and we did.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will our intervention was about belief. We didn't engage with the substance of her arguments, we engaged with the fact as to whether the belief that biological sex has a definitive meaning that affects the meaning of the word woman was relevant to be considered as a protected characteristic under the protected characteristic of belief.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I had confirmation hearings from with two select committees, one and a half hour, which is quite a trial by fire, and I don't believe it came up once in my confirmation hearings”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“were long dead we had sort of one structural feminism had won out women had equality now at a structural level and so that hadn't much engaged me in the last ten twenty years where if the race issue had come back and forth regularly we've had a lot of legislation this country I was involved in some of it and I was involved in parliament on the passage of the Equality Act so we thought quite a lot about that I thought really that would be my preoccupation I didn't expect trans to be there at all I didn't know very much about it it was on the periphery of my vision wasn't front and centre”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was appointed, when I was being selected for the role during the several months beforehand, the Black Lives Matter movement was very much to the fore and everyone was extremely concerned about race and where we were as a country on race. And it didn't escape my attention that I am a brown skinned woman, a migrant, and that perhaps this is what EHRC had been a little weak on, certainly in terms of that kind of diversity on the board there wasn't sufficient amount of it. And I thought being old fashioned race equality campaigner from the past, being an old fashioned feminism campaigner from the past, but I had thought that the feminism debates”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I said so publicly but context is everything. We were having a discussion in a board meeting about the importance of definitions, and I use that I'd heard woman's hour announce that they were going to have an old female column, and I saw on Twitter that the person was being described as a bloke in lipstick, and in the conversation that we were having I referred to it in the sense that, you know, we have to have no choice but to engage in these debates because if we don't this is what the discourse comes down to.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, you know, there were people who said, Why are you staying? Walk? It's the first thing, actually, if you have a good lawyer and I have the best, but it's the first thing they asked me. You know, they need to reassure themselves of what their client thinks off the alleged misdemeanours and whether they have the client has the resilience to go through with it. Of course I contemplate I offered a resignation straight away by ringing the minister's office and speaking to her officials and saying You know, would she like me to go? And I was told that she didn't believe in letting down people who had been appointed properly and were doing a proper job. So that was the easy part. Look, resignation is simple. One does it with a heavy heart. But, you know, it is for people, it's completely the right thing to do for certain people. For me, it wasn't because this was so serious.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that was the easy part. That was, you know, could be rebutted, refuted without even needing to blink. It was so untrue and remains so untrue. The difficult part was, as you said, the harassment or bullying, any idea that that's who I am was for me very difficult.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, because it's not who you are you don't recognise yourself It's not who you thought you were. And it's not what you want other people to know a few. You know, nobody gets out of bed in the morning to come and upset other people So it becomes very personal in the sense of it undermines your own view of who you are, which is impossible.”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in these sort of things people sometimes find that they're more resilient than they imagined themselves to be. But when you're actually in it, nothing you've ever heard about in terms of anyone else's experience is ever applicable to you. It's a very personal thing and one goes through it at a very personal level. If you're lucky you have the love and support of your family, which I've had in terms there is some relief, of course there is. But I think the thing that I reflect upon is that there were times when I thought I had a very well constructed flack jacket in terms of my resilience, and there were times when I thought that flack jacket became incredibly thin, and I was really worried about weather. survive the experience. On the other hand It was”
2023-11-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kishwer Falkner One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source