Sarah Everard; Zoë Billingham, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary; Pepsi & Shirlie; The ethics and laws around surrogacy
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sarah Everard's killer Wayne Couzens was sentenced today. The court heard that Sarah Everard was handcuffed by her murderer - a Metropolitan Police officer - as he pretended to arrest her for breaching Covid guidelines, as she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham on 3 March. Couzens showed his warrant card before restraining her and putting her in his hire car and driving away. Emma gets reaction from listener and journalist Kat Brown, and reads from Sarah's mother Susan Everard's victim impact statement.
She also speaks to Zoë Billingham, who is standing down today after 12 years in her role at Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. Zoë has taken a lead on domestic abuse inspections, and this month published a damning report into the way an ‘epidemic’ of violence against women and girls is being handled – and calling for the prevention of these crimes to be taken as seriously by police and Government as counterterrorism. The report was commissioned by the Home Secretary Priti Patel in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder in March.
After many years as members of Wham!, Pepsi & Shirlie broke out to conquer the charts as a pop duo. They discuss the challenges of making it in the male-dominated 1980s music industry, juggling pop careers with motherhood and reinventing themselves.
Surrogacy in England and Wales has quadrupled over the past decade and enjoys a much higher profile thanks to celebrity parents such as Elton John, Kim Kardashian and Tom Daley. But despite it becoming an increasingly accepted option for those wishing to have a family, the laws regulating surrogacy and the rights of those involved haven't changed in the UK since the mid-1980s. The Law Commission is now in the process of reviewing those laws for the modern day. Bioethicist Dr Herjeet Marway from the University of Birmingham and lawyer Dr Claire Fenton-Glynn from the University of Cambridge discuss the many sticking points in surrogacy's evolving legal and ethical picture.
Image credit: Family Handout/CPS/PA Wire.
Presented by Emma Barnett Producer: Louise Corley Editor: Karen Dalziel
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:41.0 | Hello I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Womensa from BBC. podcasts. disbelief, unimaginable sorrow, and more rage. |
| 0:54.4 | Some of the emotions pouring out of women all over the country, |
| 0:57.9 | as we learn some of the horrific details of Sarah Everett's last hours |
| 1:01.4 | at the hands of policeman Wayne Cousins who will today be sentenced at the old Bailey. |
| 1:06.0 | We learned he kidnapped Sarah under the guise of a false arrest before raping and killing her. |
| 1:12.0 | You've already been in touch this morning, Asia emailed in to say, |
| 1:15.6 | I'm utterly appalled and horrified to hear the details of Sarah Everard's final hours. |
| 1:20.4 | It is horrible to hear of anything like this, but what makes it feel worse is how much I recognize that it could be any one of us. |
| 1:27.0 | Sarah was just walking home. |
| 1:29.0 | Every time I think about going somewhere, I'm constantly planning in my mind and aim to avoid walking alone as much as possible. |
| 1:36.4 | I feel like it's programmed into us as women from a young age and I'm particularly heartbroken |
| 1:42.4 | for Sarah's family and have remembered them in my prayers, |
| 1:45.9 | my deepest condolences to them. |
| 1:48.2 | May Sarah rest in peace. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.