Wes Streeting blasts Nigel Farages silence after racist comments from Reform MP

After sparking a backlash, Reform MP Sarah Pochin said she hadn’t meant to offend anyone with her rant about diversity in advertising and the comments were ‘phrased poorly’

Wes Streeting has blasted a Reform MP for making “racist” complaints about ads “full of Black people, full of Asian people”.

The Health Secretary said Sarah Pochin’s remarks on TalkTV were a “disgrace” and said the silence from Nigel Farage on the row “says it all”. Ms Pochin apologised for offence she may have caused by saying “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of Black people, full of Asian people”.

Amid a major backlash, she said she hadn’t meant to offend anyone and the comments were “phrased poorly”. But the Runcorn and Helsby MP doubled down on her claim that many adverts are “unrepresentative of British society”.

Today, Mr Streeting said: “She’s only sorry that she’s been caught and called out, and she said the quiet bit loud.” The top minister, who represents Ilford North, said he visited a school in his constituency on Friday where teenage boys told him of the appalling racism they suffered.

Mr Streeting said there had been a return of “1970s/1980s style racism that I thought we had left in the history books”. He went on: “The only way we’re going to defeat this racism is to call it out and confront it for what it is, and for the decent majority of this country to stand against it, as we have always done.

“I think what she said was a disgrace. I think it was racist, and the deafening silence from her party leader says it all. Reform is a party who think that our flag only belongs to some of us who look like me, not all of us who have built this country, built its success.”

The row began on a TalkTV phone-in, when Ms Pochin was responding to a caller called Stuart, who complained about the demographics of advertising. The MP said he was “absolutely right” and “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.

She said: “It doesn’t reflect our society and I feel that your average white person, average white family is not represented anymore in TV advertising.

“We are talking about adverts, and how many times do you look at an advert and think ‘there’s not a single white person on it. Actually it is, it’s something that has happened, I believe because of the woke liberati that goes on inside this sort of arty farty worldand it when it comes to northern towns like Runcorn that I represent, it is just not representative of the rest of the country.

“It might be fine inside the M25 but it’s definitely not representative of the rest of the country.”

But in a later statement, she said she was trying to say the advertising industry had gone “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) mad”.

She said: “My comments were phrased poorly and I apologise for any offence caused, which was not my intention.

“The point I was trying to make is that the British advertising agency world have gone DEI mad and many adverts are now unrepresentative of British society as a whole. I will endeavour to ensure my language is more accurate going forward.”

Labour Party chairwoman Anna Turley said: “It’s astonishing that a senior Reform MP is spending her time counting the numbers of people with a different skin colour to her on TV adverts.

“Defining British people by the colour of their skin is completely unacceptable and shows once again that Reform are more interested in dividing our country than uniting it.

“Nigel Farage needs to condemn this now, and urgently clarify whether Sarah Pochin’s views on race are welcome in his party.