Dame Louise Casey

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is Dame Louise Casey, Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Now a cross-bench peer, she's worked under five prime ministers, tackling the country's thorniest social problems ⁇ homelessness, poverty, crime, antisocial behaviour and family breakdown. Baroness might be the grandest title she's earned in her career, but it's by no means the first. She's been known as the Homelessness Tsar, the Respect Czar, the Asbo Queen and, on occasion, the Tsar of Tsars. Her outspoken style and pragmatic approach have always set her apart. As one former colleague put it, there's no other civil servant I've ever met that's gone down a crack alley to find out why someone's homeless. But then she started at the sharp end, behind the counter of the DHSS. The poverty she saw there in the late 1980s moved her to find a job where she could offer hands-on help. She began working for homelessness charities and by 1992 was the deputy director of shelter at just 27. By the late 90s she was a government troubleshooter. Under Tony Blair she led a drive to slash the numbers of rough sleepers. Under David Cameron she ran the Troubled Families programme. More recently she chaired the COVID-19 Rough Sleeping Task Force. Her Everyone In initiative was credited with protecting over 14,000 rough sleepers. She says, It's really important to me to make the world a slightly better place. I think if we can do something to help a person, we've got to get on with it. Dame Louise Casey, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Dame Louise Casey2:12

Thank you very much for having me. It's a real honour, actually. A nerve-wracking honour, but a real honour. So, thank you for having me.

Presenter2:19

Well, you're most welcome. So Louise, kindness and compassion are your watchwords. And you talk a lot about the need for a culture of kindness. In the last year, of course, we've seen that, haven't we, in with neighbours and communities all rallying round to help each other. That must gladden your heart to see that.

Dame Louise Casey2:37

I think the best thing that has happened because of the pandemic is just this extraordinary sort of surf wave really of kindness towards each other. 750,000 people volunteered for the NHS last year, so many that people couldn't go. I was down a food bank just the other week, and they've got endless people volunteering, you know, and wanting to volunteer.

Dame Louise Casey2:59

you know, the goodwill is there. We've just got to make sure that it converts into something that that is, you know, longer and and not just once we're all vaccinated. Everybody thinks they'll go back to normal'cause there won't be a normal for a lot of people.

Presenter3:10

Poor.

Dame Louise Casey3:11

Yeah.

Presenter3:11

Tell me about that volunteering then. That was where you started and you I know that you've been back doing outreach again. Why did you want to go back to the sharp end of volunteering?

Dame Louise Casey3:21

To be honest, I've never really stopped. That's just, you know, the way I sort of approach things is I think you've got to see, feel and understand what's actually happening, as it were, on the street, in the homes, on the housing estates and getting on a train and going to see people and listening to them and trying to understand what their lives were about.

Presenter3:42

Louise, I know that your work has often taken you into some really difficult situations and that you often work long hours too. How do you relax and decompress from all that?

Dame Louise Casey3:53

I love socializing. When that who's who thing came years and years ago when I was first a civil servant, I couldn't fill it in because they what are your hobbies? And I said, drinking and reading novels.

Dame Louise Casey4:05

I love to go out, socialise, and I love to read. I've nothing else to add, really.

Presenter4:11

Let's get into your discs. This is your first choice today. Why are you taking it to the island with you?

Dame Louise Casey4:16

We used to go to Mass, particularly on a Sunday night, and if the Mass went on, I couldn't get home in time to listen to the top forty.

Dame Louise Casey4:25

And I saved up. I was working from quite a young age and I saved up for one of those tape recorders.

Dame Louise Casey4:31

you know, the one you put the tape in like that and just press down on the buttons. And the first tune I ever taped to my unending joy was this particular one in my bedroom after Mass on a Sunday night.

Speaker 44:47

I'm in the phone.

Speaker 44:48

Wanna call the hall

Speaker 44:50

If you don't answer my

Speaker 44:51

I know he's there, but I just wanna crawl.

Speaker 44:57

We'll be having on the telephone.

Speaker 45:03

We're hanging on the chill

Presenter5:11

Blondie and hanging on the telephone. So Dame Louise Casey, you returned to public service last year after time away to chair the government's COVID nineteen rough sleeping task force, and you led everyone in, which was an emergency initiative to get rough sleepers off the streets and protect them from the virus. How did you get involved?

Presenter5:31

Well the star

Dame Louise Casey5:32

Tucked my nose in.

Dame Louise Casey5:33

How many involved yourself? I chose to persuade people that they needed me. I was due in the Cabinet Office to do something I had to do there anyway. Anyway, I just walked down Whitehall and I texted Robert Jenrick, who's the Secretary of State for Housing and Local Government, and I texted the Permanent Secretary and said

Dame Louise Casey5:51

I'm in reception. Do you want a hand, really?

Presenter5:54

And it was considered a a largely very successful initiative during that first wave. But you did say about that time I was like a civilian wandering about trying to find solutions and no, I couldn't. Did you feel on the back foot? I mean, looking back, is there anything that you would do over, do differently?

Dame Louise Casey6:11

Um sometimes I've looked back and thought

Dame Louise Casey6:15

Maybe I should have been even more challenging to some of the system.

Dame Louise Casey6:21

I was deeply disappointed that when we had a lot of these people in hotels, many of whom were able bodied and okay and could have worked, that could I get anybody to give them a job, I found really frustrating and I couldn't really

Dame Louise Casey6:34

Get enough attention onto that. We left people in those hotels for too long without getting them out and into jobs. And I think it's where the other thing I think is.

Dame Louise Casey6:44

Like you've got to be careful that you're not pretending you're solving something when you're not.

Dame Louise Casey6:49

And actually, the truth is, it wasn't a rough sleeping strategy. I mean, I'm not running down the work. You know, it was amazing, and it's shown that it's possible.

Speaker 16:54

It was

Dame Louise Casey6:57

But you need a strategy to sort out these really difficult and challenging problems, and that's what we'll need as we come out of the pandemic.

Presenter7:04

So during your working life, you've served under five Prime Ministers, both Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and the Conservatives under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Today, obviously, you're a cross bench peer as well. What's your approach to keeping politically neutral?

Dame Louise Casey7:20

You know, I often think of it as like a stone with the water like a uh actually endless big waves coming at you. And that what you have to be is a stone that weathers those waves, that if you're doing

Dame Louise Casey7:35

Really important big things for society. You have to hold your own in it, and that can be very difficult. How do you know when you're striking the right balance?

Dame Louise Casey7:45

And

Dame Louise Casey7:46

I think you don't always know because you can't always handle politics. So, you know, I thought that the transfer from Blair to Brown would be smooth because I thought it was the same party. And it wasn't that smooth, actually. It took a while. I didn't hit right at the beginning. I got the ball in the wrong net. And then again, in the transfer between Cameron and Theresa May, a Cameron-led agenda actually wasn't what she wanted. And it took me a while to work my way into

Dame Louise Casey8:18

getting that f final review that I did for them at that point on extremism and integration. It it took a while to get that out and published. So but we did. We did and I do. And that's what you've got to hang on to.

Speaker 18:22

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:30

They

Presenter8:32

It's time for some more music, Louise. Second disc today. What have you chosen and why?

Dame Louise Casey8:36

Well, got to have Louis Armstrong. What a wonderful world. It's a no brainer. I don't know why you don't have it every week. It's um it was the first forty five that my parents had.

Dame Louise Casey8:48

It reminds me that, regardless of how dark.

Dame Louise Casey8:53

and sad and painful many things may be in our communities, in our families, in our society, that the world remains wonderful.

Speaker 49:09

I see trees of green.

Speaker 49:14

Red roses too

Speaker 49:17

I see them blue.

Speaker 49:20

Five minutes.

Speaker 49:23

And I think to myself

Speaker 49:28

What a wonderful world!

Presenter9:33

Louis Armstrong and what a wonderful world. So, Louise Casey, I know that you don't often talk about your private life, but if you don't mind, I'm going to take you back a little bit now. You were born in Cornwall, but grew up in Portsmouth, and your dad had come to the UK, to Liverpool initially, I think, from Ireland, when he was a teenager. Why did he make the move?

Dame Louise Casey9:51

Uh

Dame Louise Casey9:53

My dad was one of many brothers, some died, some lived, and then their father died when he was forty two in Rattoth, which is north of Dublin, County Meath in Ireland, and my grandmother basically had no choice but to put them all I mean, everything went, the house went, the house came with the work.

Dame Louise Casey10:13

So they were tenant farmers? They were tenant cattle farmers actually. And so she put all of the uh boys on boats to different parts of the world. My dad came into Liverpool, so that's quite a tough, tough call. He arrived into Liverpool in the days of no blacks, no Irish, no dog.

Presenter10:14

To do a tenant.

Presenter10:17

Actually.

Presenter10:30

So your dad eventually found work installing telephones in prisons around the country, and he and your mum after some time settled in Portsmouth. That's where you and your brother grew up. What was your relationship with your dad like?

Dame Louise Casey10:44

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey10:44

My dad

Dame Louise Casey10:46

you know, wasn't always easy. Um, and y I think my brother would agree, he could be very controlling and I don't want to cast off every man, but he had a tough life. It doesn't excuse some of his more difficult sides, but um

Presenter11:01

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey11:02

But yeah

Presenter11:02

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey11:04

Uh

Presenter11:04

I think you were closer to your mum, and in fact she had been a civil servant herself in the war office before she had children. Str

Dame Louise Casey11:11

Strange beyond, isn't it? And it's one of the like she never saw.

Dame Louise Casey11:17

You know, she never saw the honours and realized what I did. I think she just worried that I wasn't married and didn't have children.

Dame Louise Casey11:26

I didn't quite understand what all of this was about, but when she died and I was down at the house, I realized that she'd kept um clipping after clipping the bad ones as well as the good ones.

Dame Louise Casey11:40

Well, fair's fair.

Presenter11:40

Yeah, no, I'll take that. Looking back, Louise, would you say that you had a happy childhood?

Dame Louise Casey11:46

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey11:49

Um

Dame Louise Casey11:50

Yes, of course. You know, there's definitely happiness in there. Um.

Dame Louise Casey11:55

You know, when my brother left home

Dame Louise Casey11:58

I found that quite difficult.

Presenter12:01

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey12:02

Because, you know, I was I was home alone, um and I yeah, yes, no.

Dame Louise Casey12:09

Yeah.

Presenter12:09

Do you think that's shaped the life that you've chosen later?

Dame Louise Casey12:14

Etched throughout my face, etched throughout everything in me, is my beginning. I don't think it's the defining thing. I I don't know if I hadn't had that beginning, if I wouldn't be like this anyway.

Dame Louise Casey12:24

But I certainly think that.

Dame Louise Casey12:27

For one reason or another, it's my privilege really to have some sense of

Dame Louise Casey12:33

What being in the dark is like, and what facing difficulty is like, particularly as a child or a young person. And I think that that means.

Dame Louise Casey12:43

I'm empathetic. So there's a strength to it, but it also means that you, I, we, whoever, I feel very impotent that I can't affect more change.

Dame Louise Casey12:56

Um

Dame Louise Casey12:57

particularly for women and children.

Presenter13:00

Louise, it's time to take a minute for some music. This is disc number three. Tell us about this choice.

Dame Louise Casey13:05

It's Labo M. My mother loved this. She had to be carried out of the Manchester Opera House by one of her beaus early on because she was crying so much. And basically it's our tune. So on a Sunday when my dad was down the pub and Noel was probably with him, we would put Labo M on and blare it out at the top of what that little record player could possibly do.

Dame Louise Casey13:33

and sing it. And the last time I got my mum to anything operatic was Pavarotti in Leeds Castle. And we were right at the back and, you know, he it wasn't his finest day, but it was one of her finest moments.

Speaker 413:55

I played a photo.

Speaker 413:57

I love that you

Speaker 414:02

Every moment.

Speaker 414:05

Ah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 414:14

Aspect is in your ina and let it open whoever oh

Presenter14:48

Kei Gelli de Monina from Puccini's Labo M performed by Luciano Pavarotti with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrian.

Presenter14:57

Dame Louise Casey, you were educated then at a Catholic comprehensive in Waterlooville, just north of Portsmouth, and as you mentioned earlier, you had some problems at home. How did those difficulties affect you at school?

Dame Louise Casey15:10

Well, I think I threw myself into school and relationships in school, Lockstockham Barrel, really. Got there as early in the morning and left as late as possible, was endlessly involved in all sorts of after school activities. I was assistant director of a school play and all of that type of stuff. Yeah, and I became head girl, president of the school council.

Dame Louise Casey15:37

Yeah.

Presenter15:37

Yeah. But I think, Louise, that your academic work did begin to suffer as you grew up, as you got older.

Dame Louise Casey15:44

Well, I would say, I mean, I hit a buffer really after Noel left home. That was my A-levels year. And if that happened now, I would have been a write-off. Whereas because of the school, and particularly because of a woman called Sister Ita, I'm not, and I wasn't. And I was trying to find actually, because we've got this little file of things, this note.

Dame Louise Casey16:10

That she wrote one Christmas telling me I had a future and I had a gift to give and that I was worthy and um.

Dame Louise Casey16:19

Yeah, I kept it for quite a long time. I squirrelled it away and kept it for a long time and I would read it when things were tough.

Dame Louise Casey16:26

People like Sister Ita and others have the gift of giving the shaft of light and the shaft of love, and that.

Dame Louise Casey16:33

Can just make someone keep going again. It can make them.

Dame Louise Casey16:39

go to school, it can make them cope with things that when they're difficult.

Presenter16:44

So unfortunately, Louise, you didn't do very well in your new levels and you decided to leave school and get a job. You also wanted to leave home, so you were looking for residential work and found a job in the cafe at the Sunshine Holiday Camp on Haling Island.

Dame Louise Casey16:58

Uh

Presenter16:59

Was it fun?

Dame Louise Casey16:59

I absolutely bloody loved working at the holiday camp.

Dame Louise Casey17:04

We used to get up you know, it was routine, wasn't it? We got up every day.

Dame Louise Casey17:08

rang the cafe all day and then, you know, when everybody goes to bed, we all took to the dance floor.

Dame Louise Casey17:14

And had a really good time. And it was a really, really great place to be, actually. I loved it.

Presenter17:19

Well, with that in mind, time for your next disc.

Dame Louise Casey17:22

What are we going to hear? This is Love Train, which of course for me is is a dancing song and it just it's like a sparkle of joy.

Speaker 417:31

Join me. It's not a love tree. Love treat.

Speaker 417:38

Oh my god.

Speaker 417:41

Join in love round love trade, love trade, the next love that we make.

Speaker 417:49

We'll be fun.

Speaker 417:54

Tell my own the folks in Russia and dinner too.

Presenter18:00

The O. Jays and Love Trains. So there you were, Dame Louise Casey, at the Sunshine Holiday Camp, and you may have still been there if Destiny hadn't intervened in the form of Sister Ita.

Presenter18:11

She arrived What happened?

Presenter18:13

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey18:13

Well, basically she just said, Look, I've re-entered you for A level English. You're going to take it. You're going to pass it and then you're going to go to university. It's like there wasn't really much more to say, frankly, Lauren. It was like reasonable management instruction issued by Sister Ita.

Presenter18:32

Uh

Presenter18:33

So you did what you were told and you went on to study history at Goldsmiths, University of London, graduating in nineteen eighty seven. And I think it was actually your worries about your student debt that prompted you to apply for a position at the Department of Health and Social Security. It was in South London.

Dame Louise Casey18:35

You are not used to it.

Dame Louise Casey18:51

What was your job there?

Presenter18:52

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey18:52

I was working on the reception, which at that point was the most violent inner London reception in any um and it was violent because people were desperate. So what were you seeing day to day? Oh, God, people would cu we had security guards on the doors, both at the front and at the back.

Dame Louise Casey19:09

chairs were screwed to the floor because people were going to get them up and crash them into the windows. Somebody came in once with a pickaxe. And then the thing that did for me actually was this woman had been coming in all week dragging her kids in, God love her, and she was just desperate.

Dame Louise Casey19:28

And every day I had to say no.

Dame Louise Casey19:31

And she sat at the back, right? We were getting to Friday. Absolutely clear now that the fellow that she was with was taking every single penny.

Dame Louise Casey19:40

And despite that, we the the computer says no. And so I went to the back on the Friday, so you were at the office bit and I just said, What can we do? We can't. It's like it's the weekend, she's got nothing.

Dame Louise Casey19:53

And the guy in charge of the desk said, Would you just shut up about her? There's nothing we can do. It's nothing to do with you. He just sort of shouted at me, and I was like 21 or whatever, or 20. And this other woman called me over and she said, We can give us some tokens. Don't tell him. I'll get you some tokens.

Dame Louise Casey20:14

and I go for tokens for milk,

Dame Louise Casey20:16

And for sanitary towels.

Dame Louise Casey20:19

and she took them under the thing and she put her head on the desk and wept.

Dame Louise Casey20:24

And I thought, I can't do this. I can't do this. So literally the next day I read City Limits. Remember that magazine in London, City Limits, it was a... The Listings magazine? The Listings magazine, the same as Time Out, and they had um they were looking for volunteers at a night shelter for young people and I thought that's it. You're going to volunteer there, you work during the day, you'll volunteer and you'll try and help properly.

Presenter20:48

It's time to see your next disc, Louise, what's it going to be, and why are you taking this with you today?

Dame Louise Casey20:54

My next disc is Abide With Me and

Dame Louise Casey20:59

This is obviously Shirley Bassey.

Dame Louise Casey21:01

Abide with me is saying

Dame Louise Casey21:04

God, and if you don't believe in God, for me, each other, to humanity, it's saying, please be with me.

Dame Louise Casey21:11

Be with me and carry me in the times that are hard.

Dame Louise Casey21:15

People are there for me in my darkest moments.

Dame Louise Casey21:19

and I will be there for them.

Dame Louise Casey21:21

And

Dame Louise Casey21:22

A bite with me is for Sister Eater.

Presenter21:55

Abide with me, Dame Shirley Bassey, with the Morriston Rugby Club Choir.

Presenter21:59

Louise Casey, by 1992, when you were only 27, you were Deputy Director of Shelter, and you were instrumental then in setting up Shelterline, the country's first twenty-four hour telephone helpline for homeless people. You describe your work as a vocation now.

Dame Louise Casey22:16

Was it the same back then?

Dame Louise Casey22:18

I think vocation and calling is probably too it makes it sound like it's too thought through.

Dame Louise Casey22:25

I mean, you know, I was writing a leadership story or something like that. I might try and retrofit, but no, not at the time. I was just driven. Work and fun. I played hard and I socialized hard.

Presenter22:39

Back to that first czarship then, if that's the right word. It was nineteen ninety nine, and Tony Blair appointed you the head of the new Rough Sleepers Unit, which was set up to reduce rough sleeping in England, and that earned you the title Homelessness Czar. How did you take to being a civil servant?

Dame Louise Casey22:56

Well, we were going to reduce the number of people sleeping rough by two thirds within a two to three year period. And then bless the civil servants on my arrival, they'd written a note that I was supposed to send up to the minister saying it's going to be really tricky, we may not make it. And I was like I got everybody in the room and I went, look, I just need to be really clear here.

Dame Louise Casey23:15

I've waited all my life so far to eradicate rough sleeping, right? We're going to do this. And anybody that doesn't want to be part of it or doesn't believe it's possible, you need to go and find another job in the civil service. I'm not the easiest of people to necessarily work for.

Dame Louise Casey23:33

is one way of describing it.

Presenter23:35

And you did

Dame Louise Casey23:36

Damn it.

Presenter23:37

How quickly?

Dame Louise Casey23:38

Well, we met the target within two years, actually. It was at that time of the new Labor government. Actually, amazing things happened during that time. We did it. You've got a Prime Minister in your corner, right?

Dame Louise Casey23:52

You've got a cause that people feel they want to actually do something about. So the charities were with us and we had a methodology. So God knows if we hadn't done it, then somebody should have sacked me.

Presenter24:03

And you went in all guns blazing by the sounds of it. How did the Civil Service take to you, do you think?

Dame Louise Casey24:09

I would say that I've always been an outsider.

Dame Louise Casey24:13

And I think even, you know, I got a CB, which is like the it's the civil servant's honour.

Dame Louise Casey24:20

Amazing, but I think I became their outsider. It's time for your next disc. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Dame Louise Casey24:29

Oh, this one's a bit of a killer. This is Danny Boy from Brastoff, the film Brastoff, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. And

Dame Louise Casey24:41

There's something extraordinary about brass bands and the dignity.

Dame Louise Casey24:47

And the story of Brastov is the story of taking the dignity away from working people. It goes deep into my own family.

Dame Louise Casey24:56

And so when I listen to a brass band play Danny Boy, it takes me into my soul about those people.

Dame Louise Casey25:04

and the fact that it is Irish.

Dame Louise Casey25:06

of course is about

Dame Louise Casey25:09

Really, some of the tides of immigration, and those tides have made this country the country that it is.

Dame Louise Casey25:15

And we should embrace it and accept it.

Presenter25:50

Danny Boy performed by The Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

Presenter25:54

Louise Casey, you're well known for your plain speaking approach and for holding some pretty forthright views. And when you were at the Rough Sleepers unit, you accused other charities of keeping homeless people on the street, of enabling homelessness, if you like, with certain practices. And you were criticised for denigrating other agencies' good work. What was your thinking and how did you respond to that criticism?

Dame Louise Casey26:18

Well, I, you know, a few times in my career, not my finest hour, I would say, that what I was trying to say is, look, we've got to get people off the streets, not keep people on the streets. Instead of that, I said rather brashly, they're handing out better sleeping bags on the strand than you and I can buy, you know, in the best camping shop. So it wasn't sensitively handled, but the point remains the same. It's hard to imagine right now, but imagine you were back in the times that actually what you wanted was help off the street, not on the street. So what I wanted to do, we wanted to encourage people to come inside for help. And that if we made everything on the street, then there would not be the incentive to come in. It's tough love.

Presenter27:03

Uh

Presenter27:04

After the Rough Sleepers unit you were appointed the head of the Antisocial Behaviour Unit at the Home Office. The media then dubbed you the Asbo Queen. Asbos were controversial and your support of them didn't always go down well. You must have known that there would be pushback. Did that bother you at all?

Dame Louise Casey27:19

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey27:19

It's interesting. I found the Asbo criticism

Dame Louise Casey27:23

Which was pretty unilateral across the left. Really hard. Because actually.

Dame Louise Casey27:30

I genuinely believed and believed that a lot of the housing estates.

Dame Louise Casey27:36

That people were living in were just not good enough, right? Bad behavior that actually got to the point where people were shoving basically what they were human waste through people's front doors, they were putting fireworks through people's front doors, they were ganging up on people that were blind. Things weren't okay. And it's all right for the liberal intelligentsia.

Dame Louise Casey27:57

To have a problem with the fact that many people would have anybody as bowed if it thought they brought safety and peace to their community.

Dame Louise Casey28:06

And is there part of you, Louise, that kind of relishes the fight?

Dame Louise Casey28:09

I won't naturally go with the grain if I don't think it's the right thing, Lauren. But I'm not a politician. I don't have to be popular. It took a particular moment in my career where I delivered a particular after-dinner speech where essentially after that I realized that I couldn't just go out there and say what I think. I had to be more careful about the environments I was talking in and not try and be funny and various other things.

Presenter28:35

And

Presenter28:39

Yes, this was during your time at the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit. You gave an after dinner speech to a group of police officers, and you have described that event as one of the lowlights of your career. What happened exactly?

Dame Louise Casey28:42

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey28:51

Yeah, I used the F word seventeen times in one speech. You know, that's not really what you expect of senior civil servants. And I felt ashamed of myself really. Messing up in public is incredibly painful, but you can learn a lot from it. I didn't do many more after dinner speeches.

Dame Louise Casey29:08

I can tell you now, that was on the band lift for quite some time. But you know, I learnt from it. You pick yourself up, you live to fight another day if as lo as long as you just try and do the right thing.

Dame Louise Casey29:22

Yeah.

Presenter29:22

Louise, let's take a second for some more music. This is disc number seven. Oh. Why have you chosen it?

Dame Louise Casey29:28

I spent best part of six months in Rotherham conducting an inspection into Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council.

Dame Louise Casey29:37

Famous because of its failure to protect children.

Dame Louise Casey29:44

from child sexual exploitation.

Dame Louise Casey29:47

And it was one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life.

Dame Louise Casey29:52

I used to come go across to Donny and get on the train to come down to King's Cross every Friday night and then I'd have Saturday at home and Sunday mornings I used to sit down early and I'd review the evidence of the week and plot out what I wanted to find out next and I put this on. It's just simple and beautiful and it just carries you. So it was in and out of my life for six months every week.

Presenter31:20

Chopin's nocturne number two in E-flat major, performed by Daniel Barrenbohm.

Presenter31:26

Dame Louise Casey, last year you stepped down from your government role as chair of its task force supporting rough sleepers when lockdown ends. Why was it time for you to go?

Dame Louise Casey31:35

Well, I felt that I'd done what we'd set out to do, and at the same time

Dame Louise Casey31:43

I'd accepted a cross bench peerage in the House of Lords, and so it felt like the right thing to do at that point. Clearly then I instead of going into the House of Lords, I've avoided that so far, but I got very involved in hunger, basically, particularly trying to make sure that we were

Dame Louise Casey32:01

match ready for to keep going getting food out to all these vulnerable households. And so I've been I've been pretty much on that actually, Lauren. I will get to the House of Lords. I'm slightly overwhelmed by the thought of it. You're definitely going to turn up. Definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely.

Presenter32:16

Well, you can't go just yet, because I'm about to send you to the islands.

Dame Louise Casey32:19

Yeah.

Presenter32:19

Are you good at relaxing, kicking back, not doing much? No. You're shaking your head.

Dame Louise Casey32:23

Shaking your head. No, I'm not great at relaxing unless, of course, I'm with my mates in a bar or in a restaurant and then a couple of glasses of rose. I think I'm fluent in Spanish, particularly in the language of tapas, and I play the spoons.

Presenter32:40

An impressive and perhaps underrated skill, Louise. So before I cast you away, it's time to hear your final disc. Tell me about this piece, please.

Dame Louise Casey32:49

This piece is by the Self Isolation Choir, and my friend is one of the six thousand people that is in this Self Isolation Choir. And it's just an extraordinary thing, I think, to think that people all over the world

Dame Louise Casey33:05

get in front of their, you know, telephones and their whatever's and they record together.

Dame Louise Casey33:11

You know, dear God, I hope as the clouds part and the sun shines again and we're through this.

Dame Louise Casey33:18

That we will all meet again and we will meet again together and that we will leave no one behind, that we will go back and we will check that people aren't hungry and we will check that people aren't homeless and we will check that communities who've been riven by unemployment and by despair have hope and that that's what this song means.

Presenter34:13

Quantaqualia, the Self Isolation Choir. So Louise Casey, it's time. I'm going to send you away to the island. Now, I'm giving you the books to take along with you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can also take a book of your choice. What will that be?

Dame Louise Casey34:27

I'm going to take the eclectic works of Jane Austen. There is something just incredibly comforting about Jane Austen. You can also choose a luxury.

Presenter34:36

Item, what would you like?

Dame Louise Casey34:38

I will be hopeless here. There'll be no reflection, thinking through how I could be a better person, take time out on the island to improve myself, do yoga. No, I will literally be reading and drinking. If I could have a.

Presenter34:45

Do you

Speaker 134:46

Uh

Dame Louise Casey34:49

Annual supply of wine until you rescue me, that would be great.

Presenter34:53

Oh, 100%. And finally, which one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today would you rescue?

Dame Louise Casey34:59

from the waves if you had to.

Presenter35:00

Uh

Dame Louise Casey35:01

I'm going to go for Love Train because I think I need some wine, I need a few books, I won't bother with the Bible or Shakespeare, to be honest. I might do if I get desperate. But, you know, I'm going to have a party on that island till somebody somewhere comes and gets me.

Presenter35:16

Dame Louise Casey, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Dame Louise Casey35:20

It's been An unusual and fantastic experience, so thank you very much yourselves.

Presenter35:46

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Louise. We'll let her turn the OJs up and enjoy her party. Over the years, we've cast away many crossbench peers, including Baroness Jane Campbell, Baroness Halle Afshar, Lord Indijit Singh, and Lord Victor Adeboale. You can hear these programmes on the Desert Island Disc's website and on BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the writer Maggie O'Farrell. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 436:22

Are you fed up with

Speaker 436:24

The news

Speaker 436:25

Next slide please.

Speaker 436:27

The skewer the skewer

Speaker 436:29

The news chopped and channeled. A National Health Service. Oh dear.

Dame Louise Casey36:41

Everything

Speaker 436:42

They need to know.

Dame Louise Casey36:42

Mean to know, like you've never

Speaker 436:43

Yeah.

Dame Louise Casey36:43

I don't think so.

Speaker 436:45

Fly boss walk jam nitty gritty you're listening to the

Speaker 436:50

By John Holmes.

Speaker 136:52

They're no British fish. Happy fish. They're no British fish. Happy fish.

Speaker 436:57

Vascular

Speaker 437:00

On B B C Sounds.

Speaker 137:01

On B B C Sounds.