Swinson challenges Humphreys on air over jokes about equal pay

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Jo Swinson clashed with BBC presenter John Humphreys on the air over sexual harassment and equal pay for women.

East Dunbartonshire MP Ms Swinson took the Today Programme host to task over a recording made of him joking about BBC colleague Carrie Gracie’s campaign for equal pay.

At the end of an interview about a new system for dealing with sexual harassment claims at Westminster, Ms Swinson said: “While I’ve got you here 0 Jo Swinson was appearing on Radio Four’s Today programme John, can I just ask, have you apologised to Carrie Gracie for the remarks that you made about her courageous stance on equal pay?”

Interrupting, the present- er replied: “I wrote an e-mail to Carrie Gracie immediately after that exchange... Quite what this has to do with what we’re discussing here I fail to see but there we are.”

Earlier he asked Ms Swinson, who helped draw up new measures to combat harassment in parliament: “So what is sexual harassment?”

Mr Humphreys raised the “old cliché of if a young man asks a young woman out for a drink” and asked, “that isn’t sexual harassment, is it?”

She replied that “it’s really not all that complicated” and said: “The argument that it’s possible for anyone to ask someone out is just a nonsense and a distraction.”