Satwat Rehman: The issue isn't how lawyers are trying to test the law or to support people to realise their rights to the law. It's the flaws that are built in by the lawmakers.

Jen Ang: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Lawmanity podcast where we explore the complex relationship between law and activism and discuss the different ways that law can oppress people, but can also lead to real social change. I'm Jen Ang, a human rights lawyer and activist based in Scotland and your host on the Lawmanity podcast. Today we're speaking to feminist activist, anti racism and anti poverty campaigner and absolute legend Satwat Rehman. Satwa's most recent role is as Chief Executive of One Parent Families Scotland, the leading charity working with single parent families in Scotland, providing expert advice, practical support and companioning with parents to change the systems, policies and attitudes that disadvantage single parent families. Satwat's activism has deep roots with more than 30 years experience in the voluntary and public sector in Scotland and England, working in the fields of equalities, education, employability, economic development, regeneration and early years in childcare. She is a recent or serving member of the Commission for Child Care Reform, the Just Transition Commission, the Social Renewal Advisory Board and alongside me, the First Minister's

National Advisory Council for Women and Girls.

Jen Ang: And her breadth of experience definitely shone through in our interview. Welcome to the show, Satwat

Satwat Rehman: Thank you very much for the opportunity to be able to chat with you.

Jen Ang: Well, that's very kind. Just to start off for this podcast, I've been experimenting with a surprise opener question, just to get us settled and to help people learn a little more about the people behind the legends who we're interviewing. So if you don't mind, could you please tell me about a smell that you like that's meaningful to you, Maybe

Jen Ang: just something you enjoy or something that's

Jen Ang: connected to a place and a time

Jen Ang: that you like to bring to mind.

Satwat Rehman: Loads of smells come to mind. A smell that really sticks in my mind is the smell I remember, of the aeroplane door opening as we landed in Lahore in Pakistan. And every time since then, when we've been to Pakistan and actually when I've travelled elsewhere as well, each place has its own smell and every time I catch a whiff of that smell, it evokes all these memories. So in terms of, for, Pakistan, it evokes memories of those journeys back home, first time meeting lots of relatives who I didn't even know existed and touring around and getting a sense of who my mum and dad were and what made them who they are. So to me there is something about every time you land in a different country you get a sense of the place from the smell. And it stuck with me.

Jen Ang: I love that.

Jen Ang: And you know, I, whilst never having really thought about it in that way, I recently went back to Maryland, the United States, which is where I grew up. and I was, I was like surprised, but actually you know, in quite a kind of core and visceral way surprised by this, this memory of the smell and not realising that the place had a smell, you know, but it was the smell of home. It was so recognisable and it was so absent everywhere else other than this place. But it was. Yeah. So I love that. Thank you for sharing that. , but also for I guess making me think a little different about what I experienced earlier this year too.

Jen Ang: Okay, so having, having warmed us up

Jen Ang: we're going to get down to the questions which are, which are big weighty questions. The first one is this. So the question is, do you feel

Jen Ang: that the law works equally for you

Jen Ang: or for your community, however you choose to define that?

Satwat Rehman: That is a really big question. It is and I'm going to answer it by starting off by saying that there is no one answer. it depends on so many factors. And I'll speak about that from the perspective of the single parent families that we work with. But also I'll speak about that as somebody who's grown up in a racially minority here in the UK and for me it's also about a number of levels because sometimes the issue isn't with how lawyers are trying to test the law or to support people to realise their rights through the law. It's the flaws that are built in by the lawmakers and some of those aren't flaws which are unintentional. Some of that might be exactly what they want the policy to do, you know. And for single parents you see that a lot in the design of benefit support, for example, where we might take, you know, and lawyers have, through organisations like Child Poverty Action

Group, taken cases to challenge things like the two child limit for example or the benefit cap and other things which disproportionately impact on single parent families. But those cases haven't been successful because of the way the law was made and its intent.

Jen Ang: Here Satwat is referring to strategic litigation taken by the Child Poverty Action Group or CPAG against a Conservative government reform to welfare benefits as part of a programme of austerity in 2017. The two child limit restricted support and Universal Credit to two children in a family, leaving families without means tested support for their third and subsequent born children. According to CPAG, it was the biggest driver of rising child poverty. CPAG led strategic litigation more than once to challenge the two child limit. In 2021, they led an unsuccessful human rights and public law challenge all the way to the UK Supreme Court. Justices there concluded there were no legal standards by which a court could decide how the government should strike the balance between a family's financial needs and the wider public's tax contributions. Returning the issue entirely to parliament. In 2025, CPAG led a second case challenging the so called rape clause which exempted children born non consensually if they were born third or later, but not if they were born first or second. To the High Court they were again unsuccessful, with the court declaring the matter to have been previously settled by the Supreme Court.

Satwat Rehman: It is a policy question dealing in social, economic, moral and ethical subject matter. It is also a question with potential resonances in family law more generally. It is a political law reform question

Jen Ang: Following election of a Labour government in July 2024. In April 2026, the UK government scrapped the two child limit, essentially meeting the Court's reply with a political solution. As a result, CPAG estimates that the measure immediately lifted 350,000 children out of poverty and of course made marginally more dignified and humane the system for accessing welfare support for families in the UK. However, there are more campaigns to be fought and won. As Satwat pointed out, another Conservative austerity measure, the benefits cap still remains in place. This is a limit on the total amount most working age people can receive in the UK and is also a key driver of child poverty. Let's return to Satwat who carries on with a big question for single parent families.

Satwat Rehman: I'm going to talk about poverty because that is one of the big, as we know, the biggest issues for single parent families. There is so much evidence to show that the two child limit keeps and pushes families into poverty. So on the one hand you've got a child poverty strategy being developed at UK level, on the other hand you've got them sticking with and pushing through further reforms that's going to increase poverty levels amongst families. So there, I would ask, is there a hierarchy in terms of which laws are considered important? So I think there is something there about what role lawyers who are activists and who believe in social justice can play in the development of the laws, which is critical. I think from this point of view, because I think what quite often happens is after the bills are passed and they become acts and they're being enacted, it can be too late. And so there is something about how you can be more active as a profession in supporting campaigns and activism which is completely and utterly grounded in the experiences of the individuals who are meant to be the benefactors of these laws, or actually being completely and utterly, and I'm not using this word lightly, but destroyed by the changes that are going to be taking place. As we can see at the moment, when we looked at disabled people's organisations and their response to the latest set of welfare reforms that the UK government is considering, which is all about reducing the benefit bill by forcing people with, lifetime conditions to be, considering how they going to work, even though work may never be sustainable or affordable for them in terms of lifting them out of poverty. So I think there's a big role there in how we can collaborate and work better together as lawyers and as activists and being able to challenge processes like, for example, are, equality impact assessments even considered? At what point are they considered in the processes of designing something? What weight do they carry then? What's the role for the equalities legislation in that sort of space? Which are they going to consider as being of greater value and how do we push collectively as activists and as those working in the legal professions to be able to challenge that? Uh-huh. So there's that which I think about in terms of, even before we get onto what you can do to support with the laws as they are, what more can we be doing effectively in the law making process which might make it easier? And again, so it'll be those who can afford will be able to use the law and those who can't afford will find it more difficult to use it, particularly as we've seen the erosion of legal aid and what legal aid can be done for. So it's not an easy question to answer because actually it's not a siloed question. It cuts across so many things in terms of what the reality is for the families that we work with and actually what many of them will say to us. We feel completely invisible in policymaking and we're not prioritised in legal reforms, so how can we do something about that? And one of the things there has been that there's been a movement to see whether single parenthood should be a protected characteristic in equalities legislation. And again, there's pros and cons to that. You can see the protections it could bring. But actually it's not necessarily a fixed identity, it's not a lifelong identity that you have. So are there other laws we should be using or other things? Like for example, should single parents be named as a group that you have to take into consideration through the public sector equality duty? You know, should they be named to the Fairer Scotland Duty, which is the equivalent of the socio economic duty? And so, but you know, it's easy to latch onto that, to say if we do that in equalities legislation we'll be protected. But actually that assumes the other groups already in equalities legislation are protected and we don't see much protection coming the way of some of those groups at the moment.

Jen Ang: Absolutely. And you've taken a very big question that I've asked you and just posed a series of huge questions, but I

Jen Ang: think that they're really interesting for you.

Jen Ang: Is the law, do you think, is

Jen Ang: it still potentially a tool for social

Jen Ang: change or for positive progressive change or is it primarily a barrier?

Satwat Rehman: I would say it's a little bit of both.

Jen Ang: Yeah.

Satwat Rehman: Yep. On the one hand, I really do believe that laws empower us and can, can empower us and can offer us those protections against unfair treatment and securing rights to housing, benefits, support services, you know, and they're Absolutely. I think without them we'd be in a much, much worse position than we are now. But it goes back to the point about the processes of the law and the process of law and how difficult it can be to access and it's intimidating for families, you know, it's intimidating for me if I have to speak to a lawyer about something that really matters to me and is personal to me. And it's not necessarily designed with the end user in mind, being the individual. And you know, a lot of terms in law are archaic, difficult to understand and I think we need to be demystifying it. And I think there are some real activists out there and lawyer activists who are very good at doing that, who are demystifying the law. So you can actually begin to see, actually this is what my right is and here are ways in which I can realise those rights. But we always are, ah, pushed back to the fact that what we can do is constrained by the system and the finances within the system. I mean, you know, if we want to look at a really fundamental right, every child has a right to an education right, every local authority has a duty to fulfil that right to that education. But what we do is do it in a way which will suit what we think is the majority. So it may work for 70% of children and young people, but there are 30% whose rights are often compromised. And when you speak about why that is, you're told it's because of resource constraints. So if you've got a child with additional needs, if you've got a child who might require more one to one support to settle in class, those rights aren't realised in terms of their access to education being equal because the resource isn't there. And they're incredibly difficult things to challenge as an individual, as a parent. And that's where I think that there is a real role for the law as a tool in terms of collective action and being able to look at an issue and say, okay, that that parent there spoken about it. Actually the evidence is showing us that this is a pattern and then it's the pattern that you need to be challenging in law. The problem then becomes you could win that, but how do you implement your victory? Where are those resources going to come from? Are those who've got the duty to provide and to realise that right going to be able to do so? Let me just give you an example of something that's coming up more and more which impacts on single parent families, will impact on lots of families, but obviously we're hearing about it from single parent families where due to the fact that resources are so limited in so many schools, if they've got children, have got additional needs or who may be playing out the impact of early life trauma or any of those things, parents will tell us about the fact that sometimes they haven't even got as far as walking back home and through the door before the school will phone to say we don't have the staff and we don't have the resource. It's not safe. Can you come and pick your child up? What parent is going to say no? You know, and we've been hearing about this beginning to happen more and more to the families that we're working with. And so there's a fundamental there about that child's not receiving an education. But then if you look at the welfare system and the fact that we've got a welfare system which has conditionality built into it and you're sanctioned if you can't then meet those conditions. These are parents who are also being expected to be looking full time for work, enter work and increase their hours in work and all of those areas have conditionality which if they don't meet they would be sanctioned.

Jen Ang: That is crushing.

Jen Ang: And you kind of paint a picture of the impossibility of the situation that these different systems, when they interact and when neither of them actually have a, I will add this, a human rights based or equalities lens.

Satwat Rehman: Absolutely.

Jen Ang: Just, just create an impossible set of decisions. Yeah.

Satwat Rehman: And actually placing them all on the individual to make do, you know. So in a way the institutions there, in terms of education have absolved themselves of their duty and responsibility and passed it back to the parent for that child.

Jen Ang: Yes. And I suppose just to draw through

Jen Ang: another thread that you mentioned earlier, which is how eligibility for legal aid and access to lawyers can really affect your

Jen Ang: ability to resolve a situation.

Jen Ang: I'll know from my own frontline practise

Jen Ang: that the parents that you're speaking about

Jen Ang: are exactly the people who don't have the time to look for a lawyer

Jen Ang: to combat the legal aid system, to

Jen Ang: attend appointments and so on.

Jen Ang: And so it is no good saying there is a legal remedy which there might be. You know, my instinct is always like that must be illegal.

Jen Ang: But actually that's, that's not useful

Jen Ang: for someone who doesn't have time or capacity to even start to engage with that. Ah, to even find a lawyer who

Jen Ang: might do the work.

Satwat Rehman: Absolutely. What they want to do is problem solve their day to day reality.

Jen Ang: Yes.

Satwat Rehman: They won't necessarily be thinking about, well actually, actually if I start this now, in two years time we might get somewhere. Because that's another thing, these things move slowly.

Jen Ang: No, absolutely.

Jen Ang: And as you said, there's a systemic

Jen Ang: problem that an organisation like yours is able to identify. But in individual cases, some things might resolve, some people might just lose touch because again they're dealing with day to day crises. But the systemic issue goes sort of unchallenged I suppose, or unnoticed for a long time. Not by you, not by the people it affects, but by governments or other bodies that might be accountable.

Satwat Rehman: I mean I remember speaking to a group of firm, parents because there was CPAG were looking for parents who might consider taking part in things that they were wanting to do as part of judicial reviews. But you have to commit to be around for a long time for that. And the family said they were just not in a position to say, actually yeah, I can be on this journey with you for two years.

Jen Ang: Absolutely.

Jen Ang: This leads us nicely on to the next question.

Jen Ang: You've been generous in your suggestions of what lawyers and the legal system can do.

Jen Ang: So the next question is what is for you the right position for lawyers and the legal system in relation to

Jen Ang: supporting movements for change? And I will just Add this extra provocation, I suppose, which is that when

Jen Ang: we speak about lawyers in the legal

Jen Ang: system, we're not just talking about,

Jen Ang: third sector sort of public interest lawyers. But I always hold in mind that

Jen Ang: people who act for, government or people who defend unequal policies are also lawyers.

Jen Ang: and the legal system encompasses all

Jen Ang: of us as well as the judiciary. so just exploring a bit your thoughts.

Jen Ang: You had many suggestions about places where

Jen Ang: social justice lawyers could support people to understand how to influence the creation of

Jen Ang: law, that there's a real gap around legal aid and there not being enough

Jen Ang: lawyers, which I agree with, to do, some of the work. Some of the work that's clearly there. Is there anything else that on your

Jen Ang: wish list of things that lawyers and the legal system should be thinking about?

Satwat Rehman: I think I've spoken about advocating for policy changes and being part of that process. We've discussed some of the issues with challenging unjust law laws that you often need cases to be able to do so and then it's about how, you know, I don't know. This could be a question you might be able to answer. Jen, for me, what level of wraparound support is provided to people who will take part in saying, actually I'm prepared to be part of the group challenging this unjust law?

Jen Ang: Yeah.

Jen Ang: So I can answer that. Yes, that's such a good question. This is rightly the kind of conversation that lawyers, social justice lawyers who do strategic work do have with each other

Jen Ang: and have with each other all the time. I suppose from my perspective, having done this for a number of years, one thing that I will carefully consider when looking at a strategic case that would have an individual at the centre, so

Jen Ang: not one that's taken by an organisation,

Jen Ang: but one that whether or not you

Jen Ang: ask for anonymity, is going to fundamentally impact someone's life for a long time.

Jen Ang: I would always want to ensure that

Jen Ang: there is support in place, like one to one advocacy or individual support in place for that person.

Jen Ang: Now that often has to come from a partner agency who's effectively allocating resource in order to do this.

Jen Ang: And so actually that's why those kinds

Jen Ang: of cases often are not when individuals

Jen Ang: come to us initially, but arise in partnership with someone else.

Jen Ang: The reason why I would want that is because as much as myself, any

Jen Ang: lawyers working with me and anyone else in the wider team are also focused on providing more than just legal advice, but actually access to support and other

Jen Ang: things that you might need. That's not our specialism.

Jen Ang: And also actually, I think people deserve

Jen Ang: to have an independent advocate with them when accessing legal advice. So it would never be right for all of that to happen from the organisation that gives you the advice.

Jen Ang: And that's because, as you've said, the law is intimidating.

Jen Ang: going to court is absolutely intimidating.

Jen Ang: But the relationship between a lawyer and

Jen Ang: a client can also be intimidating.

Satwat Rehman: Absolutely. there's a power dynamic there as well.

Jen Ang: Yes.

Satwat Rehman: Yeah.

Jen Ang: So I think that for me, I would think about that and want to have that in place before even agreeing that this is the right kind of case to bring.

Jen Ang: Not everyone has that luxury and also

Jen Ang: not everyone works that way.

Jen Ang: And also sometimes, and this is out of respect for the individuals that come to us, sometimes we have had individuals

Jen Ang: come to us with cases who have gotten through to the point where they are by being independent and forthright and self advocating and they're instructing us to

Jen Ang: just take this forward with them as they want it.

Jen Ang: And I will respect that in the case for the right person. But, but also probably in the back of my mind thinking, and it does always come to this point, thinking that at some point you might want someone else with you and, you know, and if so, who would that be and what does that look like?

Satwat Rehman: Absolutely. I think that's a really important point and it's almost like that thing, you know, in terms of how can they be allies. I think those partnership with other advocacy organisations, even service delivery organisations, et cetera, are, critical. Because I agree with you entirely that I think there should be independent advocacy in each of those cases. And not so much for my day job, but from work that I've been involved in in the past. Many, many years ago, in the mists of time, I was, involved in an organisation in London called Newham Monitoring Project and that was a group of activists working around supporting families who'd been subjected to racial harassment, racist violence and also state violence. Right. And state harassment. And none of the staff there were lawyers, they were all community activists and political activists. But what we had as an organisation were incredibly strong partnerships with human rights, you know, civil rights lawyers who would do, you know, do the legal bit, but we would do getting the family to that point, supporting the family throughout, making sure the family understood the implications of what they were taking on, et cetera, and being there afterwards as well for the family. Because even if you win your case, you know, there's an absolute shock that sets in at that point about what does this now mean for me and my family? am I going to be exposed in some way you know, having taken on the Met Police or whatever, where does that leave me? And so you always need to have that base of support in the communities the individuals are from, you know, because lawyers will come and then they will go, unless they're sat in those communities. But the support has to remain within that community because that's where that individual is going back to. That could be a geographic community, a community of interest or whatever. And that's why I think it's critical. I think that's when your monitoring project was so successful, so successful. We were closed down by the state. You know, which is, which is the other danger of these things. Yep. They like you. As long as, you're just challenging enough, we expose them too much and they'll come for you, basically. And I think there again is where, if you can have cross sector partnerships, it gives you a bit of security and strength for the organisations involved as well. But, you know, in terms of thinking about, for single parents, I just think it's that the system itself is overly technical, unaffordable and slow to act. And that's what makes it feel like a foe, you know, it feels like something that's getting in, in the way of you being able to achieve it because of how it's structured and set up. And so for many single parents, it really, access to justice depends on whether they can find legal professionals who genuinely understand the challenges that they face and what would be the benefit and the advantage of seeing something through the court, you know, judicial review, whichever route you take. But having said that, I think an area where we've seen a lot of benefit from the law and from the processes of the law and the challenges to the law has been around employment rights. And just thinking back to something quite topical at, the local authority elections which took place in England recently, where we saw a surge in support for reform and reform taking over councils. And one of the first things that somebody said who'd been elected to one of the councils was, you know, named a whole series of workers who work in roles around equity and rights and said, basically we're coming for you. And I just sort it on a post on social media and a trade union person had written underneath and we'll be waiting.

Jen Ang: Very good. Yes.

Satwat Rehman: Because employment law in this country is stronger than what there is in the state, so you won't be able to go in and do what you've done there, so basically bring it on. And I thought that was really powerful because that's also sending a message to any worker who's reading that that actually they've got our back.

Jen Ang: Absolutely.

Jen Ang: And it is, it's a really nice positive example in, you know, quite uncertain

Jen Ang: times actually for people of places where the law might still be for them.

Satwat Rehman: Absolutely.

Jen Ang: Which is I think also important for people to be able to feel now.

Satwat Rehman: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I felt really happy having read that, thinking, phew, yeah, yeah, you can't just wholesale import the American way of doing things, reform, you know. And it just really made me think that we mustn't forget the important role that things like the trade union movement can play in all this as well.

Jen Ang: Absolutely.

Jen Ang: And maybe in just sort of extrapolating

Jen Ang: a bit from what you've said as well, and maybe in looking after those

Jen Ang: parts of existing British law where accountability and protections could still be sought. So even if they are being questioned or sidelined, maybe just sticking by some of those, testing them and making sure that they are used.

Jen Ang: So once again it took me a while to get this podcast episode to you. And in that time our political environment shifted in significant ways. I asked Satwat if she had anything to add in light of the recent Scottish elections in 2026 and the challenges facing the new Scottish Parliament as MSP settle into their new offices. She said, quote, the recent Scottish Parliament results are sobering, but they're also a call to action. Yes, there has been an increase in right wing representation, but also an increase in progressive representation which gives hope. We know from experience that when the political centre shifts, right, it's the families we work with who pay the price first. The right doesn't have answers for single

Jen Ang: parent families, they have scapegoats.

Jen Ang: Scotland has stronger legal protections than most.

Jen Ang: The Child Poverty Act the Fairer Scotland Duty. And the challenge for the new Parliament is whether MSPs will use those tools with real teeth or let them gather dust. The law isn't a silver bullet, she says, but it's one of the few arenas where we can still hold power to account and we need to be using it it much more strategically and collectively than we have been, end quote. So this moves us towards the final question and it's a big one. I asked Satwat what does justice mean for you and for your community?

Satwat Rehman: I want to start small, then build big.

Jen Ang: Okay.

Satwat Rehman: I think dignity, fairness and equity, you know, if people can actually experience those things in the single parent community, not just in the law, but also the fact that what's in law can drive how society behaves, you'd begin to see the beginnings of justice. Right. Because if you have that, if you have equity and justice as the cornerstones and you build up from there, you should be actively designing poverty out of your systems. You should be actively designing the sort of things I've spoken about in education for families. it would be like the law would recognise that there, is more than one type of family and they're all equally valid, they're all equally important, but actually they require different things. And that should be the cornerstone for me. Over and above that, it would be great if we had accessible, responsive legal systems that protect our rights without making us jump through hoops. That would be great.

Jen Ang: I'd sign up to that. Yes.

Satwat Rehman: A voice in actually shaping policies and understanding what the laws are behind those policies and how you can influence them as they're being designed and not feel excluded from them because of the language and the process would be really important. I mean, I'm thinking about child support and child maintenance would be a classic example of that for single parent families and actually for all families. We've been doing a piece of work on transforming child maintenance. It's no surprise to us, it might be a surprise to policymakers, but you've got a system that doesn't work for the paying parent, it doesn't work for the receiving parent and it certainly doesn't work for the children. So who is that system serving apart from itself? You know, and, at the crux of why it is the way it is is that they need to keep costs down. But actually there's a sort of cost further down the line to families and then to the services that have to support the families. And so actually the law should be an integral part of the overall systems change that needs to take place, in order for these things to happen. but actually, if I were thinking back on some of the things that parents have said, they see justice as being seen, heard and supported.

Jen Ang: That's quite affecting, isn't it? Justice is being seen, heard and supported. I mean, it's amazing to me how simple that sounds and actually how hard it is. Yes, I know. And how right that is. Like if you said that, if you

Jen Ang: said that to anyone in any circumstance sense. Right. And they would say, that's what I want for myself, but actually that's what I want for my child, that's what I want for my parent. And then though the kind of better communication and broader thinking that we need.

Satwat Rehman: Yes.

Jen Ang: For that to be true, given what you've just outlined, which is all the different interconnecting systems with their own individual concerns, is pretty revolutionary, actually.

Jen Ang: It's transformative vision.

Jen Ang: but I love that, actually. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that.

Satwat Rehman: Oh, thank you.

Jen Ang: So I'm going to go to our

Jen Ang: final question, which it's almost one for me, because I always get the best advice here, but it's this.

Jen Ang: So there will be people listening to

Jen Ang: this series of podcasts who are interested in becoming activists or just having passing interest on how activists sort of step into and do what they do. They'll be looking at what you've accomplished today, all the many things, and we only had time to speak about one element of the many different pieces of work that you do. and they'll be thinking about, you know, how they could one day maybe be you. So the question is, what's your advice to a younger version of you or

Jen Ang: someone who might wonder how to get

Jen Ang: to where you are one day?

Satwat Rehman: Don't doubt yourself all the time.

Jen Ang: Oh, good advice.

Satwat Rehman: Yeah, that would be my first thing. And, you know, shake off that imposter syndrome. You've got a right to be there, and as much of a right as anybody else. You know, we've all taken different paths to get to where we are. And I didn't set off on my sort of work journey thinking this is where I want to end up. But I've always. And I think, I suppose this, for me would be the most important advice. Just be true to yourself in what you're doing. Don't be shaken from that, and be happy in what you do. Because we don't struggle for the sake of struggle. We struggle for the sake of everybody having a better life. And that can't just be about work and activism. We have to remember what it is we're fighting for.

Jen Ang: Those are beautiful and wise words.

Jen Ang: And, I mean, I have to say, first of all, knowing you as you are now, I can't imagine you as someone who ever doubted herself because you say one thing.

Satwat Rehman: Yes, there's not a meeting I don't go into without suffering from imposter syndrome. Still real.

Jen Ang: Really?

Jen Ang: That's.

Jen Ang: Oh, that's, a. Well, thank you for sharing that, because that is a. As a humble, but also. Yeah, very surprising thing, as I said, because I think many people admire you for saying what you think and telling it like it is. So at least that doesn't get in the way of you doing that. And maybe, actually, maybe that's the message. So you can feel your feelings, but when you get in there, being able to actually share what needs to be said is super important. And the other thing that I think is going to be resonant for lots of people, but we all need to be reminded is what you said about, life is just not about, you know, work and activism is also, important to know it's not just struggle, but we're here for something. I think many people I know who are really interested in changing the world sometimes find it hard to stop. You know how to slow down and do that.

Satwat Rehman: I was a weekend before last, I went down to London to go to see Massive Attack in concert. And at the start of that, the wonderful actor Khalid Abdalla who's been speaking out on Palestine since the word go, gave a five minute speech which was absolutely amazing. And one of the things he said towards the end was, I know it's hard for you to think about enjoying yourselves and relaxing and dancing because so many of you have been so active on Palestine and continue to be so active on Palestine, but it's important that you do so. It's important that you remember why we struggle and why we campaign.

Jen Ang: And that's a wrap. Thank you once again, our lovely listeners for joining us for another episode of the Lawmanity podcast. If you wanted to learn more about some of the campaigns that Satwat has mentioned, we'll put those in the show notes knows. And for those of you legal beagles out there, we'll also add some links to the CPAG strategic litigation challenges and the political change they inspired. Feeling inspired to take action, get involved locally by supporting anti poverty initiatives and programmes that offer help to families struggling with the cost of living and the care crisis, like food banks, befriending and buddying programmes after school, wrap around activities for kids and of course organising for better food, health and housing conditions. Get involved nationally by joining campaigns that will hold Scottish politicians to account and ensuring they live up to the promise of our groundbreaking legislation like the Child Poverty Act, the Fairer Scotland Duty and so on.

Jen Ang: Our next episode, we will be joined by my colleague and friend, human rights lawyer and legend, Fiona MacPhail. Fiona is a lecturer in Social Justice Law at the University of Glasgow School of Law and former Principal Solicitor of Shelter Housing Legal Service at Shelter Scotland. We'll be speaking to her about her work in 2019 as a leading member of the legal team that challenged the asylum seeker law change evictions driven by private contractor to the Home Office, Serco. If you loved today's episode, please do hit the like and subscribe buttons and share our episodes with friends and colleagues. Who might also enjoy learning a little bit about how the law really works in practise and how it can be used to make the world a better, brighter place. The Lawmanity podcast is co produced by me, your host Jen Ang, and by the brilliant and talented Natalia Uribe. Shout out to Halina

Rifai for mentoring us through our first year of this incredible project. And thanks also to Amanda Amaeshi on graphics and socials. The music you've been listening to is always on the move by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland. Thanks so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed listening and see you next time.