Streeting: Reform MP Pochin’s ad remarks ‘racist’

If you caught TalkTV’s phone‑in on Saturday 25 October, you heard Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin say adverts “full of black people, full of Asian people” “drive me mad”. By that evening she had apologised for the wording, saying she meant the industry had gone “DEI mad”, yet she repeated that many adverts are “unrepresentative of British society”.

On Sunday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting called the remarks “a disgrace” and “racist”, and criticised what he described as Reform’s “deafening silence”, urging people to confront racism when they see it. He made the comments on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Justice Secretary David Lammy went further, calling the remarks “mean, nasty and racist” and urging Reform leader Nigel Farage to remove Pochin. The Liberal Democrats pressed for disciplinary action. Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp declined to call the comments racist in a BBC interview, saying only that it was not language he would use.

Here’s the data point many people are sharing: Channel 4’s Mirror on the Industry study found that 51% of audited TV adverts in 2022 featured at least one Black person, up from 37% in 2020 after the Black Lives Matter moment. The same audit shows South Asian people appeared in 17% of adverts and East Asian people in 11%. The research also notes that disabled people were present in just 4% of ads and over‑70s in only 2%.

Media literacy tip: “51% of adverts” does not mean “half of all people on screen are Black”. It means at least one Black character appeared in just over half of the ads reviewed. The study codes presence per advert across set sample periods, rather than the proportion of faces or seconds on screen.

How does that sit with the census? In England and Wales, 4.0% of people identify as Black and 9.3% as Asian, according to the Office for National Statistics. Overall, 81.7% identify within the broad White category. Around one in ten households include people of two or more ethnicities.

So the picture is complex. Representation has increased for some groups, while older people, disabled people and pregnant women remain far less visible onscreen. Industry trackers point to disabled people in just 4% of ads and over‑70s in around 2%, alongside static or falling visibility for some LGBTQIA+ communities.

Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf said Pochin was right to apologise and argued she had raised a valid point about representation, citing the Channel 4 figures and saying people must be able to discuss them.

This controversy follows earlier rows. In June, Reform’s then chair Zia Yusuf resigned after labelling it “dumb” that the newly elected Pochin asked the prime minister to ban the burqa at PMQs, a position the party said was not its policy; he later returned in a different role. The episode exposed internal tensions about judgement and message discipline.

If you’re teaching or studying this, try a quick exercise. Watch one ad break, jot down who you see, then compare your notes with local census figures. This helps you test big claims against a small dataset and ask better questions about how advertising is made and who it speaks to.

For advertisers, the takeaway is simple: progress on race should be matched by progress where Britain is still invisible on screen, especially disability and age, and by telling stories that feel truthful rather than box‑ticking. Channel 4’s researchers and trade press have been clear that audiences reward authenticity.

And politically, there are two moving parts to watch. Will Nigel Farage discipline his MP, as opponents demand, and will the industry respond to the research by widening who gets seen without turning inclusion into a zero‑sum argument? We will keep tracking both.