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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now is the BBC's Nuala McGovern, who you hear many days hosting the BBC NewsHour program that precedes this show from 9:00 to 10:00 AM. She hosted from the WNYC studios today as part of a BBC reporting trip to New York and will be a guest in the green space for an event tomorrow night at 7:00 in conversation with WNYC's Arun Venugopal. As some of you know, Nuala was the lead producer of this show from 2001 to 2009 before going to London to become a global BBC anchor eventually there. Nuala, I often say to returning guests, welcome back to WNYC, but in your case, welcome home.

Nuala McGovern: Well, it is good to be home, Brian. It has been a homecoming. I have been just really blown away I have to say being back here at WNYC, bumping into old colleagues who are of course also friends. In some ways, it feels like no time has passed at all. Then you take a minute and you realize, I've actually been in London for 15 years.

Brian Lehrer: Fifteen years, what a time warp. It must feel a little weird, a little ghostly almost as you walk the halls that you used to walk every day.

Nuala McGovern: Yes. Parts of it, there's muscle memory. I'll give you an example. Outside WNYC studios, we have the subway, the number 1, and I said to somebody, oh, we took the 19 and they were like, "There's no 9 anymore." I guess there's little things like muscle memory, but that isn't completely on point. It's been wonderful actually. I have been here over the past week that has had the most glorious, glorious New York spring weather.

Everything has looked bright and shiny and new as I've made my way through. Just even going up cherry blossoms that are exploding or the tulips that I feel have been planted all over the city. I got a very good welcome both from New York City infrastructure and the people who live here.

Brian Lehrer: First of all, how many of our listeners never heard of the number 9 train, which doesn't exist anymore, and were you just dissing gray and rainy London where you now live in comparison to New York in the springtime?

Nuala McGovern: There are lots of things to love about London, but I tell you, the weather mightn't be one of them. It can be something. There's this moment and I've actually had it all week in the hotel room that I pulled back the curtains and a blue sky has greeted me every day. You don't always get that in London, I'm going to tell you.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we'll talk more about your professional journey in a little bit and reminisce a little more in a little bit and maybe get some advice from you for people who might want to follow in your footsteps, but let's talk content first.

Nuala McGovern: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us more about why the BBC wanted you to report and do your broadcast from New York right at this time.

Nuala McGovern: Yes. Well, at this moment, as of course, your listeners will be so aware, so many migrants have come to New York City, I suppose, looking at whose figures you look at but between 170,000, 190,000 people that have arrived over the past two years. For us, we cover particularly on NewsHour, a lot of the global displacement that takes place. Whether it is maybe the conflict in Haiti at the moment or maybe it's Venezuela going through a crisis and these earlier number of years ago it would've been Syria or Afghanistan.

What we've realized is a lot of those conflicts take place. Where do those people end up, those human stories? It's here in New York City. I found just really even taking that subway and going to Midtown or going to some of the communities that might have a specific nationality perhaps attached to them like Little Haiti, I went there in particular. You hear these stories of why people made it here. I suppose in one way, if not the destination, it is definitely a very important milestone when they make it here.

I think you can't understand that story of global immigration completely until you see the path that those people have taken. Over 200 nationalities in New York City, the only thing we didn't expect, Brian, though I came to talk about immigration and the congestion charge, I should say as well. I know your listeners don't have any opinions on that.

Brian Lehrer: No, not in congestion pricing at all.

Nuala McGovern: Then when we came here, of course, the Columbia protests were also developing. Part of our coverage and our reporting has also been on that. You can't be in New York for too long without something happening that has a global impact.

Brian Lehrer: Well, is something similar to the encampments on college campuses happening in the UK?

Nuala McGovern: No, not at that level. I think that's as specific as those encampments. However, there have been many, many protests, particularly in London. The same conversations are taking place. I don't think there's anything that has had the same level of scrutiny perhaps that I've seen at Columbia. Now I suppose also going to the University of Texas in Austin or we could look at California. It has been a lot of conversations really that line about when is it free speech, when is it discriminatory and those conversations are similar.

London is similar as well in the demographics that there is a large Jewish population, there is a large Arab and Muslim population, and then there are many people that of course may affiliate themselves with one cause or another, or one point of view or another. There have been a lot in London who felt that they couldn't wear their symbols of Jewish identity openly and that really was from I would say October 7th, Brian really, it came pretty soon after that.

Brian Lehrer: From then on.

Nuala McGovern: Yes. We're more than six months in.

Brian Lehrer: Getting back to migration, how would you compare London to New York in terms of the pace of migrant arrivals in the last few years because I'm guessing that that's probably what inspired the BBC leadership to deploy you here at this time. It's become such an issue in New York over the number of migrants arriving from south of the border and winding up here in the last two years. How would you compare London to New York in that respect in the last couple of years?

Nuala McGovern: The numbers are much smaller of course. We're talking about a much smaller country, but it is the number one topic that people are talking about. What there is specifically, you talk about the southern border there. I think when it comes to the UK and of course the World Service, we will talk about things globally, but if you talk about the UK specifically, what a lot of the focus has been on perhaps comparable to your southern border would be the channel. That is the body of water that is between France and the UK.

There are small boat crossings. That's how it's known. These are people that have made their way to the north of France that then board these dinghies or small boats that maybe aren't even seaworthy and try and make that passage across because it can be a short trip, but a dangerous trip as well. They hod for the Office for National Statistics. They suggest then the year ending June 2023, 1.2 million people migrated to the UK and 500,000 immigrated from it, so a net migration figure of 672,000.

Now that is, how would I phrase it? Politically, very difficult for the party that's in power that are the conservatives also known as the Tories. It has become the issue that people are talking about and how to get it under control. That would be words that would be used.

Brian Lehrer: Very similar to here.

Nuala McGovern: Oh, very similar.

Brian Lehrer: In an election year in the UK as well, I see with Parliament, including Prime Minister at stake like in the US with Congress plus the Presidential. People are debating migration and the pros and cons of migration and the pros and cons of the extent of migration you were just laying out.

Nuala McGovern: Like New York, London depends on immigrants for a lot of services to be sustainable. Particularly they have the NHS, the National Health Service, a lot of the jobs that might be done in the service industry, those things are comparable. What has come up, and I don't know whether your listeners are aware of this or not, but this is really the story. Even just saw some news over the past few minutes about this particular story from the UK and that is Rwanda. You might wonder why I am bringing up that small African country that is landlocked.

The solution was for the conservatives. Rishi Sunak is the conservative prime minister who is under pressure, let's say right now with low approval ratings, was that what they would do is deport migrants from the UK to Rwanda, and they could then apply for asylum there and be processed there and stay there.

Now, this as you can imagine, gave rise to so many legal challenges, and some of them continue, but it was made law on April 22nd that they would be able to do this. With the laws that they passed, it basically whacked off some of the challenges that they could have had from refugee laws, for example, international refugee laws, and to be able to give it a more straightforward path. However, people who may be deported in this way, they can still mount a legal challenge, so will it happen?

Rishi Sunak is saying it's going to happen in 12 weeks, that the first plane will take off. You mentioned the election. We actually don't know when that is. We don't have that date that you guys do of that Tuesday in November. Even if one plane took off, I think they could see the policy is enacted. It's happening, and that would be a political win.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and probably a political bombshell. I'm sitting here having difficulty believing my ears, and I'm sure a lot of listeners are too. You did say, just let me know if I even heard you correctly, because I can't even believe my own ears when I hear it, except that I heard it from the credible Nuala McGovern of the BBC. Any migrant who arrives illegally, however, that's defined over there, seeking asylum, will be deported to Rwanda no matter what country they came from.

Nuala McGovern: Could be sent, is probably one of the words.

Brian Lehrer: Could be.

Nuala McGovern: Could be sent. Also, let's think about the logistics of actually making this happen. They do actually have an airline that will do it because they thought there might be resistance that commercial airliner mightn't want to be associated with it in some way, but they also are talking about having thousands already of people earmarked for deportation that would fit what they are planning to do. There are 52,000 people, are the numbers that the government has given, that would be or could be considered for deportation to Rwanda. The first flight was already scheduled for June 2022, but then it was canceled with the legal challenges.

Brian Lehrer: I come from Lebanon or Bangladesh or Honduras, and they can ship me off to Rwanda. Well, besides the human rights questions, why would Rwanda agree to that?

Nuala McGovern: Well, so far they've received £300 million, and that could be up to $500 million. What would that be? $650 billion-

Brian Lehrer: Dollars.

Nuala McGovern: -perhaps. I have spoken to Rwandan government officials and on the two points, one on the human rights stash, there's been the UN, Human Rights Watch, so many groups that have said there are human rights violations in Rwanda and that's why people should not be sent there. That they didn't feel that Rwanda-- and this is the term that really matters. A safe country. Right? A safe country. They have with that law that I mentioned, that the British government passed that was deeming it a safe country and so fast-tracking that process to be able to send people.

Rwanda, like so many leaders of countries around the world, they want to be seen as a global player. They want to be making a difference. They want to be on the world stage. This is as you'll know in the United States and with New York, it's an issue that has thwarted so many governments and brought down politicians and brought up some as well. That would be, as Paul Kagame, he's been around a long time and he says that they want to help. That is the way that he puts it. The other part of this is that you do have people fleeing Rwanda looking for asylum in the UK.

Brian Lehrer: That is really ironic and they'll send them back there. It does turn the question that we keep debating in New York on its head in a certain way because Mayor Adams and maybe rightly so keeps asking the state government and the federal government for a lot more aid to help settle. They say 175,000, approaching 200,000 new migrants who've come from below the southern border in the last two years, but it sounds like there's a dollar figure or a pounds figure that the UK has set that Rwanda takes as, okay, we're going to come out plus economically by taking in X number of asylum seekers.

Nuala McGovern: Well, also, there's another figure I should mention, which is £20,000, that will be given to somebody who decides to go.

Brian Lehrer: An individual gets £20,000 if you leave our country.

Nuala McGovern: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: I have to digest that one.

Nuala McGovern: Yes, and I think there might--

Brian Lehrer: It's not a lot of money. It's not a year's rent.

Nuala McGovern: It depends where you live in.

Brian Lehrer: Not in this city, maybe in Rwanda.

Nuala McGovern: Yes. There has been questions about the conditions in Rwanda, the housing. Here's the thing, the other part of it is it is an election year. We thought we might have an election in the spring in the UK for the general election. That hasn't happened. It could happen a little later. It could happen in September, October. I think it has to happen by January 2025. There is a specific date, but it would be expected to happen before that. If Labour gets in, which is the other party, an opposition at the moment-

Brian Lehrer: Like our Democratic party.

Nuala McGovern: -they'll probably scrap it.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. All right, listeners, anything you might have always wanted to ask BBC NewsHour anchor and former Brian Lehrer Show executive producer Nuala McGovern or anything based on her reporting trip to New York this week. We're going to get into that other issue that has brought down politicians and maybe brought up some others, so I'm not sure, and that's congestion pricing. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, call or text. Here's a text Nuala that came in that said, "I'm glad she's back. Her Brooklyn accent makes her fit right in." Then they wrote, "Haha."

Nuala McGovern: [laughs] I'm going to have to work on it. I'm not going back to London yet. Mind you, I think this is surprising. I'd like to know what your listeners think about this, and I know I've got an Irish accent that they will hear, but when I lived in the States, I did get a bit of an American twang. So much so when I went back to the BBC and was becoming a presenter, they'd often maybe comment on the way I said certain words, but I kept them. However, 15 years of living in London and not a sign of an English accent, married to an English man.

Brian Lehrer: I would say--

Nuala McGovern: How so?

Brian Lehrer: There's another text just affirming what you just said, that somebody writes completely earnestly, like, "Oh, she sounds like she's from Ireland."

Nuala McGovern: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Duh. Yes, 212-433 WNYC. I'm seeing, by the way, that I may have heard you wrong on the £20,000, it's that Rwanda gets £20,000 per migrant. It's not that the individuals get it in their pocket. I apologize if I heard that wrong.

Nuala McGovern: No, I should double-check that one actually.

Brian Lehrer: You are not sure?

Nuala McGovern: Yes. I did believe there could also be for people that are leaving, but I'll double-check that one and we'll get back to people.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, and the individuals get a small stipend. Okay. There's some version of funding the individuals.

Nuala McGovern: Each--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, go ahead.

Nuala McGovern: I know we had about the individual getting 20K and on top of that, the UK government will pay up to 150K for each person sent there.

Brian Lehrer: How about that? Another thing that ties London and New York together right now is congestion pricing. New York is about to have it unless a lawsuit succeeds in stopping it. Listeners, if you don't know, London has had congestion pricing for a long time. They hit the 20th anniversary last year I see. What would you say Nuala, that the level of conflict is around congestion pricing at this point, as opposed to any consensus that it's been a good thing for the city and the climate?

Nuala McGovern: Listen, congestion pricing, so 20 years ago, Brian, now it's all about the ULEZ, the ultra-low emission zone. Let me talk our listeners through this.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, what does that mean? Ultra-low emission zone.

Nuala McGovern: The congestion charge has been in place for 20 years now in London. It's £15 a day. Let's say the best par at $20. It started at £5 a day if anybody cares. You were talking about the nickel earlier, how things change over time but now it's accepted. There is no moves to get rid of it or overturn it or anything like that, but then what was brought in more recently is the ultra-low emission zone. The ULEZ zones, which are also in the center of the city, and that is £12.50 a day. Let's say about $15 on top of the congestion charge.

That is if you drive a vehicle, and it depends whether it's diesel or petrol, but let's say a car that could be 15 to 20 years old, if it doesn't have the correct emissions, then you could be charged the extra £12.50 a day. There are so many questions about it. Some feel that the traffic measures that have been brought in to reduce gridlock or congestion have ended up shunting the traffic to more major arteries, perhaps causing more pollution in those particular areas.

It was actually a lawsuit by a mother whose daughter died of asthma brought against the city at one point, and some, which I think I've heard the same arguments here as well, have talked about poorer neighborhoods, sometimes having to foot the environmental or financial burden at times for these changes. They have introduced, as I've seen here as well, a lot more bike lanes. They have another thing called LTNs, low-traffic zones, which tries to take the traffic out of residential neighborhoods.

Big pushback against that at the moment. People feeling, which I've heard the same on the congestion charge here, people feeling that they're not able to get around in the way that they want to, that they have things that they feel should be exempt. Maybe somebody elderly, maybe somebody who's an essential worker, maybe somebody with a child. Definitely, there's a lot in common.

Brian Lehrer: Charles in Manhattan has a congestion pricing call. Charles, you're on WNYC with Nuala McGovern from BCC. Hi, Charles.

Charles: I love your voice by the way. What I wanted to say is--

Brian Lehrer: I'm sure he's not talking to me.

Nuala McGovern: He could be.

Charles: Yes. You nailed that. Gorgeous creature there. What I wanted to say is that I think that when they did this in New York City and did a survey, they didn't take in the new bikes that we have out are electric. I think when Governor Cuomo was the governor, he made them legal. What has happened is they have taken over the bike lanes and the bicycles and they go faster. I think they should be licensed just like the scooters. If there's an accident, they can explode. Then in the morning in Central Park, they go through a highway getting to their jobs. I think you should have-- I'm sorry.

Brian Lehrer: No, go ahead.

Charles: Can you hear me?

Nuala McGovern: We hear you.

Brian Lehrer: Finish your thought.

Charles: Yes, I think they should have taken that into consideration because the streets, as we know it, has changed with those bicycles. Before, guys were fast on just regular bicycles [unintelligible 00:22:44].

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me jump in here, Charles, and get you a response. Nuala, you may know that here there is a lot of discussion about regular bikes versus e-bikes, the place of e-bikes and mopeds and scooters on the city streets and in the bike lanes. Do you have that same debate in London?

Nuala McGovern: Absolutely. Every vehicle has an issue against another vehicle, if that makes sense. I think probably the scooters, the electric scooters, they're allowed in certain neighborhoods, but not in others. I think they were trialing them to see how it worked. It didn't work out so well. For a lot of them, there's a lot that are modified as well privately that also goes against the rules, but there hasn't--

Brian Lehrer: Like for food delivery, there are places where you can't use an electric moped, scooter, e-bike, call it what you will?

Nuala McGovern: Well, the scooters are fine, but I suppose the scooters which are like mopeds are fine, but you know the two-wheeled scooters? That's really where the debate is-

Brian Lehrer: I see they're different cons. Yes.

Nuala McGovern: -in London. Exactly. I think there's a lot of younger people that are using them. There's a lot of pushback against it. The same arguments are about, they have mopeds or scooters in London and you can drive one if you have an L plate, like a learner plate. There's a lot of people that feel that they're not perhaps as proficient as they should be in driving those motor motorcycles or those scooters as they would like them to be. Then there is the usual pushup against whether it's pedestrians or indeed motorists and the road rage continues.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting some very important texts. One listener writes, ask your guest to pronounce methane and ask Brian to pronounce methane. You just heard me pronounce it, Nuala.

Nuala McGovern: I could say methane.

Brian Lehrer: Ah, is that it? Another one says, how come in America, we go to the hospital in Britain, we go to hospital?

Nuala McGovern: Yes, we go to hospital. I go to the hospital.

Brian Lehrer: Is it true?

Nuala McGovern: Yes. Even protest. Protest against. These things come up again and again and I've been between the two and now I never know which one is, shall we say, the received pronunciation in the UK.

Brian Lehrer: Michael in East Harlem. You're on WNYC. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Hi, Brian. Hi, Nuala. How are you getting on there? Fellow Irish expat here. I wanted to ask you what you found the biggest difference between London and New York is with the public transport. I know the tube in London is the big one. How do you find that compared to the subway here?

Nuala McGovern: Well, one thing I love of the subway, you're down there really quickly. You don't go down into the lower depths of hell to actually get the tube. You have to go really deep down into the tube to get it but it does come very quickly I will say that. You travel longer distances, I think, often in London. I used to find it very fast getting around Manhattan, Brooklyn, et cetera. I think the journeys are often quite a bit longer.

A lot of people live outside of that central area. Perhaps we're a little bit more contained or dense here. Having said that, yes, you wouldn't wait too long for a train and I don't know, I'm trying to think between the subway and the tube. There's a lot of similarities. It's always crowded in rush hour, et cetera. You do have air conditioning here and we don't have that in London.

Brian Lehrer: You don't have air conditioning?

Nuala McGovern: No. We've got very hot summers now as well.

Brian Lehrer: Did they even claim to plan to use the congestion pricing fee, the money that had generated, for improving mass transit? Because that's what they're promising here.

Nuala McGovern: Yes. I looked it up actually. It's 80%, they say go into improvements of every day transportation. Then 20% I think more visionary. The other thing about the tube, it's over a 100 years old. I think it was the first subway system that was created.

Brian Lehrer: So is ours.

Nuala McGovern: It's pretty creaky. We should have a look at exactly the years it was created. I do feel that the tube was created for much smaller people. It's tiny. My husband is quite tall and there's only certain parts of the carriage that he could actually stand in upright.

Brian Lehrer: Oh wow.

Nuala McGovern: It's a little bit pokey and then to change anything I think takes huge changes. A, because its down so deep as I mentioned, but also because it's all in such small tunnels under this very ancient city.

Brian Lehrer: We just looked up. Your successor as my lead producer, Mary Cro just looked up London Transport Museum website dating of the origin of the London Tube, 1863. That makes it older than New York's for sure. All right. We're running over because it's so much fun and we have 15 years to catch up on, listeners, with Nuala McGovern, formerly, The Brian Lehrer Show Executive Producer. Now Anchor, what do you call it? Anchor, host, presenter, some obscure--

Nuala McGovern: I'm there behind a mic I tell you.

Brian Lehrer: The BBC-

Nuala McGovern: Golf on a Stick

Brian Lehrer: -including in the hour before this show. Many days. I think our bookends on your 2001 to 2009 lead producer tenure is that we were together on 9/11. You saw the towers explode out your office window. I will never forget that moment. Your office was across the hall from mine and I heard an explosion and I thought, "Oh, what was that? A sonic boom?" You shouted, "Brian, the Trade Center."

Then at the end of your time, the election of Barack Obama, we were doing special coverage on election night. Do you remember this, Nuala, and the callers were the most euphoric, I think, I have ever heard them. Speaking as a group, obviously, not everybody voted for Obama, but those who did, who were calling in were just over the moon. I'm just curious if there are any particular memories, just one or two that stay with you 15 years after leaving the show for the UK.

Nuala McGovern: Do you mean from that night or?

Brian Lehrer: No. From any of the whole period.

Nuala McGovern: Oh, gosh. I've so many. You know what, actually? Being back up, I was up on Columbia campus this week with the protests that were taking place, but actually, I have such fond memories-

Brian Lehrer: I know [crosstalk].

Nuala McGovern: -of being up there. We broadcast from their radio station after 9/11, of course, a horrific event that took place, but there was real community from our listeners. It was cathartic in a way every day for months, really years but those months directly after the event. We would talk out everything that New Yorkers were thinking about or the developments that were taking place.

We did so much from Columbia. I was going by, just I've mentioned the cherry blossom trees. I was going by some of the trees and this little lawn we used to sit out, Brian and myself and our producers and have lunch and talk things through. That was a very special time, I think, because we were able to, I suppose support each other and get ourselves through that time together after something just unimaginable that had happened.

Brian Lehrer: We'll be forever grateful to the people at WKCR, the Columbia Radio Station for letting us use one of their studios in those weeks after 9/11. You're going to be doing a Greene Space event tomorrow?

Nuala McGovern: I sure am.

Brian Lehrer: 7:00 PM in conversation with Arun Venugopal, what can people expect?

Nuala McGovern: We're going to talk a little further about how BBC's News Hour covers immigration. We have a lot of case studies really. It's just been one of the years because of upheavals right around the globe. Whether we're talking about Gaza or Ukraine and many more places. We want to talk about how that happens, how we cover it, how we report it. That will be a big part of it. Also, what we've seen this week. As I was mentioning we came to do immigration and migration, but then up to Columbia protest, then running down to Foley Square for the Donald Trump trial, and then-

Brian Lehrer: Oh, boy.

Nuala McGovern: -back up to [unintelligible 00:31:35] then Harvey Weinstein. I was like, "Gosh, a New York minute. Never a truer word said." We will be talking about what we have found this week. Just some of the sites and sounds, how things have changed and I suppose some of those issues that New York and other cities continue to grapple with as well.

Brian Lehrer: Nuala McGovern, you're top of the top-

Nuala McGovern: Oh.

Brian Lehrer: -as a producer, and now you're top of the top as a host and anchor. You're amazing. I'm proud and grateful that you helped this show become what it was. Thank you, and continued success.

Nuala McGovern: I have to say, people say, "Did you go to journalism school?" I always go, "No, but I was Brian Lehrer's producer, so that's like a PhD in journalism that I got every day." I sometimes find myself following some of the ways that you used to approach stories and approach people and keeping it human-centered. Thank you for the education.

Brian Lehrer: That is too kind. Nuala, we'll be in touch. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Little information before we go to our next segment, about the Greene Space event tomorrow night. It is once again at seven o'clock, Nuala McGovern in conversation with WNYC's Arun Venugopal. We have a pay what you choose tickets policy that starts at $5. There you go. Come see Nuala and Arun at the Greene Space if you're interested tomorrow night at 7:00.

 

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