The housing crisis and women with Vicky Spratt, Rising Covid rates, Christian Peake on Maeve Gilmore

Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled his "benefits to bricks" plan to tackle the UK housing crisis - the chronic shortage of homes to rent and buy and climbing property prices. According to the charity Shelter at present across the UK there are currently 17.5 million adults without safe, secure or stable homes. If you include children in this number – it is 1 in 3. A new book Tenants is about people on the frontline of Britain's housing emergency – and describes particularly how a shortage of homes is affecting women. The author is journalist Vicky Spratt, housing correspondent for the I newspaper, and she joins Emma in the studio. Covid rates appear to be rising again and some experts are predicting a new wave of the virus over the summer. In the week to 2nd June, 1 in 65 people in the UK were testing positive – up from 1 in 70 the previous week. But do we actually need to worry about it – and if so, what should we be should we be doing to protect ourselves? Emma will be getting the thoughts of Professor Devi Sridhar, who’s chair of global public health at Edinburgh University, and sits on the Scottish Government Covid-19 Advisory Group. Listener Christian Peake was given a huge stack of canvasses painted by her grandmother the artist Maeve Gilmore who had died when Christian was 11 and whose artistic work had been over-shadowed by her more famous husband Mervyn Peake. A busy teacher and mother, Christian didn't really know what to do with them. As time went on though she became increasingly determined to get Maeve’s work the recognition she feels it deserves. She has created an online gallery at maeve_gilmore_archive on Instagram and her grandmother's first exhibition is currently on at Studio Voltaire in Clapham, London. A new report by healthcare charity Doctors of the World reveals that some migrant women have been charged up to £14,000 for NHS maternity services in England. The survey of 257 migrant women - including undocumented, refugee and asylum seeking women - shows that over a third