Health Secretary Wes Streeting has criticised Reform MP Sarah Pochin for what he called “racist” language after she complained about adverts being “full of black people, full of Asian people”.

The Runcorn and Helsby MP apologised for her remarks, which were made during a TalkTV phone-in on Saturday, saying they were “phrased poorly” but maintained that many adverts were “unrepresentative of British society”.

Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Streeting claimed Pochin had only said sorry “because she’s been caught and called out”.

BBC News has contacted Reform to ask the party and Pochin for a response.

The Liberal Democrats called on Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to suspend Pochin from the party.

The row erupted after Pochin said she agreed with a caller on TalkTV who complained about the “demographics” of advertising.

Pochin said the viewer was “absolutely right” and “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”.

She said “it doesn’t reflect our society” and “your average white person, average white family” is not “represented anymore”.

Pochin blamed the situation on the “woke liberati” in the “arty-farty world”.

“It might be fine inside the M25, but it’s definitely not representative of the rest of the country,” she said.

In a social media post later on Saturday, Pochin said her comments “were phrased poorly and I unreservedly apologise for any offence caused, which was not my intention”.

She said she was intending to say the advertising industry had gone “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] mad” and were now “unrepresentative of British society as a whole”.

In her statement, Pochin cited a Channel 4 study which found that the proportion of adverts featuring black people jumped after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, from 37% in 2020 to 51% in 2022.

“Representation should reflect the diversity of modern Britain, but it should also be proportionate and inclusive of everyone,” she said.

Streeting rejected her apology, saying she was “only sorry because she was caught and called out and said the quiet bit out loud”.

Asked about Pochin’s comments, Streeting said: “What she said was a disgrace, I think it was racist.

“What we have seen is a return of 1970s and 1980s-style racism I thought we had left in the history books.

“The only way we are going to defeat this racism is to call it out and confront it for what it is.”

He accused Reform of failing to speak for the whole country, saying: “They think our flag only belongs to some of us who look like me, not all of us who built this country and built its success.”

Streeting also condemned Nigel Farage’s lack of public comment about Pochin, accusing him of “deafening silence”.

Pochin was previously criticised by then party chairman Zia Yusuf for suggesting a ban on the burka during a speech in Parliament.

Responding to her comments on Sunday, Yusuf – who is now the party’s head of policy – said Pochin was “right to apologise” but said she was raising “a very valid point we must be able to talk about”.

Speaking on Sky News, he said Pochin was “a lovely person” and her point had been “statistically borne out by a Channel 4 study”.

Asked about her comments, Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said he would not “call her racist” and said “there are legitimate concerns the public have about mass migration that need to be addressed”.

“It’s certainly not language that I would use and I don’t think politicians should speak in those terms,” he added.

The Liberal Democrats have called on Farage to withdraw the whip from Pochin over her comments and called criticised Philp for “refusing to call out blatant racism for what it is”.

Party spokesman Max Wilkinson said: “Nigel Farage keeps insisting that racism has no place in his party.

“Now is his chance to prove it – he must withdraw the whip or concede that Reform tolerates blatant racism.”