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IFG - Matt Hancock, Clare Short and John Denham Interviewed for IfG's Ministers Reflect
In this new IfG Ministers Reflect, Matt Hancock, Clare Short and John Denham give candid interviews about Covid, Johnson, Blair and Brown.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock, former international development secretary Clare Short, and former skills secretary John Denham have all given candid interviews to the Institute for Government for the IfG’s Ministers Reflect series.
The interviews, which include Matt Hancock’s views on Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, Clare Short’s recollections of Tony Blair and the formation of DfID, and John Denham’s accounts of dealing with Gordon Brown and the Treasury, are published today.
They can be found at https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-reflect/
In the interviews:
- Matt Hancock says his Oxford PPE degree was “more useful than I would possibly have imagined” during the Covid crisis
- Matt Hancock blames Dominic Cummings for No10’s ‘chaotic’ Covid response
- Matt Hancock describes (now Cabinet Secretary) Chris Wormald’s pandemic handling as “exemplary”
- Matt Hancock remembers the “out of body” experience of deciding Covid rules
- Clare Short suggests DfID was created because Tony Blair couldn’t face arguing with her
- Clare Short says Blair didn’t show any interest “in anything” to do with international development at Cabinet meetings
- Clare Short recalls how much Alastair Campbell disliked her
- John Denham describes the Treasury as being “very damaging” to other departments
- John Denham blames Treasury miscalculations for forcing budget cuts on his department
Highlights include:
Matt Hancock, health secretary 2018-2021, on why studying PPE at Oxford helped him respond to a global pandemic: “I have found my political philosophy training from the PPE degree at Oxford more useful than I would have possibly imagined at the time. Because when you’re facing a novel situation [like the pandemic], you need something to fall back on.”
Matt Hancock on Dominic Cummings: “It was chaotic specifically because of the attitude of Dominic Cummings, because his view was that he did not have to represent the view of his boss, and in those senior No.10 aide jobs that is unconstitutional and obviously wrong”
Matt Hancock on Chris Wormald: “Chris [Wormald] is one of the finest public servants of our generation … He’s got experience both of the court mandarin aspect of the job, which – whether you like it or not – is an important part of the job. … he has deep experience of the operational running of major budgets and major departments, especially in Health and Education. … His performance during the Covid pandemic was exemplary.”
Matt Hancock on issuing Covid rules: “I remember the out of body experience I had sitting in the cabinet room – I remember exactly which seat I was sitting in – when Chris Whitty and I had decided going into the meeting that we had to tell Boris that we had to stop all unnecessary social contact and ask everybody to do that. And I remember sitting there saying, “prime minister, we are going to have to tell everybody to stop all unnecessary social contact”. And that felt deeply strange and completely unprecedented. I almost had a physical reaction to saying it.”
Clare Short, international development secretary 1997-2003, on Tony Blair and the creation of DfID: “And my own conclusion is that Blair thought ‘I don’t want yet another row with Clare right at the beginning of the government.’ And that’s my own theory on why DfID squeezed through and managed to be born.”
Clare Short on Blair’s Cabinet meetings: “He’d never shown any interest in anything, apart from when they were embarrassed that the cabinet meetings were so short … he’d say, ‘oh, is there something you could report on?’”
Clare Short on Alastair Campbell: “Alastair Campbell didn’t like me at all – partly because I decided whether I was going to speak to the media or not without asking his permission”
John Denham, skills secretary 2007-2009, on the Treasury: “I learnt very early on that the Treasury was a law unto itself and would do things that were damaging to other government departments without any consultation”
John Denham on Gordon Brown’s decision to increase the university maintenance grant: “The Treasury had done the calculations without using the economic modelling that existed within my department. So the financial implications of this announcement was several hundred million pounds more than the Treasury had given us money for, and I then ended up having to make cuts in the department to pay for the overspend on this.”
