Helen Whately MP

0:06Well behaved women rarely make history. Bloody difficult women do.

0:19I've been wanting to talk to Helen Whately, who was a social care minister during the pandemic for a while. She's also been vice chairman of the Tory party now. She's obviously in opposition and she basically says that Labour's turning this country into a welfare state with an economy attached. Listen out for her time. Sorry. I thought the best bit of this podcast was when she talked about the pandemic. I know we don't really want to remind ourselves of that time. But as she was saying, it's really not that long ago. Welcome to Difficult Women.

0:58Helen Waitley is a prominent Tory frontbencher and now in the opposition shadow cabinet where she tries to hold the government to account for allowing this country and I'm quoting her leader, Mrs Badenock, also a former difficult woman, to turn into a welfare state with an economy attached. She's been an MP for 10 years in Fabersham and Midkent and combines tending the Garden of England and her shadow responsibilities with husband and children. And yes, I can see, I think, the word juggling there in biro on your notes. On my three smart notes. So we might get to that. You entered Parliament in 2015.

1:38You're a very familiar face. I mean, I'm sure you get recognised around Westminster a lot and about. I did note that it was an all-woman shortlist in AWS under which you entered Parliament. you've also spoken about your admiration for equality of opportunity in the party do you think those two things are aligned or women short lists and equality of opportunity what about the men who didn't have the opportunity to serve well they could have they put their cvs forward they just didn't get that far in the process oh i see so it was it was just a consequence of the the process that gets as far as who gets into the final was that men didn't make it that far so it wasn't an all-women shortlist we didn't do all-women shortlist so okay so wiki is wrong yes you did not enter the parliament unlike let's say jackie smith former home secretary under an aws i mean it just so happened that the four people in the final happens to be women.

2:41Thank God I asked. But that was by merit rather than any other route. That's exactly what Mrs Thatcher would approve of. Because do you remember she didn't ever want to have a women shortlist because she said, I would hate anyone to think I didn't get there under my own steam. Exactly. You don't want to be there just because you're a woman. I'm so glad we cleared that up. I really am. I really am. You did a piece for, I think it was Conservative Home saying, I'm proud to be the 436th woman to become an MP and the Conservative Party's then vice chair for women. Obviously, you're in opposition now.

3:19There have now been, chat to GBT tells me, 693 women MPs. We can count the number of women MPs there have been. Do you know there is no equivalent number for the male MPs? Because we can count the women MPs since 1918, nancy astor but we don't know how many male mps jing that tells us something still well the fact is you know women have been making progress but there's still a long history of men being in positions of power and women being the exception in this country like in many countries around the world um and so i mean one of the things i did as chair vice chair for women within the party and work i've done in general is supporting women to put themselves forwards So, as I said a moment ago, I don't believe in the all-women shortlist approach, but I do think that women face extra challenges standing for Parliament, may have different worries, go about it a different way, sometimes need a different sort of help, won't necessarily come and ask for help.

4:23So I've really enjoyed helping other women come on the journey that I went on, and I got support from people, including most obviously Baroness Jenkin, who's been an amazing support to loads of Conservative women. Did you come in via Women to Win? so Women to Win was an organisation that helped me during that time and you know helped me do a bit of practicing on this kind of Q &A that you'll get for a final to go through and Women to Win would help you get in contact or one of the things that Anne would be brilliant at is if you tried to go for a constituency and then you didn't make it through should be someone who'd give you a call and say don't worry your one is coming pick yourself up get on with it and that was you know massively helpful because you can make a huge effort to these things and then you get turned down you've got to be resilient and keep going.

5:04I think that happened to you in 2010 in Kingston? So I stood I was selected to stand for Kingston-Serverton in 2007 and then the election was in 2010. When I was selected we thought it might be a much sooner election that because Gordon Brown was expected to do an early election and then he didn't he went to 2010. So I had three years standing there as a candidate which I learned a lot also quite a tough time juggling on the subject juggling work having having my first child and uh being a parliamentary candidate remind us what happened in that election who what who actually won the seat how close did you get so i was standing against ed davie um who is now lib dem leader i who is now lib dem leader um who was already quite a sort of uh sort of experienced mp at the time i made a quite a dent in his majority but not enough to unseat him and so we ended up with the coalition government so david cameron became prime minister then but I then didn't get to become an MP for another five years.

6:05And of course Cameron got his majority in 2015 you were you entered Parliament and how did your life change? Oh I mean it's one of those amazing completely binary moments where one day you're standing for election but like other than the time you've taken off and the run-up to the election you're kind of doing a job and that's the thing that you've been doing for many years. And then suddenly, that job is literally phoning my employer and saying, I'm now an MP, I'm not coming into the office tomorrow. That's quite a moment. And yet everything changes. And I remember walking into Parliament and it's an amazing building to work in.

6:46It has many flaws and many problems and all the mice running around and the leaks and all of that. But it is such a historic building and walking in and it's something that you've worked towards for many years to get there, on my part, at least 10 years. And I'm like, you're here, you're in this extraordinary place where so much history has been made. That's quite a moment. And you were, how old exactly, remind us? Oh, goodness, now I'm going to have to do it how old I was. No, you don't actually, you should never ask a woman her age. Shall we just leave it? Were you in your 30s? Yes, I was. Okay, let's just leave it at 30s.

7:17You look incredible, you look like a teenager, so I just felt like you must have been a child's bride. I think I was 38, probably. but you know I like to keep it easy. You'd had a quite a traditional career out of Oxford where you met Mark as your husband PwC, Management Consultancy, McKinsey that sort of thing. Yeah I did various things it all came from the fact that as a teenager I decided I wanted to fix the NHS my mum and dad were doctors I nearly followed in their footsteps in medicine I did various bits of work experience and I thought hold on the system doesn't work I want to fix it as you do when you're 16, 18 whenever I decided on this.

7:56I did go to Oxford. But then I thought I should go and work in the private sector. So I nearly went into, I thought about the civil service, I thought about the NHS management training scheme. But I thought, no, I should go into the private sector and see how the private sector works before I go and work in the public sector. So that's why I went to PwC and did a graduate management consultancy scheme there, which gave me a chance to work in lots of different businesses. And then it was like dot-com boom. So I went to AOL Time Warner and did deals for them around a business within AOL. And I ended up selling computer games online and launching the UK's first ever video streaming service with Love Film.

8:35This was like the early days of like... Oh, I remember Love Film. We used to get their DVDs. Yes, they did a DVD rental service and then we launched the first ever streaming service. But, you know, you had to sit and wait for hours for your video to... Anyway. But I was doing that and I thought, what am I doing? I wanted to fix the NHS. and that's the point at which I started actively trying to sort of go on the journey to be a member of parliament and also went to work in healthcare at McKinsey. This is very interesting because you must have, you know, Mother's Milk listened man and boy every day to your parents talking about the NHS.

9:12One was a surgeon, one was a GP. What did they do within the NHS? Yeah, so my father was a surgeon, my mother was a haematologist. A haematologist. so they both worked in the hospital settings so they both worked in hospitals yes although my mother went significantly part time with children at the time it was very hard to work part time in the NHS so she ended up really reducing her work now lots of women and men do work part time in the NHS but then it was really hard to do so she really dialed down her career so my father could it was relatively traditional his career as a surgeon and yes we had many conversations as a family about the NHS and I think my parents' frustrations with it because they wanted it to be better.

10:00It's interesting to me that you say fix it which is a positive approach rather than saying the NHS is broken you know it's all hopeless, it's doomed. I like the kind of can-do sound of that. Do you think it is still fixable? I think I just think is a way of thinking about things it's uh how do we make this what we want it to be and I don't I suppose I don't think it's saying just saying something is broken is very helpful I mean as social care minister which was for quite a length of time in government lots of people would say social care is broken I'm like how does that how does that help us what let's talk about the things that are wrong and then work out the way that you want to fix them.

10:43Or let's talk about the things that are right first and then the things that are wrong. Yes, all of that, that too is, you know, what works and what doesn't work, be more specific. And I guess one of the things, it's one of the approaches I took in my career and it's part of the McKinsey legacy is not, can something be done as an approach, but how can it be done? It can always be done, it's just a matter of how. this government i mean as per the last government doesn't seem to have a plan for social care yes i mean i'm so i'm not shadow secretary of state for health and social care so i don't spend lots of time no sure talking about your work and pensions but clearly i care about it a lot and i have a lot of contacts with the sector from my time um as a minister and i'm really frustrated that I thought in the run-up to the election that there was a consensus around introducing a cap on the costs for social care and also pursuing workforce reforms that I was working on.

11:46And it seems like a lot of that has just ground to a halt and been kicked into the long grass by the government with a focus on the NHS and getting down waiting lists. And it's just, to me, that's just... I can understand how a prime minister wants, like a target that they can say they can hit and getting down waiting lists is a target in the acute sector that you can say well let's just spend more money on hip and knee replacements and of course people you want people to have their hip and knee replacements but actually that's that's not reforming the system and that again puts social care on a back burner which party if any uh would introduce a national care service do you think which one came closest to it well i mean that it's somewhere in the labour party policies to do a national care service as a social care But the question is, what is that?

12:32I mean, if that involves nationalising all the care homes and home care agencies that there are around the country, giving them some national social care service branding and funding them through. I mean, that's a huge thing to do. And I don't think the right thing to do. Like we have loads of care providers doing a great job in their own different way. and they're often family-run businesses. Some of them are big organisations, but I don't see the benefit in nationalising that. So do you think that national care service would mean, by definition, it would be a nationalised industry, one of them?

13:12Well, that's one extreme. I mean, the other extreme is, and I have heard Labour ministers talk about it in this way, is basically, well, it's a drop-down list of all the care providers that exist on a website. Well, CQC already exists and gives you that information. And so I feel like it's a slogan that would only disappoint or fail. So you were saying, you know, the NHS is the focus of this government when West Streeting has said it's reform or die. They've inherited a legacy of strikes from the resident doctors and now the nurses. How long do you think that this government can carry on blaming all its problems on the last?

13:53I think they already have to stop blaming their problems. on us because a lot of the problems that they face now are of their own making including their relationship with the nhs workforce uh and including what they've done with the economy uh so and and and i hear that you know i i therefore think uh it's my personal perspective but you might not be surprised about that but i know hear that from people i talk to and about it's like we're done with hearing the government blame you guys um they need to take responsibility for what they're doing the endless covid inquiry continues i i presume you will be appearing at some point so i have done you have done i did uh i was there for a short time in the pp section and then i spent a whole day giving evidence a few weeks ago for the social social care Yeah.

14:48Forgive me for not watching every minute of that or attending. What was the hardest bit of Covid for you when, you know, obviously there was Matt Hancock was held accountable for what happened in care homes. The expulsion of those elderly from NHS beds into care homes and the seeding of the virus and all that. Just tell us a bit about what it was like to be in government during that time with those responsibilities. Yeah, I mean, the hardest time for me was early on when the virus was getting into care homes and we had so few leavers. You know, care homes desperately wanted PPE, but there wasn't enough PPE across the country for the NHS or for care homes, you know, for everybody.

15:32Everyone was desperately trying to get PPE around the world. So that was going on. We didn't have a vaccination. We didn't really know very much about how this virus was spreading. We didn't even in the relatively early days have up to date data about the number of people who were dying from COVID in care homes. I mean, we didn't have enough tests. So all of those things very early on was just we didn't have the infrastructure, the organisation to be able to respond. And actually on arrival, it was seen as it was going to be local authorities who would look after the social care sector anyway.

16:08I relatively soon in discussion with Matt Hancock took a view that like the care sector is clamoring for action and we are going to have to just seize this and do this ourselves from the centre. But it took some time just to get the machine to work. That was that was that was the hardest time. It's kind of like having your foot flat on the floor and the accelerator in a car, but it's not going anywhere. Like that was that was and knowing that that meant people were dying. we then spent the summer of knowing trying to do the first wave getting things really set up to have all that so we had loads of tests we had loads of ppe um and that went into the next wave so we're in a better position but it was still really awful seeing covid still getting into care homes despite all the ppe and testing and seeing that people were dying it didn't really change until the vaccination that was a thing that really made a difference but the thing then I guess the biggest when you think about that time do you kind of go back into a kind of that state of possible anxiety and responsibility that you must have felt then or have you managed to you're taking deep breaths I thought about it a lot for the inquiry I mean I thought I thought pretty hard about the the things I've submitted to the inquiry in writing and the evidence I've given orally because I I want to make sure that the experience I went through and what we went through can feed into us being a better position in a future pandemic so i spent quite a lot of time kind of reliving it and thinking uh thinking through and thinking like and obviously you think well what could have done differently i mean the one area where i i genuinely think you know we could have done differently and wish we had uh is on visiting and the visiting restrictions and i wish we'd managed to enable people to continue to see their loved ones more during it yeah i can i get that um when it became clear that the average age of death from covid with covid or of covid was 82 um it's interesting to me that there wasn't a kind of pivot in government to sort of let the schools go and to increase the protection on the vulnerable and the elderly and those who needed shielding rather than having a kind of quarantining of the healthy to protect the vulnerable but do you think that will ever be the takeaway from the COVID inquiry and what's your takeaway?

18:37So I think the COVID inquiry should look at you know are there alternatives to lockdown in the way that we manage and compare us to other countries. It's not that we didn't think about those things at the time but the reality is kind of just quarantining people in that way i mean so so for instance in social care we know that it was no fault of their own but the reality is most of the time the virus got into care homes by by staff coming in who unknowingly often not always yeah whatever i'd got it or or you know they had no family they're living in families and it got around the moments in in a community then we found it would then get into the care home that way so and the the only way you could kind of stop that transfer happening was in the small amount of circumstances where it was possible for care workers to actually like live on site and bubble with a uh in their care home but but you know most people work in social care they have family responsibilities they're often carers for family members at home they've got kids they've got that bubbling thing just it's not possible so that was the problem is it wasn't it didn't seem to be an option of just let just shield those people who are vulnerable and everyone else go about their normal life because the world doesn't the country doesn't work that way and that's why i mean i remember times when hospitals were basically completely full and you'll get to a point where somehow the rate of the spread of the virus has to be slowed down otherwise hospitals are going to have to turn people away and they did that in italy for a period there was like anyone over 65 i think i remember here it was like no you can't you won't be treated for at peak moment So to avoid that, that was the reason for the investigation.

20:16I remember my bro saying, you know, the NHS would have fallen over. Exactly. Yeah. But in the end, it was a pivot. Anyway, let's not dwell on that awful time. I'm sure, you know, the country got through it. We got through it. We've got through it, though. It's not long ago. I mean, I remember it's not that long ago where we suddenly, like, when things opened up and you're able to go to the pub and you're like, I'm in a pub. Isn't this amazing? and now we're just like it's it's so forgotten we've pushed it back but the consequences are with us today whether it's in people's health conditions whether it's children no stop going to school and never went again whether it's of economic consequences where you know we spent a lot of money on keeping the economy going well it's for it costs 400 billion to close the country down and we've left with a which we're going to talk about a long tale of worklessness, work shyness, mental health, you know, effects on all sorts of sectors.

21:13I mean, I know the economy bounced back, but what we're going through now shows that the legacy of that debt is something that is going to hobble this economy for a long time. Before we get onto that and welfare, you said, you know, as a sort of student or as a child of your two parents who worked in the NHS he wanted to fix the NHS if you were health secretary Helen Waitley what would you be doing to fix the NHS? If I know anything from my time as a health minister there are no easy answers and it's not something in a few minutes. That is an easy answer to that question. Yeah but that aren't easy I mean so things that I was working on and would continue to work on and I mean some of the the rhetoric hasn't been wrong is about you know shifting our care from hospitals into the community, treating people sooner, moving more to prevention.

22:05I mean, all of these things are, we know this is what needs to happen. Oh, coupled with the use of technology. AI. AI, personalisation, like extraordinary things that technology can do. So on the one hand, leaning in on technology and then on the other hand, shifting care close to home and prevention and anything you can do that means people are healthier. Would you be more nanny safe when it comes to diet, for example? I'm more about kind of what works. Yeah. And the question is the extent to which nanny state stuff actually works. I mean, the sugar tax is an interesting one on sugary drinks, which has meant that people are not consuming so much sugar in sugary drinks because it's been replaced by sweeteners and things.

22:42But there's some research that indicates that people, instead of finding their sugar in other sources and that, so because your body tells you if you're expecting sugar to go looking for it. I'm not an expert on this. I'm not a clinician or a scientist, but I think you have to think hard about what will actually make a difference. Well, I suppose you do, especially if obesity costs tens of billions a year. That's money the NHS can't afford. And also the comorbidities of obesity, as you know, are multiple. Yeah, it impacts people's quality of life on the one hand. And I see that in the DWP welfare sort of work that I do and people who are not able to work because of ill health, some of which is related to obesity, as well as clearly being a big cost on our health service.

23:30Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Uh, sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice? Ugh, I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyer's rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Corvana.com. And when the whole drama around personal independent payments was bubbling up a few weeks ago when it transpired that, you know, one in four adults, you know, I've seen your tweets about it.

24:12It does seem to me that we are a very unhealthy country with a high dependency on welfare. Do you think this is something that really can be tackled and how? So, yes, picking up on where I started earlier, that yes, of course, I absolutely believe that the scale of the welfare state and the benefits bill can be tackled. I mean, I know that conservatives did it before when we introduced universal credit in the period from 2010 to the pandemic. We have now 8 million people on it. Yes, but for that period, we actually brought the number of people claiming benefits down. so you can do it i always think it's an imperative to do and i don't mean just the cost which is clearly huge but also the lives of people who instead of embarking on a lifetime in work uh not embarking on a life not in work um and one of the most worrying things about the figures at the moment is the growing number of younger people who are going on to uh 16 to 24 benefits exactly particularly for mental health um and i've been working on this uh in opposition and looking trying to understand to what extent is it that people are that they're genuinely uh don't have good enough mental health to work and is there a whole thing going on about it's a mentally ill society so to what extent are people being told that because they're struggling with their mental health they shouldn't work and therefore believe that and don't work and to what extent is it that actually when it's difficult to get a job and things are tight actually is is it a financial rationale and you know these things will mix together it's not it's not simple and I'm not dismissive about for instance people struggling with anxiety or mental health problems but something I have said is that I don't think we should be giving the personal independence payments those benefits which are meant to cover the extra costs that you may have if you have an illness or a disability I don't think we should be giving them to people with what you call common mental disorders like anxiety and ADHD or acne or tennis elbow or many of those or insomnia I don't believe that there is the same material extra cost of those kind of conditions as there are for many disabilities and I think we should be supporting people to be in work And that's what PIPs are supposed to be for.

26:45They're supposed to help you to get into work, aren't they? Well, it's to cover the extra costs of your illness or disability. And some people will use them to help them work. I mean, there will be some people who receive personal independence payments for whom working work is incredibly... Okay. Like, disability is a huge spectrum. And I'm realistic. there are some people with a severity of disability where working much so you might love it is not going to be possible if you need round-the-clock care from multiple people but there are many people for whom who are disabled who actually would like to work and it's about supporting it and I come at this I started out in Parliament one of the things I did was campaigning on mental health and trying to get parity of steam between but that's now Jeremy Hunt says that's a terrible mistake because it's people who think they're neurodiverse or ADHD now claiming universal credit or personal independence plan.

27:43So the thinking now, I thought, in the Tory party was that there shouldn't be parity of esteem between mental and physical health because you can still work if you've got insomnia or ADHD or OCD. But if you are tetraplegic, you can't. So I think, so, and I don't want to be overcomplicated, but also don't want to lose a nuance. And actually, Jeremy Hunt and I, we worked on this a lot. There have been unintended consequences of the attempt to improve care for mental health and particularly for severe mental health. So one of the things that motivated me was I saw, and I saw this before I become an MP, is if you went to A &E in an acute mental health crisis, you could be left sitting on a chair in A &E for 12 hours, 40, like just let even though actually you might well be suicidal and people sadly have done and do walk out of A &E because and in a mental health crisis and do terrible things to themselves and while if you're there with a broken leg you might have to wait but you're so I saw that happen I said hold on we need to have a system that is reacts differently to people with serious mental health with serious mental illness so that was what the kind of parity of esteem thing was however However, we've had an unintended consequence, which is, and it's gone hand in hand with COVID again.

29:05One of the things that happened in COVID was the shift to phone assessments over the phone for benefits. So instead of going face to face, it's over the phone. And I think that combined with it now has become a thing that you can receive a benefit for, as you say, whether it be insomnia or anxiety or things like that. And you try to ban sick fluences who teach and coach people online how to get a personal independence plan or some sort of benefits. So I think it's wrong that there are people making videos that say in order to get benefits, this is how you do it. This is what you need to say. Or also writing out this is what the answers are or even making people pay for a VIP service, which will tell them what they need to say.

29:48I totally understand and support that you for instance if you're somebody with learning disabilities or difficulty reading for instance you might have difficulty filling out the forms to apply for benefits and of course you might receive help and you might receive help from the citizens advice bureau you might have a social worker help filling out complex forms for benefits that's totally understandable but videos or people saying this is what you need to say in order to get this benefit for this no I don't think that should be happening. well the government aren't banning it are they they're not they voted against our proposal to ban it i mean i was really i'm frustrated that what we saw before uh parliament break for recess was an attempt by labor to make some savings from the welfare budget which like the savings need to be made but they did it they gave up so badly cost an extra three billion i seem to remember well so so they went from originally saving setting up to save five billion which isn't enough in the scheme of things with a bill that's going up to 100 billion and then it's forecast actually that the legislation they put through will cost 100 million instead oh it's just i mean it's not what the country needs and the problem is like in the end in the autumn we'll get taxes going up and then it'll be even harder for businesses to succeed and people to create jobs and opportunity and it's like oh it's not what um the country uh wants or needs will the Tory party do you think have to follow reform and say that they will ban inheritance tax if it looks like Rachel Reeves it's going to add on additional inheritance taxes to the ones she's already imposed obviously family businesses and family farms are now subject to much more inheritance tax than they were before and there is now talk that she's going to get a clamp down on the way you can gift assets before your death reform i think could be on to a serious winner if they commit as other countries have done to abolishing inheritance tax because actually it generates more revenue for the treasury anyway so what will the tories do do you think or what should they do i mean people people hate inheritance taxes but um i mean we've we've we've already said clearly that we would reverse the family farms tax and the family business tax, which is clearly very damaging for the economy.

32:08Lots of businesses are now coming out against the family business tax. It's the same package of things that Rachel Reeves did. Extremely damaging for, say, British businesses and farms. I mean, we'll see clearly what Rachel Reeves comes forward with. But definitely what I'm hearing from so many conversations I have, whether it's businesses or others, is that it feels like Rachel Reeves is just, you know, Labour is just coming after everybody. And people who are trying to start businesses, grow businesses, create wealth, create opportunities, or people who've kind of done the right thing and saved, nobody feels that their money is safe at the moment.

32:48And, yeah, and the awful thing about people leaving the country who would otherwise be building businesses here and creating the opportunities, which would provide the jobs for a new generation to go and work. I've got teenage children and I think what is this country going to look like when my children leave education? What are the opportunities going to be for them at this rate? I want to be optimistic and I think AI and technology will do amazing things and could make a huge difference on productivity. But I don't feel the government is doing this country any favours in creating opportunities for the next generation at the moment.

33:23You mentioned your children. Two, three? I have three of them. Three. Yeah. Teenagers. They're teenagers. They are... Boys and girls. I have a 17-year-old son, a daughter who's 14, nearly 15, and a daughter who's 13. The oldest two are both doing summer jobs, which I'm quite a stickler on, get out and work. What kind of jobs? My eldest has been working on local farms in Kent, doing some fruit picking, which is... Very good. Tough work. It was an early start, hard on a teenager. um and then my older daughter has been working in a local cafe uh but yeah i remember really as a teenager in my summer holidays i started i i worked when i was 16 and i remember that thing of this is money that i earn this is my money good feeling it's a really good feeling to have that feeling well done making them work i mean have you seen the impact of of nix for example in your constituency yes i mean so many businesses i talk to um are you know not hiring or letting people go so hospitality is significant my constituency there's tourism pubs shepherd neem is uh has its brewery there as well so big employer locally they have lots of pubs and now that's a sector that's been really hard hit because the national insurance change is clearly everyone's hitting people on the lower end of the pay scale which is opportunities it's often the start where young people start out it's been terrible terrible yeah um we're getting to the point where i have to ask about your difficult time which i mean i didn't want it to sound like a sort of victim self-pity in question so sometimes i say to people when have you had to be most difficult but actually you can get the most interesting answers from people when you ask what their difficult time was so what would you answer to that i mean we already talked about a bit for me but i mean in terms of my career COVID was like the hardest time was to be a health minister in that time when you felt a huge amount of responsibility and the challenge to be able to save people's lives and fix the problem and that was a and just personally with the level of pressure the hours that I was working and everybody around me, that was a really hard time in my life.

35:52Did you feel personally responsible for when people died? I remember a woman coming up to me and my brother and my mother and my other brothers, and the last time we saw her alive in her care home, and saying, and berating him. It was at a sort of COVID memorial lunch in her care home. And she just came up to him and berated him. She wasn't to know it was the last time he was going to see her alive. But she said the most, you know, awful things like, you know, you've got the blood of 300 ,000 people on your hands and things like that. And I just thought it was the most unfair way of approaching what happened and how the government had to respond.

36:38so I think and I saw that that criticism clearly leveled against your brother and and Matt Hancock was born a lot and I saw from working alongside them how you know their efforts they were making was it was all about saving lives and how more people could have died without those efforts now and as I said a moment ago I think the thing that I look back on I think could we have done it differently was on the visiting like the virus was it it was a virus and that that was the thing that killed people though but the visiting was the decisions that were made um with you know in line with public health was that your decision were you making the decisions about about you know i was part of internal arguments right where uh there was there was me there was a public health advisors and uh matt hancock and and in fact boris and you know working out all of this in the mix as to what was the right right way to to control covid on the one hand and enable people to keep on visiting and i guess my thing is i i wish that but care homes kept going into lockdown anyway and they you know even if you could have visitors suddenly one day to the next the there'd been covid covid outbreak and they were shut for 10 days that happened all the time and then it was happened multiple and so i just just and so there was a time so my it was it was after the peak of the pandemic but there was a time when my my mother went into hospital um unexpectedly and suddenly and uh had emergency surgery and um was conscious but then was you know we didn't know whether she was going to make it through and uh I desperately wanted to go and see her um in case that would be the last time I could see her uh and even though the pandemic was pretty much over the hospital that specific hospital still had visiting restrictions uh on and I couldn't see and I I remember that moment I remember how that that felt and I know you know that happened to people day after day through the pandemic so that's one reason why I feel so strongly about it So who's going to win the next election?

38:48Well, I want Conservatives and Kemi Bader not to win, of course. That is the only answer you can give to that question. That's why I'm doing the job that I'm doing.