55. Gillian Keegan: The future of British schools, union 'barons', and Sunak's Rwanda battle

26:38So I look at these and I'd be horrified if I was 27, 28, but if it is, you just have to deal with the situation and do something. There's been differences in the curriculum, the approaches to the curriculum. And I think personally, I mean, I'm not an educational expert or an academic, but listening to the academics and listening to and looking at the results and listening to what other countries say about us, I think you can be confident that we are improving our educational standards and that matters um so that's that's what i'd say but i i don't say um that there aren't challenges in schools one of the biggest ones actually that many many head teachers mentioned to me and i don't think uh that that head teacher mr o 'neill mentioned it but his special educational needs he does actually he wrote along he actually says that if if we fully address the special educational needs as it exists we'd probably put most councils out of business.

27:31Because the costs, the necessary costs are so high and they don't have the funds to deal with. So there's a massive increase in special educational needs. And probably there's a massive increase because we just know more. We know more how to diagnose. We know more how to put strategies in place to help children overcome. And we know how important speech and language training is. So we know a lot more and we care a lot more as well about special educational needs. So more people are categorised as having special educational needs than would have been the case 40 years ago. Yes, definitely. And we know more about special educational needs.

28:02I mean, you know, some of the things that people would have just said, oh, you know, somebody's not able to keep up or whatever. But now we say, well, why? What is it? And we try and diagnose and then help the child. There is no doubt that we need to improve our special educational needs offer. And there's a couple of things. We've got a SEND and alternative provision improvement plan. So we recognise that we definitely need to improve it. One of the things I think we probably did wrong is we didn't invest enough in special educational needs schools that had some specialist sort of approaches for various special educational needs.

28:39And many, many more children went into mainstream schools. Some of them wanted to and they did perform very well. Some of them not. So we now have special educational needs schools where we have lots of people waiting for places. So that's why we've announced another 15 special educational needs schools all across the country. and that's on top of 90 odd we've already done. You must get pressure from MPs. There won't be an MP in the country who doesn't have people with special educational needs, kids who are really struggling to get into the system at all. To get diagnosed, yeah. Well, but also once they are diagnosed, really to get in.

29:12The system feels very, very tough from their perspective. Yes, and I have a nephew with special educational needs and I feel very strongly about it because I've seen my brother and sister-in-law, You know, they almost, parents almost feel like they're battling the system. And I don't want them to feel like they're battling the system. I want them to feel like the system is there to support them. So there's a number of things that were put in place, lots of training as well. We're training more educational psychologists. We're training 7 ,000 more SENCOs so that we've got enough people with the specialist skills.

29:45When you get a big increase, and it's the same with mental health, you know, we had a quadrupling of demand in children's mental health. So when you get that, you know, it sometimes takes a system and time to catch up because the workforce is very important. So this is something you're both profoundly passionate about and we could continue for a very long time. But it's also interesting. I mean, it's interesting to get a government minister defending and taking the line rather than what we tend to do, which is just say the whole world's gone to nonsense and grumble. Can I take you back, though, just before we come back to politics, back to your working life?

30:18Because you spent nearly 30 years not being a politician. right and give us a sense first what the difference is between not being a politician being a politician what's the difference between having a normal job which most people listening to this show have and the strangeness of being a member of parliament how would you describe that difference because very few people have ever come into parliament recently with that degree of professional experience most people are coming in as you say having been professional politicians since they were almost in their teens yeah and i think that's one of the things that we need to change actually there's very few people from business go into politics or politics go into business and there does need to be more crossover, but there is a fundamental difference.

30:52So, I mean, obviously, I started as an apprentice. I'm the only degree apprentice in the House of Commons. So, you get that kind of experience, which you can bring to the role because the vast majority of people probably have done the traditional university route. So, you know, they don't understand the power of an apprenticeship or degree apprenticeship. That's something that I definitely bring. But one of the things that is really different is once you get up the managerial ladder, and I got into a senior executive positions, I worked in technology, I worked in banking, I worked in manufacturing.

31:19You are accountable, you're responsible, but you do get to set the strategy. You do get to hire the people. You do get to fire the people if they're not performing. You're fully accountable for the results and you yourself will have to bear that accountability, you know, if you don't grow the business, if you lose business or whatever. So it's very highly accountable. One of the things that's very different as a minister and as a cabinet minister is because you're working through an organisation, which is a civil service, you're kind of pulling levers and I think you've described this sometimes you're pulling levers and actually the levers aren't attached so how do you get the attachment between what you want to do and how to get this massive organisation civil service to be able to deliver and that is the key thing.

32:00Develop that a little bit more just before I go to answer it what's the difference between I don't know being the head the chief executive of a big schools group and being the education section in terms of what happens when you come into the office and say this is our plan this is our vision you've been doing the job now for I guess how long did a year and a half? Yeah just coming up to a year and a half, yeah. There's a veteran in Tory ministerial science. Give us a sense of what the difference is compared to when you were a senior person in business and the way in which it works managing civil service.

32:26Why is managing a civil service department different? Well, because they're a different organisation and what motivates people in an organisation is their job, their manager, their leader, what's going to get them promoted, what's going to get them on, their work colleagues. You're none of them. Right. You're not a colleague, really. You're none of them. So what you need to do is you're in this extraordinary position where you have the power, as it were, to make the decisions, but the implementation has to be through a completely separate organisation that works with its own organisational dynamics.

33:00So what you have to do is work out how you can get them to want what you want. And that's the key important skill. And in your case, getting teachers and headteachers to want what you want. Yes. And I want what they want. You know, one of the things that, And, you know, obviously we've had some difficulty since, I mean, I took the job and, you know, the first time, you know, when I got the job, I got a letter from the unions actually saying, you know, we need two billion pounds. Two billion pounds for the inflationary pressures, some of the cost pressures, plus also the higher than they'd anticipated pay rise from the previous year.

33:34Two billion pounds. And I thought, my goodness, it was just after the mini budget. Or the quoting. Yes. Yes. So very difficult economic times. I thought, I'm going to get two billion pounds. And I worked with the unions. I understood the case. I'd spoken to many headteachers and I put the case for the two billion and we got the two billion. And so I was delighted. I thought, this is great. You know, everybody's going to think this is, you know, a good achievement. And, you know, it didn't really last long because, you know, a couple of months later, they decided to take strike action. So I then had to deal with that.

34:05And so, you know, you don't have all of the levers, you know, I need to work with many, many different stakeholders. I need to work with many different, and they've got their own organisational dynamics. So I need to understand where they're coming from. And then I need to try and sort of figure out how we can get to a position where we can agree. And, you know, getting the£30 ,000 starting salary for teachers was really, really important. You mentioned recruitment and retention. The whole world's got recruitment and retention difficulty in almost every sector post the pandemic. There's been a dislocative impact on the labour market, and that's impacted everything from nursing to teaching to tech to you know pretty much everywhere that's why we've got nearly a million vacancies in the country and it's not just our country it's all over the world just on that specifically so back to my friend andrew o 'neill head teacher of the year he talks about recruitment retention crisis says it hasn't come out the blue latest figures show 13 of teachers are leaving after one year 30 are leaving the profession after five years.

35:03And these are people who join the profession believing that this is the vocation. How do we crush these dreams so quickly, he says. The government has missed its recruitment targets year after year after year. And that's exactly why in 2019, we put a recruitment and retention strategy in place, which included getting to the starting salary of£30 ,000, which was in our manifesto, which included focusing on shortage subjects as well, which included on looking at more roots into the profession. So one of the first things I did when I was the apprenticeships and skills minister, which is my first ministerial job, was I wanted to put apprenticeships on the map and I wanted to have an apprenticeship.

35:43I wanted people to accept them as an equally valid route. And I knew that that was a bit of an uphill struggle because I tried it all my life. But I thought I'll get an accountant's, a doctor's, a lawyer's apprenticeship, and I'll get Morgan Stanley and I'll get Goldman Sachs and I'll get financial analysts. And that will do the work for me. So that's one of the first things I did as apprenticeships and skills minister. And I tried to get a teaching apprenticeship so you can go into teaching, you can learn on the job as well as doing your degree alongside it, because then you get more used to, you know, the sort of leading, because what you did find is, you know, teachers were leaving in the first two years.

36:19And that was when they went from the classroom to the real full time. And obviously they do, you know, placements in schools, but they weren't getting the support actually they needed to cope with what is you know a new environment every day within a school so we've put mentorship places a system in place and actually it's starting to improve but the teaching apprenticeship is another route to get more and more people i want ta's to want to become teachers there's many fantastic ta's we have 56 000 more ta's than we had in 2010 and 27 000 more teachers yeah teaching assistants you know many of them will be able to go on to be become great teachers i want the roots to enable them to do that so that's all the vision stuff well no we're doing it no okay but but but yes so yesterday in the house of commons rishi sunak talked about everybody having a you know i think world-class education he said or something and your big slogan back at the last election leveling up which you know i don't know what i didn't know what it meant i don't feel that feel that it's happened but in relation to education brawley and i talk about this a lot.

37:21So I don't want to make this personal about Rishi Sunak, but his older daughter, her education costs£48 ,000 a year. So that's what the value of the education that she gets is put at. Most of the kids, most of the parents listening to this podcast, we're talking about £6 ,000. So how can we ever really get genuine equality of opportunity and genuine levelling up with that massive gap? Well, that's not what matters. What matters is whether they come out with the qualifications at the end of it. And that's why - What is the likelihood if you're talking about a factor of six between the value, the cost of your education?

37:58That's the real attainment gap in this country. Well, we're actually investing more in our state schools than we ever have in our history, 60 billion pounds a year. And actually, to be honest, growing up in Noseley, the one thing I learned about education is money doesn't solve everything. They spent a fortune on Noseley education, but it actually didn't improve the outcomes. The outcomes are improving now, but they're still nowhere near where we want them to be. But the most important thing is that children get a good education to enable them to get, you know, the GCSEs, then the, you know, level three, whether it's A levels or they go on to an apprenticeship or BTECs or whatever, T levels.

38:33That is the most important thing. And you see now the outcomes are improving for children. That's why we're going up the league tables internationally. That's the hard work of teachers is really delivering on that. And Gillian, can I just sort of maybe transition now off? I mean, I think this has been very interesting on education, but at the same time, one of the problems I think in politics today is the way in which we have these conversations. Because, you know, there's always this sort of gap between somebody listening to the show who's having a very tough time in school or who worry about their local school.

39:03And then the minister comes on and they talk about statistics or how much more money is going in. And of course, in an odd way, it's, I mean, of course, it's what you have to do and it's what everybody's always done. Do you feel there is a communications challenge in politics? I mean, I guess, you know, it would have been true when Alistair was running Combs for Labour. You know, people say, well, it's rubbish. And you say, yeah, but, you know, we're spending X billion on this and we've got a new strategy on that. And we've done this and the other. And everyone's like, oh, my goodness, here's a politician just talking nonsense again.

39:34That's why in the end it's all about delivery. Tell me about communication. Tell me about how we inspire people, what you've learned about what doesn't work, what does work, why people are losing trust in politicians. Yeah. So I think the number of the problem is when you're dealing, you know, as a cabinet minister responsible for a whole department, what you're dealing with is you're always looking at the average across the country. You're looking at the averages everywhere. I do go into the detail to look at where those averages are different in different places or you know where the contrasts are but of course when you're dealing with the average and showing that on average school standards have gone up on average more people are getting access to technical education and apprenticeships on average there will always be someone who sat there that says that's not my lived experience at all and the whole thing that you need to do when you're trying to define policy for example is make sure that you don't just look at the averages, but you get people who actually got that lived experience.

40:34So one of the good examples we've done recently is care leavers. Now, I know you talk about prisoners a lot and that they get a really rough deal. Care leavers get a really rough deal. So if you look at care leavers and the outcomes for care leavers, for homelessness, for employment, all things which massively affect their life chances. Care leavers is... Just to explain to listeners again outside the United Kingdom. These are people who for challenges within their families have been taken away from their families and put in care often with a foster parent or with some other kind of institution.

41:09And that, of course, is very, very difficult to know that. So they've already had a lot of challenges to overcome and their parents often have as well. But yeah, they're people who grow up either with foster parents or within care homes and systems within the government and local authorities usually look after them. But you look at the outcomes and they're really really awful so when you're designing what should you do the first thing we've done is go and work with a whole load of people who are in care and who have left care and understand what is it that has got in the way and there's loads of things and what can we do to make sure we take those barriers away so we've just not long ago had a new strategy which we worked with Josh McAllister actually he's now a labour candidate but we worked with him because I'm not actually tribal at all.

41:57I work with anybody who's got some experience and a good idea. You're a bit tribal. Actually, I'm not. My best friends voted Labour and voted Leave. And I voted Remain and I'm a Conservative. She's been my best friend for 45 years. So I'm definitely not. But we worked with people. And actually, I met a care leaver this week who's doing a level two. Angelina, who's fantastic, was doing a level two business admin apprenticeship. And her life's been turned round. so we have to to get to those areas you have to work with people who are living the experience and they can help you most in terms of defining policy and one of the things that we're trying to do is to make sure that we you know look at there's only 85 000 people in this situation and and i just believe that that we should really focus on trying to make sure that we remove all the barriers in their life we help them and we recognize that none of us would be where we are today without our parents.

42:52Can you imagine trying to get on in life without your parents? And that is, you know, I take that very seriously. And that's how you try and get from trying to do it across the whole country, looking at data that's averages. And at that level, it is definitely all the things we say are true. But of course, if you're not living that experience, there's no way that any of that makes a difference to you. So that is why you need to get both sides and when you're developing policy. Okay, Rory, Gillian, let's take a break.

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44:27Now, Roy raised the issue of communication. I think the communication, the single piece of communication for which you're probably best known, Gillian. Now, we don't normally swear on this program, but it's when you said, does anyone ever say you've done a fucking good job because everyone else has sat on their ass and done nothing? So you're talking to Daddy Who of ITV, You've got the whole rack thing, schools falling down, going on around you. Talk me through it. Talk me through it. Actually, my best friend looked at that and she said, I know exactly what happened. She said, you'd finished the interview.

44:58You went to take the mic off. And then someone has asked you for a photo because I saw you do this with your hair and start messing with your hair. And that's exactly what happened. So they said, can we take a shot? And so I thought, and actually I can take the mic off. But what was the mindset? Did you think we should have been thanking you? No, it wasn't me. So what happened with that incident was, and I'll call her out actually, the Lord's Minister, Baroness Barham, way before I got there, had set about, and actually I think it started under Nadeem Sahawi, but she had continued making sure that we tried to get these questionnaires.

45:29We've got 22 ,000 schools in the country, 65 ,000 buildings, so we knew where RAC was. And she had, against the odds. Just to explain, so know where this sort of dodgy form of concrete was. area. And the problem with that is that it's been going into schools and we didn't know where it was and buildings were there. It's been going on. I mean, this is from buildings from the 50s, 60s, 70s, right up to 94 when we stopped using it. So it's been going on for years. No one's kept... Let's not read the record. No, no. But no one's kept... So basically this minister said, we have to find out where all this is.

46:03So she went through this from March 2022 to getting all these questionnaires back. The only reason I could make the decision, which is probably one of the most difficult decisions I've made, but I will never regret it. But the only reason I could make the decision was because of all the work she'd done. The decision was to not reopen some schools that she thought were unsafe. So what had happened is they'd gone around, they'd been identifying RAC. RAC had been either called critical or non-critical. All the critical schools, which there was 52 at the time, All of them were closed straight away.

46:34All of the kids were put into face-to-face via, you know, port-a-cabins or via using other space in the schools. We had done that for 52 without a single media inquiry. What happened was there was 104 that were judged as non-critical. Over the summer, in other settings, there were panels that failed. And we were so concerned about this that any panel that failed anywhere, we would get sending engineers to go and look at it. And the reason that's a problem is if a concrete panel on a ceiling fails, it can drop on someone's head, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, horrendous. So what happened is some of the panels that failed had previously been judged as non-critical.

47:13So I had all the engineers, the institution of structural engineers said, what's the difference between the non-critical here and the non-critical there? I wasn't willing to take any risk at all that a panel could fall on children's heads. So it was very cautious, but I said, okay, I don't want to open the schools. I want to get where all this rack is and I want to get those ceilings made safe immediately. And we kept most children in face-to-face education. The teachers did a brilliant job and the headteachers did a brilliant job. We've talked on the podcast loads about rack at the time. So it was a moment.

47:49It was a moment. It was a moment. I regret, obviously. We've got a few minutes left. You regret it? Well, I regret swearing on telly. Yeah, my mum wasn't very happy. But I don't regret the decision at all. No, the decision, I just felt, when I said, you know, I actually did feel grateful that I could make the decision, that the work that had gone before me quite recently, they had the information. So I could say, this is where we're going to take action. Let's just briefly talk about your party. So you voted for Rory Stewart to be leader of the Conservative Party. I did. is probably the reason why in an earlier podcast you said he thought you ought to be prime minister.

48:27Well, I thought he ought to, obviously. I think Gillian's wonderful. So you can stay out of this mutual backscratching. But how different is the Conservative Party today than you think it might have been if actually Rory had become leader of the Conservative Party? And can you live with both? Yeah, I mean, I voted for Rory. I didn't vote for Boris. I didn't vote for Liz. And I voted for Rishi. And I think Rishi is great, actually. I do. I've worked with lots of people in many, many different parts of the world, in many different geysers. You see, this is a problem. You did also defend Liz Truss and Boris Johnson when they were prime ministers.

49:00I know that's part of your job. You have to. But that's what people hear. So I want to get a genuine sense of where you are on that spectrum between Rory Stewart and, you know, Suella Braverman, the radical right, as it were. Where are you on that spectrum? And where's the Tory party heading? I'm what the Conservative Party is, which is pragmatic, right? So, I mean, one of the things that always strikes me, because, you know, I know that you go on about Boris quite a bit, but it always strikes me that you call him Johnson. Yeah. Well, it always strikes me, though, you know, first of all, you go with the majority vote.

49:35Right. That's the whole system that we have, whether it's on leadership, whether it's who governs the country. The choice that the country had in 2019 was Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn. I think they made the right decision because I am pretty certain that Jeremy Corbyn would not have presided over the fastest vaccine rollout in Europe. I'm pretty certain that he would not have stood up immediately when Ukraine were invaded by Russia. I'm not even sure we know which side he'd be on. And I'm pretty certain that when Israel was invaded on the 7th of October, he would not have defended Israel, supported them and said they have the right to defend themselves.

50:10That was the choice at the last election. The country, I think, made the right choice. so that's the way i look at it and once the country's made a choice i do what i can we all talk about and we talked about it a lot you know what a privilege it is to be able to serve your country in government but your party which has been in government for so much so much of its history you know it is in i think incumbent on all politicians to be honest with the public about where that the politics of that party lie yeah i can't imagine even margaret thatcher's party doing some of the stuff that's been going on recently in terms of what well i think rwanda i think that's a policy that would have probably been rejected back then well i think i think it's let's talk let's talk about rwanda because i think you know there's something which i know is seen as something that you think is defining the the party but well rishi sunak is you know he deliberately made this one of his five defining priorities because what that's why it's become such a big thing it's well no it's become such a big thing because of two things one is the migratory pressures all around the world are increasing and will continue to increase.

51:13The second is that there are organized criminals who have now moved into this space and created a business model, which is actually going to just continue to fuel it. So it is a big issue. It's a big issue in our country. It's a big issue in Europe. You've seen it impact politics in Europe. It has to be dealt with. So when you say and go back to try and imagine what Margaret Thatcher would do. She would do, I think, what we're doing now, which is in the face of that, almost impossible to imagine how you can stop it. What more can we do? And obviously, there's lots of things within the policy, working with the NCS, trying to smash the gangs.

51:50What about coming out of the European Convention of Human Rights? We've said very clearly that we've obviously got to go as far as we can. And this is probably the toughest legislation that we've ever introduced on immigration because we're facing the toughest circumstances we've ever faced on immigration. So those two things need to go together. But, you know, of course that needs to be within, you know, the respectable legal arguments and be able to, you know, defend itself in the law. And of course that needs to, you know, we need to be as tight as possible, but we also need to make sure that it's, you know, there's a respectable legal But no one's had to deal with this before.

52:29And we have to deal with it. You wouldn't agree that Rishi Sunak is actually being driven to a place that he doesn't necessarily feel politically comfortable. Do you think he is politically comfortable where he is? I think we're all being driven into a place we never expected to be by the size of the immigration problem and the fact that the organised criminals are not going to go away. Obviously, we try and we take boats. We try to get to the source. The National Crime Agency are working with everybody to do as much as possible. but these people will always find you know they find a way i was very struck and this is kind of you know i was in tanzania going to see a refugee camp actually with leila moran and jess phillips because i am not tribal and i have lots of friends in other parties but i was very struck because we were talking to people then they were talking about the successes they'd had in crushing the drugs routes and the drugs trade that were going through there and they said to us unfortunately that has meant that the criminals have moved into people trafficking human trafficking and they are basically selling dreams and delivering nightmares.

53:32And that is what we're on the end of. Nobody's had to deal with it before, but anyone who thinks that you can deal with this in either ways that we've done in the past, you know, you can't. We have to have new ways of dealing with it because we're dealing with a new phenomenon. You don't see it as a major political shift to the right? I see it as a major shift that we have to do to make sure that we control our borders and we do so fairly. The British public are so fair. We've lost control of our borders in part because of Brexit. The British public are so fair and they voted for Brexit. But they are so fair that, you know, you could never accuse the British public of not being fair.

54:09And yet this is something that's happening. And, you know, look at what's happening in Europe, 80 % up. You know, the small boat crossings are 30 % down. I know you don't like the numbers, but, you know, it's an incredibly difficult problem, but it has to be solved. My last question. Give us a bit of sense now that you've moved into this new world of politics, what you enjoy about the job, what keeps you cheerful in the morning? Is there anything that's funny and amusing and sort of invigorating about the job? I mean, you've been very serious in this and I know you can be more lighthearted and you've given us a very kind of serious policy account.

54:44But give us a sense about the daily life and what you might hope you'd take away if you were talking to your children about your legacy or about what's been satisfying in what you do. Well, the first thing I say is I've had loads of jobs. I've actually always loved working. I love it. But I love this job. It is the best job I've ever had of all the jobs I've had. I mean, what makes it really fun? I mean, mostly actually the constituency stuff. You know, you can really help people when they're at their kind of lowest ebb, when they've tried everywhere else. They've tried to get things solved. They've tried to, you know, battle the system and you can help them.

55:18There's so many ways that you can try and unblock things for people. That's a huge privilege to do. It's a very different organisation. Everybody in politics gets one vote. And therefore, it's very equal whilst being very hierarchical. And the hierarchy changes all the time. That's a very unusual dynamic. So you do find lots of things that happen that you don't always feel that you can control every aspect of it. But all you can do is do your best to try and push forward to improve things. Now, my final question is a little less softball than Rory's final question. So, families. And we're talking at the middle of this massive post office scandal, which has been going on for quite a few years.

56:01And now, on the one hand, you could say, well, my private life is my private life. And I married a guy who happened at a certain point in his life to be a very senior figure in Fujitsu. And that's fine. But on the other hand, going back to what we talked about earlier about the balance of power in this country and the feeling about, you know, and I'm, by the way, not equating your husband remotely with people like Michel Mohn. But those. Well, thank you for saying that. But those sorts of stories where people feel that the connections within the political and economic systems are just too close.

56:36Do you feel you have a bit of a special responsibility on something like this in a sense to keep a bit of a distance from. I mean, you always have a responsibility to be open and transparent about everything. And what happened, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of talk about Horizon and the post office. And what happened was just an unbelievably, truly awful miscarriage of justice. And, you know, I first learned of this. I met some postmasters in my own constituency when I was very newly an MP. And their stories, they're unbelievable, heartbreaking. In fact, I mean, they did move me to tears. you know village sub postmasters they've been there for decades they were trusted pillars of the community suddenly their livelihoods ripped away from them and their reputation hasn't really the political system over decades has failed them no and thank goodness thank goodness for alan bates and joe hamilton and the campaign group right tv program it's taking a tv program well yes but to be honest i i think the inquiry has been set up over two years ago and that you know the job of government now is to obviously speed this up because it has taken too long and make sure those affected get paid compensation fair compensation that's what we're doing but the judicial inquiry which was set up two years ago and is very thorough and win williams i think is doing a great job as well as jason beer as well the kc but they they will bring everybody in they will ask tough questions under oath and everybody should fully cooperate with this inquiry and everybody they will get to the bottom of this and and when they get to the bottom of it people will be held responsible so but so your husband who is reasonably senior in fidget at the time would give would be giving evidence to that inquiry well that that's up to the inquiry so the inquiry can call whoever they want and and i but i am certain if they if they called him he would obviously fully cooperate and how do you as a politician feel when this kind of thing is going on and i don't think you're being you know it's not as if you're being followed here by cameras or any of that stuff but it's kind of out there people are sort of you know think that this is relevant because you're a current member of the cabinet how does that make you feel about being a politician is it fair is it unfair is it part of the job and do you feel the responsibility is sort of you know to to drill down maybe deeper than others in government it would seem over time probably the best example of that was just to bring it to light to your listeners was um actually when um i got into the papers because of the rack decision or more more importantly probably because of swearing on camera.

59:03And I got followed by cameras. But more importantly, they followed me on holiday where my family, my mum and dad were there. And they were knocking on neighbours' doors. And all my neighbours were saying, because I have a house, I'd lived there for many, many years, were saying, we didn't even know she was an MP. She's had a place here for 20 odd years. We didn't even know she was an MP. And can you just imagine my poor parents, they still live in the same house they've been in since I was 10 years old. They don't really know much about politics and you know they've got these they're being doorstepped by these journalists when they're on holiday so it's quite astonishing what i think has happened is the whole media landscape has changed media is obviously with the exception of bbc is largely funded by advertising revenue that advertising revenue is now being shared with social media platforms social media influencers promoters podcasts everything right the landscape has absolutely changed and if you think of podcasts aside actually i think they're a good addition but if you think of some aspects of like influencers or promoters you know they need lots of clicks right that's what they're trying to do to to get lots of clicks and that is what is happening and it's changing the aspect i think some aspects of our media okay i'm going to come in for a final question then so um i get a bit gloomy about politics um i know i've heard i don't know why you should you should have stayed actually you'd be happy.

1:00:24We didn't have any choice. You did. Give us a sense if you were talking to a young person about an honest, quick one minute on the bad side and the good side of being a politician. The bad side is you become a public figure. And when I was first thinking about politics, which somebody else suggested to me, I didn't even think about it, which sounds terrible. But I thought of lots of things. I thought about, you know, the difference in the jobs, the difference in the sort of lifestyle and how you live in two places and all of that stuff. I thought about what you could do and how I'd have to get used to and understand the world of politics.

1:01:03I didn't think about becoming a public figure. I didn't really think about that and I didn't think that was going to happen. And then it does. Now, you can't do anything about that. So you have to be prepared for that. I wasn't really prepared, but now I'm pretty pragmatic. So I'll just go with it. And I recognise I am now. Therefore, that's why I come on. I'll answer anybody's questions. I'll try to be as detailed as possible, hopefully not too detailed. Maybe I have been for your podcast, but that's the downside. You're a public figure. My mum probably put it the best when I said to my parents I was going to go into politics and they couldn't believe it.

1:01:35They were like, but you've got your way to these great successful jobs. Everybody loves you. You're really sort of popular. Why will you do that? Everyone's going to hate you. They were probably more right than I thought. But that's the downside. That is what you see, but that's what you see when you look on Twitter, if you look at some of the sort of negative media, you go into your constituency, you go into a school. When I go into a school, I genuinely get a fantastic experience. You smell, you're like the queen, you smell the paint. Well, I go into schools, sometimes they don't even know who I am.

1:02:08In fact, most times they don't even know who I am. But I go into schools and what do you see? You just see the energy of the kids in there. You see the enthusiasm and professionalism of the teachers. You see the dedication of everybody in that school and you see the outcomes improving. We haven't really talked about technical education, but every lawyer doing a lawyer's apprenticeship or accountancy apprenticeship or a nuclear science or a space engineering apprenticeship, none of that would be happening if we hadn't put that in place. That is the good side. You can do things and you can deliver things that change people's lives and there's so many stories of people who have used the apprenticeship system or used the technical education system skills boot camps they're a new addition to transform the outcomes of their lives that is the good side and that's what you can do thank you very much jillian thank you now you can go back to the cabinet and tell them there's not many of them that we'd have on but you know there's a few that we might so just tell them you've had a wonderful day lovely the experience and recommend Richie, we'd have Richie, wouldn't we?

1:03:14We definitely definitely, that would be a great, great honour Well it has been a lovely experience but I just want to say that it was actually me that asked you on the stage if I could come on and you were very reluctant because I said you only have Labour MPs on so thank you for having a Conservative it's really, really been a pleasure thank you. Get us another one Thank you very much indeed. Bye bye. Thank you

1:03:38So, first serving Cabinet Minister, what did you think of that? uh i have very mixed views actually i thought she was very likable very warm i know you're not don't understand football quite as deeply as i do but if if i was thinking of a football analogy that's not an understatement that thing okay but i think it's like you're playing against the team that spends a lot of time knocking the ball around at the back and then hoops it forward and sort of moves into the corner flag a bit in other words i felt she was sort of filling space quite a lot um i had a sense of a very good backstory but i wasn't utterly persuaded of the forward story and i really do think there's a there's a disconnect is that the part of football analogy to the backstory but and i and i think that i don't know look i came armed with all these stats and facts and i was so determined for us not to go down that but i I thought for her to sit there and essentially say, Labour government on education was terrible and we're doing well.

1:04:40I mean, speak to any head teacher. I also think, though, I was interested. I mean, it's not the way that I would do it. And I'd be interested in your view on political communication again. My instinct is usually to agree with the questioner. So if you say to me, you know, this head teacher says it's all awful. Usually when I was a politician, I'd be like, yes, I mean, it is terrible. And, you know, I visited the school, which is even worse. And then I would try to say, however, you know once i've really lent into that however there are some really interesting other things going on elsewhere um but i was quite sort of interested in it was quite good for you i thought she was quite it's the first time we've had someone who's actually really been like doing the traditional political stuff like actually we're really proud of what we've done actually later didn't do that good do you know the only place where i found it really convincing was when she was defending boris johnson bizarrely as opposed to jeremy corbyn that's when i've actually felt there's something coming out that's real here.

1:05:35Because I'll be honest, what I hear from the headteachers that, you know, and Fiona kind of is immersed in this education world, but I speak to a lot of headteachers, what I hear from them is that they don't feel that for a long time that they've had a government that really gets education and really has education at the heart of the government strategy. So I just felt that she was a little bit trapped in that, you know, here are the points, here are the lines to take, here are the rebuttal points as opposed to here's a vision for the role of education in the country and i thought the other thing she did which is kind of fine on one level but this constantly taking it to you know well i've my best friend is a labor brexiteer i've got somebody who's got special needs in my life i've got you know sort of thinking that because you've got that personal connection it gives you some sort of special place in the debate i'd be interested because the guy he's not a close friend of mine The guy mentioned Andrew O 'Neill, the head teacher, who runs this amazing school.

1:06:32I'll be very interested in his take on it because he's somebody who I think is really speaking from the heart. Now, she is somebody who people will listen to that and think she's speaking from the heart. But is she speaking from a really deep awareness of what's happening in schools and a deep conviction about the importance of education? Or is she just somebody who's on a career ladder? Well, it's difficult to know, isn't it? And it would have been interesting to interview Angela Rayner when she was shadow education secretary. But I also thought Gillian was quite reflective and interesting about the reality of what a minister is.

1:07:03And of course, they're not a head teacher. They don't have that kind of deep expertise. They never can. And as you know, they're often popped into these positions without having been in a department before. I liked though the fact that she's somebody who's gripping things I like her I liked her tone I mean as a kind of center-left Tory I like the fact that she's able to be likeable and approachable but also pretty proud of being a conservative I often feel a lot of the time I'm pretty ashamed of being conservative I spend a lot of time apologizing so it was it was cheering up to me to feel the tone of somebody who was prepared to say actually I think we've done a pretty good job But you've often said that you've been more reluctant to interview serving politicians because you feel that they're constrained.

1:07:47Let's just say, for example, that you had stayed in Parliament. Let's just say that you were now somebody who worked under Johnson, Truss and Sunak. It's kind of your job to do that. And that's what I couldn't quite work out. I wasn't any clearer at the end of it where she was on that Conservative Party spectrum. But it's almost impossible, isn't it? I mean, I know you think that there are certain really brilliant political communicators who can be very, very honest and also be senior cabinet ministers. But the reason, obviously, I always think that politicians are pretty boring people to interview is that it's so difficult.

1:08:23The co-presenter of the rest is politics. Because there's an Alistair Campbell sitting in the background listening to this saying, why are you going on that show? What exactly are you trying to get out of going on that show? What risks are you taking? but you know when i made the point she was coming at me with some statistics of this that and the other and i had all the rebuttal statistics here and i thought i can't be bothered i just pushed them to one side because i do think that one of the reasons people listen to this podcast is because we we don't just sort of dive down into detail and argue about well you say three percent and i say five percent you say this apprenticeship i say that apprenticeship and i felt that she was a little bit i thought she got better as it went on fun enough the only time to be fair to her that she looked down at her notes and was clearly reading for them was in the last question when we talked about her husband and Fujitsu.

1:09:08Where actually I think I was pretty tame. I think lots of our listeners will say, why did I give her a harder time? But I knew that she had the lines written there. So I think what we're going to get was a kind of a rehearsed line to take. And that's what we're trying to avoid on this because that's what just I think drives people mad when they're listening to these. I've come out of that still with a huge amount of aberration for Gillian as a person. I think her backstory is extraordinary. I think it's amazing to have somebody from a working class background who left school at 16, had an incredible business career.

1:09:38I think she brings a lot of common sense and empathy. I think she's been in politics a very short time. She was elected in 2017. So barely six years, five years, I think, before she was in the cabinet. I think she could have a long way to go. I think she could improve a lot. Do you think she could be Prime Minister? You once said she could be Prime Minister. Do you still think that? Yeah, I still think she could be. And I would definitely much prefer to have her as Prime Minister than almost any of the other potential candidates coming out of the Conservative Party, I'd be deeply reassured by her because I think she's got a lovely combination of wisdom, common sense, empathy, practicality.

1:10:12You're probably right that if we get back to her swearing in the studio or this kind of stuff, that the stuff she still has to learn about political communication, but she's very much at the beginning of her career. Okay. No, my upsum would be very warm, empathetic. I can see why people like her, but I didn't have that sense. I didn't really have a sense of her fully understanding the challenges that are being faced in the education sector and didn't have the ideas about how she might actually start to deliver on some of the very fine words that she said about what she believes in. Well, let's see then when Labour comes into government, how they perform against those metrics.

1:10:49if Rory if stop saying when it is an if see you soon see you soon bye-bye