Matt Hancock: Opens Up About His Affair, Mistakes & The Pandemic

Matthew Hancock is the MP for West Suffolk, the former Secretary of State for Health, and was responsible for leading the country through the COVID-19 pandemic until his time as Health Secretary was brought controversially to an end in summer 2021. For the first time, Matt speaks candidly on what it was like to lead a country through a once-in-a-century pandemic, and the circumstances surrounding his resignation. When I started this podcast, I wanted to bring you conversations that allow us to see behind the scenes, to give the context and this conversation is no different. You do not have to agree with Matt but I think after this episode today we will have the answers we’ve all been waiting for. This is not your typical political interview. This is a conversation that definitely needed to happen. Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  One of the reasons I wanted to come in and talk to you was because I want to just talk freely.

• 0:05Steven Bartlett?

  How does that all feel for you personally? That thought that one week earlier, we could have saved 21,000 lives.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  There were some mistakes that we made in terms of the measures.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  How they were brought in. Well, now you see, Stephen, you're getting into gotcha questions.

• 0:19Steven Bartlett?

  No, I genuinely.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Just all total rubbish.

• 0:21Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, no, I've not even asked the question yet. There needs to be boundaries.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  No, no, no, those rules.

• 0:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  Were not in place.

• 0:28Steven Bartlett?

  Can I ask the question?

• 0:29Speaker 00

  You can ask a question.

• 0:30Steven Bartlett?

  I'm going to ask a question.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  Just this bit is really hard for me.

• 0:33Steven Bartlett?

  People say you were a contradiction.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:35Steven Bartlett?

  What's your response to that?

• 0:46Steven Bartlett?

  When I started the Diary of a CEO, I wanted to create a platform where we get to see behind the scenes, where we get the truth, where we get the context. That is at least my attempt. The rest of it is up to the viewer to decide what they make of the conversation and what they take from the conversation. And the same applies to this episode. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  Matt, I was really, really keen to have you come and join me in my, in my kitchen here in, in London to talk in a long form way about a ton of different things that are front of mind for you that have gone on over the last couple of years. I think, you know, usually, and you've listened to this podcast before, so you know, I typically start about with childhood and all those things, which I will get on to. But the question that was really front of mind for me.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42Steven Bartlett?

  And I think will be for a lot of people is why did you want to have this conversation here?

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Hmm. Well, I love your podcast.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  One of the reasons I love it is because I think what you managed to do is you managed to get people to be really, really honest about themselves. One of the things I admire about the podcast is that it's important that we have a space where people can talk about where things go well and where people have failed and what they've learned from that. And you're so sort of brutally honest with yourself about it and you really put that on the line. And that in turn gets it out of other people. And, you know, I've been through this extraordinary experience of being the Health Secretary in the pandemic. There's a lot of, you know, things that I've learnt through that and learnt about myself.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  And I want to be able to articulate how I saw it, if you like. I just think that you're, it's just one of the most self-aware podcasts that I've, I've listened to and now I'm completely hooked.

• 2:47Steven Bartlett?

  So let's start then. I was brought up in a happy, loving, complicated, modern family.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:55Steven Bartlett?

  Explain. And why complicated?

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Well, complicated because my parents separated when I was two and I effectively grew up with four parents. So the both of them happily remarried before I can really remember. So it was complicated in the way that lots of modern families are complicated. And I have, I have a half brother, I have stepbrothers and sisters. But it was also, it was also very, it was very loving. And every, you know, I got that, that love and support from, from four parents rather than the normal two.

• 3:30Steven Bartlett?

  What were you like in school?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Well, one of the biggest things that happened to me was that I, after primary school, primary school's in this lovely, very rural Cheshire, primary school, a very, very straightforward, small, warm. And then at the age of 10, they put me in for the, or I was asked if I wanted to go in for the exam for the local independent school a year early. This was probably one of the biggest things that happened in my childhood. Because, you know, I went and did the exam and I got through and I went to school. So I went to secondary school a year early. Suddenly, I went from being, finding it all pretty straightforward to really having to struggle to keep up. Really having to work hard.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  And both socially and academically, suddenly, I was in this, you know, I was in with a group of, big group of people who were all a year ahead of me and combine that with my sort of, my mother's work ethic. You know, she started her own business and worked incredibly hard. And, um, you know, that had, it had, it had a big impact on me.

• 4:39Steven Bartlett?

  In what way? Specifically on the social side, you said socially struggling to keep up. Were you bullied?

• 4:48Speaker 00

  A bit, I wouldn't say that was the main, that was the main thing. But I was, but yeah, people, it was tough. People were tough on me.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  And, um, and I'm also quite sort of, you know, self-confident and exuberant and that sometimes has rubbed people up the wrong way, especially when you're the little guy at school. So I think, you know, that, so that, I'm, I'm sure that part of the sort of, the drive that I have comes from the fact that I found myself aged 10, suddenly in a very, you know, a tough environment.

• 5:22Steven Bartlett?

  And you, you ultimately must have done pretty well in that secondary school where you were trying to fit in because you went to Oxford, which is just.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I went to Oxford a year early, you know, so I was, yeah.

• 5:31Steven Bartlett?

  Because you got into secondary school early.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 5:34Steven Bartlett?

  And you studied politics, philosophy and economics, right? Which is a lot of, a lot of people that go on to become politicians, study, study that course. That seems to be almost like a bit of a rite of passage to politics in a way. Cause you've got, you know, people like, is it Ed Miliband, David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt, that have all.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, the list goes on, Michael Go.

• 5:52Steven Bartlett?

  Ed Davey.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Right. Ed Balls.

• 5:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. So one of the things that as being a bit of a pot like a, I guess there's two questions here. The first is, why did you choose politics?

• 6:02Speaker 00

  I thought it was just, I thought it was the most interesting thing to do. I actually got into it through the economics. So I did, I studied economics A level because I was really interested in business.

• 6:10Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  And what, what happened was this, that when I was a teenager in the early nineties, my mum's business nearly went bust. And we had a moment when we had this, our major client themselves were struggling in the recession in the early nineties and couldn't pay their bills. So it was a classic late payment cash crunch for a small business. We knew that if we didn't get this cheque by the end of the week, then the company was, was going under. Eventually, on the Wednesday or the Thursday, the cheque arrived and the business was saved and it went on to prosper. But that made me ask this question, you know,

• 6:54Speaker 00

  how come a perfectly good business, employing a load of people who are working incredibly hard, how can that go bust or be at risk of going bust for something completely outside of their control? And the sort of sense of injustice in that made me then ask, how does the economy work? And that's what led me to, to take an interest in economics, which I had a real affinity with. I loved it as an A level subject. And that, so that's what led me to, to, to PPE.

• 7:25Steven Bartlett?

  At that age, say like eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:28Steven Bartlett?

  Were you, were you aspiring to become a politician?

• 7:31Speaker 00

  No, I was inspiring, aspiring to become an entrepreneur. So I actually, I almost did economics and management at Oxford. And then somebody told me it was easier to get into PPE than economics and management. So, and that sounded close enough to what I wanted to do. So that's why I ended up doing it.

• 7:46Steven Bartlett?

  Is there not, because when I, because people have said to me, you know, I've had business success and all these things, I've built a platform. People say, have suggested, oh, maybe you should go into politics, Steve. And the thing that scares the life out of me is it's like a lose lose game. People are going to fucking hate you regardless of what you do. So I sometimes wonder, I'm like, who are these people that like, want to be politicians?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  So, thanks. But it's true, right? And my experience as health secretary is that as you get, you know, some people are, some people love you and some people hate you, right? I was, I was on the tube and I never know what that, what, how it's going to be and when they come up and see me. So I was on the tube last night and some enormous guy in a heavy metal t-shirt, long hair comes up to me and I'm like, how's this going to go? And he said, I just want to say, thanks. I got my vaccines because of you and I'll never forget it. I was like, oh, well, that went, that could have gone worse. And so, and so, you know, and, and obviously not every interaction is, is cheerful, to put it diplomatically.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  And so in a way, you know, that is part of it. You know that if you're going to make a big decision that affects lots of people's lives, some people are going to like it and some people aren't. And that isn't what got me into politics. What got me into politics was the observation that that's where the big decisions are made. And quite rightly in a democracy, you know, the big calls in economics to stop other people going through the same experience that I did as an early teenager with my parents' business where it almost went bust for something completely outside their control. And that, and that, and that's what drove me. And the combination of the interests and, you know, because it's very interesting politics and the mission got me there.

• 9:31Steven Bartlett?

  So, one of the things that has also always leveled the like political system in our country is that, and you kind of see this from, you know, you studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, is that a lot of the people that do go on to make those big decisions, as you've described, they come from like privilege.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:47Steven Bartlett?

  Right. And even, you know, you, you know, your parents went through a tough time, but living in Cheshire is.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:51Steven Bartlett?

  I'd rather live there than Moss Side, right?

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:53Steven Bartlett?

  It's a, it's a, it's a privileged place to, to grow up and to live and going into an independent school. You went to King's.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  King's School, Chester.

• 9:59Steven Bartlett?

  King, King's School in Chester as well, which is a privileged place to come from.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:02Steven Bartlett?

  So one of the things that I've always contended with and is, you know, and honestly, one of the things that actually quite, quite honestly put me off ever going into politics was this prospect that it's kind of this elitist club where they all come from Oxford. And, and then the problem you have with that, if that is true, right, is that the decisions then that are made for all of us.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:22Steven Bartlett?

  Are made from people that have walked a different set of foot.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:26Steven Bartlett?

  Pathway, right?

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Okay. So I think there's a few bits. Let's park the Oxford point because actually if we get, if Oxford and Cambridge and the other top universities get it right, then actually they are great meritocratic levelers. Because the thing that Oxford really did for me, not only taught me how to read and write, but it also, it took a provincial boy from Cheshire and put him into exactly the group that you describe, right? So I was from a very much a middle class background. But if those, the, the top universities get their, their selection right, who they choose, and if they get the, the support right, so that people from your sort of background feel encouraged and drawn towards them and

• 11:11Speaker 00

  then supported once you get there, then they can be great levelers.

• 11:14Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Okay. So, so, but let's park the sort of Oxbridge debate.

• 11:17Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  That's the sort of, you know, that debate will go on for as long as those universities are preeminent, I imagine. I think the most important thing in politics is where, where you're going and what you're trying to achieve. And one of the most important skills that I think is incredibly hard to communicate in politics, but is vital to doing the job well, is empathy. Right? And you can't.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  Walk other people's shoes, except through empathy. And, and the lived experience of a particular background is incredibly important. And I'm, I'm a, you know, I'm a big fan of welcoming people, trying to get people into politics from all sorts of backgrounds. So I'm not disagreeing with your critique. The point is each and every one of us has our own background. The way that you can try to get over the problem that you described is through empathy. And that's, and that's incredibly important.

• 12:18Steven Bartlett?

  I can't have empathy for what it's like to be a woman, for example, because I've never been one.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  No, that's not true. You can have empathy for it.

• 12:25Steven Bartlett?

  So, yeah, I can have empathy, but I, I, I believe that empathy comes, real, real true empathy for someone else comes from understanding the pain or struggle or situation they're going through.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:36Steven Bartlett?

  And I can never truly understand the pain or struggle that, say, for example, a woman facing discrimination.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:42Steven Bartlett?

  When she's trying to raise money.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:44Steven Bartlett?

  Is going through because I have never experienced that. So I can guess what it might feel like. It's like, almost like the topic of racism, I think, like.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:50Steven Bartlett?

  No one can know, I don't know how a white male politician that's gone to Oxford will know what it's like to be called the N word on the playground when I was 11 and how that made me feel like the feelings of shame and being different that I then went on to feel.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:05Steven Bartlett?

  So, so I, I tend to believe that the, the way we create a truly empathetic political system.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:11Steven Bartlett?

  Is by finding a way to get people in that have come from like low economic housing and different backgrounds and minorities. So when I look at the political landscape and I see that a lot of, you know, a lot of people have come through a very, like, too many people have come through a very privileged background. It makes me think that the decisions that are going to go on to be made will lack that true understanding of what it's like to grow up in a house that is like damp and moldy and there's rats and stuff.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  So there's, this, I'm grinning because there's two ways to answer this, right? But the thing that's absolutely screaming at me to say to you is that is why you should go into politics.

• 13:46Steven Bartlett?

  But I feel like I can't get in because.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Of course you can get in, you'd be, you'd be. I'll I'll sign you up now. It depends which party you want to join. That's I can only speak for one of them, but but go for it. So firstly, that's my actual response. But the other thing is, it's it is wrong to say that you cannot um uh that you can't empathize with with others and others' situations. You can't have lived somebody else's life, but you can seek to try to um to understand where they're coming from. And and I certainly do that. And, you know, that's part of representing a constituency. I think it's actually really hard to communicate

• 14:27Speaker 00

  in politics, uh this this the empathy point, because it's really easy to generalize. And and it comes down to the fact that if you poll people, right, most people think that politicians are useless. But when you name a politician, they tend to think that they're they're their local person, their local MP, they tend to think that they're great, right? So there's a gap between what people think of politicians as a whole and think of individuals who have interacted with.

• 14:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, I think I think I think I can definitely empathize with pain and suffering and all of those things. I just think in order to create a truly like representative political system.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 15:02Steven Bartlett?

  It needs to be full of people who have actually gone through those things.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Go for it. Join, get involved.

• 15:08Steven Bartlett?

  I think the thing that's always put me off is because when I heard about this, like, you know, everyone's come, you know, a lot of politicians have come from a certain background. And then you see how promotions and stuff are done. It makes me think that it's a bit of a like a, you know, a system where we're promoting our friends and bringing them up. And if they've gone to Oxbridge and I went, you know, I studied with them, I'll promote them when I get there. So I want it's always felt to me like running would be very, very, very difficult. Because I didn't go, I don't come from that sort of privileged Oxbridge, like typically quite boys' club place.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:42Steven Bartlett?

  That's how it feels, right, for me. So I might be wrong.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  I think I really I really think you're wrong.

• 15:46Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Because I think actually the system in a way, because of this problem. Um. The system is actually tries to draw people through faster.

• 15:57Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. Is it doing a good enough job?

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Uh, it's, I mean, look at actually, um, give him his credit, you know? Look at who Boris Johnson has put in his cabinet, right? And um, I know that you're immediately thinking of people he was at the same school and university as, right? Um, but there are an awful lot of people who weren't, right? And I don't want to go through the individual backstory of, you know, the guy who arrived aged nine from Kurdistan with only a pound, his dad with only a pound in his pocket.

• 16:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Right? Um, Sajid Javid, who grew up in one of the poorest streets in Bristol and made it uh from there. And by the way, who's from a family of amazing, amazing uh men. Um, his, I think he's got four brothers, there's five of them. Um, uh, Rishi Sunak, right? He grew up in a, his, his mum's a pharmacist, he grew up in a pharmacy, right? There are, there are loads of people who have made it from difficult backgrounds and, and actually, I'm sad that you have the impression that, that you do, because it's not really my experience of uh, of, of being there.

• 17:03Steven Bartlett?

  So you, you, you make the decision then to move towards politics. You become eventually George Osborne's Chief of Staff in two thousand and

• 17:13Speaker 00

  In five.

• 17:14Steven Bartlett?

  Five-ish, yeah?

• 17:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:14Steven Bartlett?

  And in two thousand and ten, you became the MP for mid Suffolk.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  West Suffolk.

• 17:17Steven Bartlett?

  West Suffolk, okay.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:19Steven Bartlett?

  And that, that was your, I guess, your, your entry into politics.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:24Steven Bartlett?

  Moving forward then, you, you, you know, you get promoted a few times and then Theresa May comes in and demotes you?

• 17:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 17:33Steven Bartlett?

  So she demoted you to Minister of State of Dig- Digital Culture?

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Digital and culture, and god, that was a brilliant job. I mean, so.

• 17:41Steven Bartlett?

  Why did she demote you?

• 17:43Speaker 00

  She demoted me because they decided they wanted a clean break from the Cameron Osborne years.

• 17:50Steven Bartlett?

  She didn't like George Osborne.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Well, she fired him pretty brutally and I was just, you know, head below the parapet enough to get through and she demoted me. I was, I was attending the cabinet at the time and she, I remember the meeting was, they had told the press that they were going to fire people until 11am and then start hiring people. And I was asked to go and see her at 10.50. So I thought, oh, this isn't going to go very well. I walked in and I was, she'd been running about 15 minutes late. So I walk in and there's a clock on the wall in her House of Commons office and it says 11.05. And I said, oh, it's gone 11. So I guess this is going to be okay. And because I thought, well, you know, at least make her

• 18:34Speaker 00

  laugh if she's going to be firing me, you know, why, why make it unpleasant? And she said, well, that depends how you react. Because I, there isn't a space for you in my cabinet, but I know you're really interested in digital and that's one of the big things that's going on in the world. So would you like to be the, the number two in DCMS and, and be responsible for digital policy and just keep your head down and sort, and, and sort that out? And I, I leapt at it. It was absolutely wonderful.

• 19:10Steven Bartlett?

  This is maybe a bit of my political naivety, but when I, when I was reading through that you'd, you'd been the minister for like digital, business, enterprise, energy, and ultimately health.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:20Steven Bartlett?

  How can one person know anything about any of that stuff?

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:23Steven Bartlett?

  How can anyone be a master of like five, six different things?

• 19:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, because that's not the job. So it's not the job to be the master. In a way, it's the job to be the people's representative amongst the experts. So your job as the minister is to be able to be the representative of the people.

• 19:41Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  Who is responsible for the direction of that policy area. And you have endless experts. Your job is not to be an expert, it's to listen to the experts and then decide democratically, what direction do we want to go? So take, I mean, an area that I do know, you know, I did have a background in, take on the future of the internet. And

• 20:05Steven Bartlett?

  What was your background in that?

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Well, only that I, I, you know, I can code and I understand a bit of about technology. But the big question was, how do you just keep children safe online?

• 20:16Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  And how you make, take the internet from a sort of a wild west and social media to a place where people have more protection. You know, is it, that was the, the, the, you know, most important question in that area at the time. And for that, yes, you need experts, but you also need a, you basically need a view of where you want to get to. It's a, it's a, it's, you wanna, you, you need to set the mission and the direction. It's

• 20:43Steven Bartlett?

  Let's talk about that.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Leadership that's needed.

• 20:45Steven Bartlett?

  My background, social media. And I actually, whenever I see like the social media policies being set, I always, the, the debate we have in social media and digital is like, who is it that's making these decisions? Because the people we see.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:56Steven Bartlett?

  When we, obviously the spokespeople, as you've described.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:58Steven Bartlett?

  We know that they don't know it like us.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:00Steven Bartlett?

  So we think that we, we, we pray that the decisions aren't made poorly. So let's take, cause that can be the subject we use to describe all of these industries that you've, you've led as minister. So as it relates to say, social media, when you're trying to understand what policies to set for children to keep them safe.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:16Steven Bartlett?

  You're telling me there's this like group of experts behind the scenes.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:19Steven Bartlett?

  Who are discussing and feeding information.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:21Steven Bartlett?

  And then your role to play is in deciding.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, on the trade offs.

• 21:27Steven Bartlett?

  The trade offs, right? Which would, would, which needs expertise to know what the trade offs are.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And then also, and communicating them.

• 21:36Steven Bartlett?

  Communicating it to the public.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  And understanding what the public is expecting.

• 21:41Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Sometimes experts can get so close to their subject matter that you've got to be like, well, yeah, but there's, you know, there's 60 million people over there who aren't experts. And they need the voice in the room as well.

• 21:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you're ultimately the person, when you're in charge of digital, that is making these calls. So you speak to the experts, then make the calls. My, my thing is, on a topic like digital, the harm that can be done if someone doesn't understand that area of expertise. Because ultimately, the minister makes the call.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:05Steven Bartlett?

  You can like destroy an industry, cripple an, like cripple an economy. So I've always thought that the person making the call.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:12Steven Bartlett?

  Should be. Should be really experienced in that subject matter. And that doesn't seem to be the case because of the design of the political system.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  Because of democracy, Stephen. It's democracy. And that's good and right, right? Because when you have technocratic government, you can, you just get, you know, experts are so focused on their area that sometimes they just don't see the big picture.

• 22:34Steven Bartlett?

  So you're saying you need that impartial kind of outsider to?

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what, that's what I tried to be as a, as a, as a minister. And also, so it's about lifting people's eyes to the, to the, you know, the big social trade offs. And I mean that in the best sense, that, you know, the trade offs within society, how free to be versus how safe to be in the, in the internet. It's an absolute classic of political philosophy, right? And people have been worrying about that question in the offline world for 300 years. And we were bringing that sort of approach into the online world as opposed to just leaving it as a completely libertarian space. But the, the job is to, is to synthesize the expert view, but not just, not just follow

• 23:19Speaker 00

  it. Because the experts can become so focused, but also they can't sometimes provide the leadership, right? To say, we, we're going over there. And, and, you know, like, yes, of course, we're going to take on Facebook over some of the harmful content. Of course we are. We're not just going to lie down and say that they can make the rules up.

• 23:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because when I see the political debates with things like Facebook, a lot of the government officials, both here and in the US, haven't got a fucking clue what Facebook is. And you can see them asking Mark Zuckerberg the most dumb, naive questions about the platform. And then as an outsider watching that these people that don't understand what they're talking about are ultimately going to be writing the legislation. As someone that works in the industry and could actually tell you what, in my view, having worked in the industry for 10 years, deep in it, fully understands things like the Cambridge Analytica scandal and data, data privacy, and really also understands the context of the media pressure, which is sometimes Comes doesn't come is it agenda based?

• 24:27Speaker 00

  And I worry. So getting a rational, get it right. So getting a rational solution out of that bundle of problems.

• 24:34Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Is not easy.

• 24:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. So what would you kind of?

• 24:36Speaker 00

  But it is, but it, but it is democratic to ensure that somebody who is, who represents, represents people.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Is ultimately making the decision, but if they're any good, they'll listen to the advice that you get.

• 24:52Steven Bartlett?

  I think, I think my view is that they should represent the people for sure. And I think that spokesman role in leadership is incredibly, incredibly important. But I also feel like they should like have deep understanding of the nuance and complexity and have experience in the thing, which kind of brings me on to, you became in charge of health as well.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:06Steven Bartlett?

  The health minister, which is obviously not in your wheelhouse.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  No. So I'm, I'm a, doctors ask me, you know, why should a non-doctor?

• 25:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Be responsible for the health service? Now, two answers to that. First is, well, it's pretty arrogant of doctors to say it should be a doctor. What about a nurse? Right? Cause there's more nurses in the NHS than doctors. Park that minor local issue. Right? The reason is because I am there as the representative, not just of those who work in the health service, but of the people who use the health service, which is to say all of us. And so I think actually it's better for the health secretary to essentially be somebody who is a, who is there on the side of the patients. You, of course you listen to the, the clinical advice, you know, and some of the most amazing brains in the world,

• 25:53Speaker 00

  right? Like, like Chris Witty, Jonathan Van Tam. These people are amazing, wonderful communicators, very shrewd advisors. Ultimately, it's right that the person taking the decisions is representing the people through the democratic process we have. And not representing the, the producers, if you like. That is a, that is a better way of structuring it.

• 26:19Steven Bartlett?

  You think you believe that?

• 26:21Speaker 00

  I really do.

• 26:22Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, I don't know these issues deeply enough to know the full complexities. And this is maybe even proving my point that I don't understand the nuance of politics. So I can't actually say if that's a better or worse system. One would assert, though, that the best solution might be to have someone who understands the side of the patients, because they are one, we're all humans, we all live in this society. So we use the NHS. That gives me a little bit of empathy as to the, you know, the system from a patient's perspective.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:47Steven Bartlett?

  But also someone that understands health and the nuances of that. Maybe that's spent the last 10 or 20 years, you know, working within the industry and can understand those layers, you know, more than someone who was working in digital five minutes ago can. It's just an observation as like a naive outsider.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:04Steven Bartlett?

  Like, why do these people that don't have experience in this subject matter become the minister for it?

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's quite a common, it's quite a common critique of politics. And different countries deal with it different ways, right? So some countries, the entire cabinet is made up of people who aren't in parliament. Like, you know, the US cabinet is made up of people who have to by law not be in the Senate or the House of Representatives. But then you get even more of a divide between the sort of political and the democratic over here.

• 27:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  And the essentially technocratic over there. Actually, I think that our system is better than the US system because it's because these two things are merged together. Because you do, you get in taking these decisions, you get incredible advice, you get access to, you know, the all the industry experts that you want to talk to. And ultimately, you're making, you know, you're making balanced judgments. The way the UK does it as well is the civil service will never put forward a proposal that they don't think is workable. That's the, that's the deal, right? So you do have these long term experts who have been in the field. And they will, they'll say, okay, this is where, the way I tried to do it was I'd say, this is where I think we need to get to.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  How do we best get there? And then the experts will come up with a plan of how to get there.

• 28:22Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  And, you know, you might have a view on some of the details of that. But essentially, I saw my job as saying, this is the mission and then communicating how we get there.

• 28:31Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  And then being advised on the way from A to B. Because the thing you lose if you go for your model is you lose the democratic input. And, and that can lead to things going wrong.

• 28:44Steven Bartlett?

  In 2019, when Theresa May stepped down, you ran to be the next Prime Minister, or at least to lead the party, right?

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Well.

• 28:51Steven Bartlett?

  And that would lead you to being the Prime Minister.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:55Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you want to be the Prime Minister?

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Because I thought that there was a need for a complete fresh start.

• 29:01Steven Bartlett?

  Did you think you'd win?

• 29:02Speaker 00

  No.

• 29:03Steven Bartlett?

  At least you're honest.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, but I had fun trying.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  No, I didn't. I didn't think I'd win, but I wanted to get some, I wanted to get some arguments made, right? I worried that my, I worried that we were, the party was talking not enough about how it's enterprise that leads to prosperity.

• 29:27Steven Bartlett?

  Is it a publicity thing running? Because they, I watch the US elections every year, I'm obsessed with it. And it, and the same people run every year, they know they're not going to win. But I think the, the exposure and publicity you get is incredible.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a, of course, that's one of the consequences. I basically had an argument I wanted to make, which was, which was, okay, Brexit, decision's been taken, let's get that done and get on to building a stronger economy in the future and basically get it done as quickly as we can and move forward. That was the argument I wanted to make. I managed to make the argument quite sort of loudly because I was running.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  And then, well, and then I pulled out.

• 30:08Steven Bartlett?

  Pulled out, came seventh, got behind Boris.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  I.

• 30:11Steven Bartlett?

  Seven out of 10, was it?

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 30:12Steven Bartlett?

  Did you come seventh out of 10, was it?

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Six or seven.

• 30:15Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah. And then you got behind Boris?

• 30:17Speaker 00

  And then I got behind Boris.

• 30:18Steven Bartlett?

  Because you knew he would win?

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was obvious that he was going to win. Also, I came to the view that he, he could sort the problem that we were stuck with of Brexit better than any of the other candidates. And also, I thought, you know, this guy has great capabilities and he needs people around him.

• 30:44Steven Bartlett?

  We move forward to Covid.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:46Steven Bartlett?

  Which was, you know, you get appointed as being the Health Minister when a pandemic rolls in.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  I know. I remember, I remember seeing the, um, the, the Chinese publication on the first of January. So it was New Year's Day and I saw this thing on the inside pages of one of the newspapers. To say, um, the Chinese have just announced that there's a, a new, uh, disease. And nobody knew, we didn't know it was a coronavirus, it might have been a flu. Uh, and nobody knew whether it was serious or not, but I remember thinking, well, maybe this is it. But I didn't really think it was until, um, uh, until a couple of weeks later.

• 31:29Steven Bartlett?

  When, when was that, that, cause I, you know, I was reading through all of the minutes from your Sage meetings to try and understand the, the kind of phases of.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:36Steven Bartlett?

  Cause I listen, I run business, right? And we have crises and chaos and all those things.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:40Steven Bartlett?

  There's various stages you go through of trying to understand exactly what this is. And then how, you know, how impactful it's going to be.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:48Steven Bartlett?

  And then what we should be doing.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:50Steven Bartlett?

  And I kind of ran through all of that. So when, when in your view, did you start to realise that this wasn't just a cold?

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. End of January. So the Chinese published the sequence of the genome of the, of the virus. So we then knew it was a coronavirus. Um, that was bad news, right? Because we had a stockpile of flu vaccine, uh, for this sort of emergency, if it had been a flu. And the fact that it was a coronavirus and spreading this rapidly in China was bad news. And then at that point, I remember Chris Witty saying to me, it's 50 50. Something this contagious, either they can hold it in China. Or if it gets out of China, it's going to go global. So we were, by the end of January, we were on to, um, developing the vaccine, for instance.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  And. Trying to get the testing system up and running. And then we had this surreal month during February when nobody else was sort of thinking that this was a big thing. And we still thought it was 50 50, but 50% chance of a global pandemic is, you know, very, very bad. And we were, I remember standing next to the speaker's chair in the House of Commons for a PMQs, watching every single question was about something else. And nobody asked a question about what became known as COVID. And I remember thinking at the end of the session, the end of half hour, every single question that has been asked

• 33:23Speaker 00

  is totally irrelevant, because it's all about other things. And we've got this one fact in China, and it is, it's totally dominant.

• 33:36Steven Bartlett?

  Why weren't you raising the bell?

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Oh, I was. I was giving statements to Parliament and what have you. And we were preparing inside government for what needed to happen. So at the end of January, JVT came and said, I said, how long will it take to get a vaccine? He said, well, normally it would take five years, but we think we can do it in a year to 18 months.

• 33:56Steven Bartlett?

  He said in January?

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, if everything goes well. And I said, your mission is to have a vaccine by Christmas. And we, he and the team that we built pulled it off. So we were getting things moving. And then it was when we saw the pictures from Italy. Do you remember the, you know, that was the moment that I knew it was global.

• 34:17Steven Bartlett?

  And that was what month?

• 34:18Speaker 00

  That was the end of February.

• 34:20Steven Bartlett?

  February, yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was the end of February half term.

• 34:22Steven Bartlett?

  Because everything was calm at this point. We were watching it happen overseas. I mean, like, I remember this, the China scenes.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:28Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone was kind of calm about it. Oh, China are having a problem. That's kind of how it felt. And then the Italy moment was, was terrifying.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was the moment when it was obvious it was coming.

• 34:38Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  And I remember having a call that my, my, my German opposite number, who I got, you know, became very close to, he phoned me up. He said, have you seen these pics out of Italy? I was like, yeah. He was like, this is it. And it's like, yeah, this is it. So that was the end of, yeah, that was the end of February.

• 34:56Steven Bartlett?

  But still in March, there was a lot of confusion in those Sage minutes about what to do.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:01Steven Bartlett?

  About what was going to happen.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:02Steven Bartlett?

  Could we stop it?

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Complete lack of data. That's the, that was the problem. Total paucity of data. We had a, we didn't have a testing regime. We had to build that from scratch. And so you didn't know how many people had it. We didn't know the characteristics of the disease. We didn't know what the, we didn't know what, you know, what the symptoms were largely because the symptoms of COVID are so varied that they didn't have a full symptom list. One of the things that we didn't know for ages, which we now take for granted knowing, is how many people have had it and have got the antibodies. There was a big debate after the first peak of some people saying they're optimists like me, but it turns out far, far too optimistic, right?

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Saying, oh, you know, three quarters of the people must have had it by now. So basically we're fine and we're through it. And then, so I got a survey done, taking people's blood and got the, got a representative sample. It took ages to get this thing up and running. And we eventually got the data through that said that something like in London, 15% of people had had it and outside London, it was under five. It's like, Christ, that means almost nobody's had it. And still we've had all these deaths. And that means, you know, that was the moment we knew we had a major problem because there was no way through this other than the vaccine.

• 36:30Steven Bartlett?

  And Sage at this point, and the meetings that you're having there, there's kind of this resignation that is going to just wipe through the population. But the, but the issue is the, the objective is now just to try and stop it smashing the NHS, basically.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what happened was, you know, we saw those predictions of the, the reasonable worst case scenario, but the big problem was we were going up the reasonable worst case scenario.

• 36:51Steven Bartlett?

  Quickly.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  You know, and I remember. I remember, of course, I remember the the day that the first person in the UK died of Covid. But but I remember the day that oddly, something like the thirty second person died. And it's a funny to say that number, but it's a there's a reason for it. I was sitting on the side of my bath at home. And I got the news that we'd had thirty thirty two deaths. And suddenly there was a this isn't, you know, one person for whom we've got a protocol of how you manage that. Terrible as that is, this is like big numbers and it was a big jump in the number. And I knew that that that number was going to get bigger.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  And the worst period, the the most sort of frightening period of the whole thing was after we'd done the lockdown. We'd pulled every lever we could. So I remember sitting in the cabinet room and saying, we're going to have to tell people to stop all unavoidable social contact. And you probably remember, you know, that being said, and

• 37:57Speaker 00

  the the really frightening time was after we'd done all those things, brought in the lockdown, we'd done everything, right? And if this disease had carried on going up, there was there was absolutely nothing more we could do. We'd shut the schools, we'd shut hospitality, you know, we'd pulled. You know, we'd set out at the start of March, a a a set of options of levers that we could pull to try to stop this thing. And by the middle of March, we'd pulled every lever. And it was a and and so the next two weeks, as the numbers carried on going up, they carried on going up for about ten days because of the incubation period. That was that was that was really scary. And then and then and then they started to turn. And then we knew we could get this thing under control.

• 38:38Steven Bartlett?

  The criticism leveled at the UK is that we were the last like major Western country to pull those levers you've described in mid March. And when you look through the minutes, there is just like several weeks of like confusion and indecision. And obviously, in those weeks, as you've described there,

• 38:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:53Steven Bartlett?

  what you didn't, from what I've seen in the minutes and subsequent interviews, is what you didn't know was the speed of transmission that was going on.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:59Steven Bartlett?

  And obviously, because there's that fourteen day death delay.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's funny that, you know, it's funny that the previous conversation we had was about how you should have the experts making the decisions.

• 39:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  The truth is, we didn't have the, the experts didn't have the data either. So these were difficult calls. Actually, in terms of where we were on the curve, we pulled the levers ahead of other countries. Because we were a bit behind Italy and, and Spain. But the.

• 39:32Steven Bartlett?

  The lockdown lever. So Spain, France and Italy went into lockdown on the ninth of March.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, but we reckoned that we were several weeks behind them in terms of the progress of the virus, that it, as in it had come to those countries first, then from them to us. But either way.

• 39:47Steven Bartlett?

  And that was wrong.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  The big picture, we were much closer to them than, than, than we were being, than their best estimate, right? By these, by the best people who were in Sage, the scientists. And, you know, what it felt like was, this is an enormous call. So the costs of action are huge. The costs of inaction are also huge. So you, you know, we knew when we were sitting around the cabinet table, making these decisions, that the, the, the balance between these two was an enormous, enormous unknown. So in a, with an unprecedented virus, with very little data.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  We were essentially, you know, doing these things that were so, we knew we were very, were going to be very damaging. If you think about the story about, I, I told earlier about coming, I, I came into politics partly because I had this searing formulative experience of something completely outside of our control. Nearly knocking out the livelihood of my family, right? And here I am. Participating in decisions that were going to have a more devastating impact on businesses and people who rely on social contact in order to survive and thrive. So

• 41:12Speaker 00

  we were hugely aware of the of the pain that would come from the decisions as well as the pain that would come from from delay. And the other thing that we didn't know was how the public would react, right? And this is there, there's an optimistic story, which is the public were amazing, you know, and and the advice that we were getting was we're not sure whether the public will will will put up with lockdown for very long. And so you've got to time the period of lockdown. Actually, the public were amazing. Once you explain that, you know, there's a serious problem, we're all going to have to do something. It's going to be uncomfortable, but we'll get through it together. And the public were amazing.

• 41:55Steven Bartlett?

  Obviously, with Italy, Spain and France locking down first, there was also a bit of a case study as to how publics will react if presented in a certain way to the lockdowns. Because we were later in locking down people, if you look at the numbers, they say that there's about 20, if we'd locked down a week earlier, 21,000 people would still be alive from that first wave. When you hear that, how does that how does that sound and feel? And also around that time Boris Johnson goes and does that interview and references one of the options being taking it on the chin. And then in hindsight, how does that all feel for you personally? That thought that one week earlier, we could have saved 21,000 lives?

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's obviously it's something that I'll always think about. You know, if I search for what I really believe about that, and the honest truth is, the honest truth is that we didn't know. And of course, you know, hindsight is a wonderful thing. And it was about it was judgment based on on on these, you know, this, the balance of these two scales. And

• 43:16Speaker 00

  I think that whenever you go through a period of history, ultimately, it's about learning from it. You know, you've got to make sure that if this, if a pandemic, you know, disease happens again, we'll be far better prepared. And I think that the, I think the Far East was far better prepared because they'd been through MERS and SARS. And honestly, that how I feel is like, I really wish we'd known then what we knew now.

• 43:45Steven Bartlett?

  Well, if you, in hindsight, then, because we're playing games of hindsight now, which are, as they say, it's 2020. But what are, when you look back honestly, at the decisions that were made and how you got the data and the way that the meetings were handled with Sage and all of these, and ultimately, what led to these decisions, what in hindsight, which is a wonderful thing that we can only deploy in the past.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:05Steven Bartlett?

  In hindsight, what do you think were the mistakes, or the areas where we could have done better in the decision making, how we got the information and all those things? What were those mistakes in hindsight?

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Well, you know, we made, there were some mistakes that we made in terms of the measures.

• 44:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  How they were brought in.

• 44:25Steven Bartlett?

  As in not hard enough, or?

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Just, you know, just details about the things that really, really matter to people. I'll give you one example, funerals. We brought in rules saying that six people could go to a funeral, I think it was, very, very restricted. But for some people, especially people who were shielding, the rules were interpreted as, in some cases, even the spouse shouldn't go to the funeral if they were shielding. Now, that was, that was terrible. I remember watching that, the film of a young boy who died, who was buried by people in

• 45:12Speaker 00

  hazmat suits without his parents there.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  And, you know, that was just awful. And, you know, you listen to that, right? And we changed the rules and made it, made it clear. So, you know, that was a, that was all, all the time. I'd say, you know, all the time we were on the lookout for, okay, what do we need to be doing differently? Cause it was unprecedented. And there was a,

• 45:42Speaker 00

  and it, you know, in hindsight, some of it looks like these were sort of hard and fast and obvious decisions. They weren't obvious decisions at all. And we were constantly sort of questioning ourselves in terms of, in terms of whether we got the judgment right.

• 45:56Steven Bartlett?

  What was your life like in that time?

• 45:58Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Well, I, I, so my alarm went off at six o'clock every morning. And I'd,

• 46:07Speaker 00

  you know, I, I basically had about a half an hour with the kids in the morning. And then I'd get picked up at seven thirty, maybe seven o'clock. And, and then, and then work, you know, unbelievable, until about, about midnight. And I, you know, what my, my permanent secretary, Chris Wormwold, at the start said, this is not going to be over in a, in a couple of weeks, right? You've got to get, we've all got to get ourselves into a position where we can just keep going. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And, and there was a, a weekend basically meant that we didn't start work till about nine. And so that was the, you

• 46:51Speaker 00

  know, that was the, the time off, so to speak. And that, it was like that for three or four months during that period.

• 46:59Steven Bartlett?

  What about your mental health position? Cause I,

• 47:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:02Steven Bartlett?

  You know, cause that feeling, that going home every day with that feeling that my decisions could sway, as we saw negatively in this case, you know, twenty one million, twenty one thousand lives for better or for worse. And ultimately, you know, hundred and sixty thousand people died. You're going home with that every day with that thought that your decisions, decisions you're making now as a health secretary are life and death. How do you relax? How do you?

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's, relaxation I got through exercise. But the, in the health department, the sense was a total sense of mission. And I've never been in the military, but some people say this is what it's like when you're on a military operation as well. As in, there was a focus over how to optimize, how we could make decisions. You know, of course, there were sleepless nights, but really, we thought, you know, when we had some, you know, Chris Witty himself is a brilliant advisor on how to keep yourself, you know, personally in the, in the zone. So the, the sense of

• 48:09Speaker 00

  mission that we were trying to solve something that was incredibly difficult as best as we could, was very, very strong in that period.

• 48:16Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have anxiety?

• 48:18Speaker 00

  It depends what you mean by anxiety. Of course, I was anxious about every, you know, all these big decisions.

• 48:23Steven Bartlett?

  That awful sense of nervousness that, you know, can be crippling at times. You know that?

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it was, yes, up to the, but not about, I, you know, I didn't, I didn't find it, I didn't find it crippling. I found it motivating.

• 48:36Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know, when I say anxiety, do you know what I mean? I mean, there's the, the kind of phrase of describing something as being an anxious situation, but then actually suffering with anxiety.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, not, not in a medical, I didn't feel that in a medical sense. I basically felt like I got up in the morning and I did my level best and then I went to sleep and then I woke up and repeated the exercise. And that, for me, that was the only way to get through it without sort of collapsing in a hoop.

• 49:04Steven Bartlett?

  If you'd known that a pandemic would roll in, would you have avoided that health secretary job? Be honest with me.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  I don't know. I don't know. That's a great question. Someone's got to do it.

• 49:23Steven Bartlett?

  Would you have, if you knew that that situation was coming?

• 49:28Speaker 00

  If I knew this situation was coming, there's about a hundred things I'd immediately have done, right? We would have.

• 49:33Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, I mean, would you have put yourself in that role? If you'd knew that, if, if I said, now there's a pandemic coming next week, do you want, do you want the job of being health secretary?

• 49:40Speaker 00

  That's such a what if question.

• 49:41Steven Bartlett?

  But I, I would answer it.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  The honest truth is yes.

• 49:44Steven Bartlett?

  You would take it?

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:45Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Because someone's going to make the decisions.

• 49:50Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so one of the

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Do you know what, do you know what the overriding sense is?

• 49:55Speaker 00

  That I'm trying to articulate not particularly well is a sense of, a sense of duty. Right. When the really bad stuff happens. And you're in the job, you've got to stand up and be counted.

• 50:07Steven Bartlett?

  One of the decisions that was made was, and ultimately criticizes this whole care home.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:12Steven Bartlett?

  Stuff. What's your view on that before?

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so, okay, this is a really good example of the, the, of, of, of, of learning from what you're seeing on the ground. So the criticism runs that the NHS made a decision to get people out of hospitals because we need hospital space and send them into care homes. And that took COVID with them and a lot of people died. And that criticism is wrong. But there's a different criticism, which is more accurate. The reason that's wrong is too fond. There's been a piece of work that's a piece of analysis that's done that showed that approximately 2% of the infections that got into care homes were from that route. The, and the reason for that is that when those people went into the care homes, they

• 50:59Speaker 00

  were, they then isolated in the care homes because they weren't tested, because the tests didn't exist. Now, I wish to God that the tests had existed and we, you know, that was a big part of my life, trying to build this testing system. But they, they didn't exist. And most of those people who left hospital actually went home, not into, not into care homes. The truth is that the peak in the care homes came about a month later. So the facts don't even stack up this narrative. But there've been, you know, there's a few false narratives that have got going about the pandemic and that's one of them. The truth is, and we couldn't say it, we didn't want to say it at the time because

• 51:40Speaker 00

  we didn't want to demotivate people. But the truth is that the main root of the virus getting into care homes sadly was from staff because staff live in the community and this disease was rife in the community. But I didn't want to stand at that podium and give the impression I was blaming the staff.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  The thing that we then did was we changed the rules so you could not work in more than one care home. And in the second wave, the number of deaths in care homes was far, far lower and we had the testing. So actually, what we needed to have done was do the staff movement policy much earlier. And we hadn't spotted that that was the route. And so, you know, there's an inquiry that will come and go through all these things. And I'm actually looking forward to it because there's a whole series of points where we've got to make sure we learn the right lesson. And then there's a couple of other things that are up there that, you know, just aren't true or need to be like this whole, you know, we talked about criticism as a politician, right?

• 52:40Speaker 00

  One of the things I've been criticised for is for giving a contract to the local pub landlord, right? I don't know whether you've read that story.

• 52:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I've heard all of that stuff, yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  It's just not true.

• 52:48Steven Bartlett?

  We'll talk about that. I want to just, because the point on the care home bit, it's good. So you've answered one of my points there, which was about that whole rumour that people were being released from the NHS into care homes and that was causing issues. The thing that I saw from the Sage minutes was that on roughly the 10th of March, which was fairly early in all of this. Sage did say that there should be special policy consideration given to care homes and various types of retirement communities. Presumably you had the data at that point that said elderly people were being disproportionately affected by. So around the 10th of March, there should probably should have been an action taken. And then in the Sage minutes, you don't really see care homes or retirement communities mentioned again until a month later, when there's been serious death in care homes.

• 53:33Steven Bartlett?

  I think people going into care homes were 10 times more likely to die than if they'd just gone home because of the more than 10 times more likely to die. I think at the peak of the pandemic, the first wave, that there were 17 times more likely to die in a care home than had they just gone home to live with, you know, in a private home.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's because there's lots of reasons for that. You've got to unpack it. So firstly, it is the most vulnerable people who live in care homes. So their vulnerability to the disease is much greater. Secondly, you know, the nature of care homes is obviously that the disease can spread more easily and every European country had this problem. But the broader point about the Sage minutes around that time, action was taken.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  But we didn't get to the policy that I think had the best impact, which was the stopping people from working in more than one care home for several months afterwards.

• 54:25Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  And if we'd known that that was going to be the thing that would say, stop it as much as it did, obviously, we would have done that. We would have done that earlier. But again, it comes down to not knowing.

• 54:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And I guess this is a point of judgment. Hindsight has revealed that that was a mistake. Some countries got it right. New York didn't get it right either, but other countries did get that.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  You know, and the other thing we were worried about. So we were worried about a different problem that didn't happen. And sometimes this, you know, it's important to think about at the time, the things we were worrying about. So in Spain, a whole care home full of elderly people had died because the staff had all gone home. So we were also worried about making sure that the care homes remained staffed because people in care homes die if the staff aren't there. So thankfully, that never happened. But we were worried about the, you know, we were worried about the opposite problem at the

• 55:30Speaker 00

  same time. And, you know, thankfully, we avoided one, but the other one came to pass.

• 55:39Steven Bartlett?

  Do you look back on that, that decision in particular? Because that's one of the big criticisms that a lot of people level at, the handling of the process. Do you look back at that as a, another mistake in hindsight? Because you, as you say, you were trying to make the best decision on balance, right?

• 55:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, I know for sure.

• 55:56Steven Bartlett?

  What would you have done differently, maybe?

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Right. What, so on this foresight hindsight thing, I know for sure that I did my best.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  And I know that the team around me worked with, you know, did, worked with the right motives to get through as best we could. The, the importance of learning how best to handle this situation, for God forbid, if it happens again.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  Is absolutely vital, but I worry as much about learning the wrong lessons as learning the right lessons. So that's why it's important that we have this sort of discussion about about the care homes in particular, um, to to make sure that just because something is in the narrative, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Uh, without doubt, if I'd known then what I know now, we would have brought in the staff movement rule much earlier. In fact, do you know what? You should probably have it in normal times as well, because lots of people die each year in of flu in care homes. And, you know, so the and the and the processes of how flu gets into a care home are probably the same as COVID, because it's just another communicable disease.

• 57:11Steven Bartlett?

  When people like mark the success of our handling of the pandemic, one of the ways that they choose to do it is to compare it to other countries. And in that first wave in particular, our deaths were just so much higher than the comparable countries. So does is that not an indicator that we messed up or that we got it or that our judgment calls turned out to be the wrong ones?

• 57:33Speaker 00

  A combination of a combination of things, right? A combination of things like the timing of the decisions to lock down. Um, the obesity of our nation compared to others is one other factor. Um, one of the factors that, um, the experts think is a cause is that lots of people travel from all over the UK to Spain and Italy during that half term. And so it was brought back and seeded across the whole country, whereas of some other countries like France had it very badly in a in a couple of cities, but didn't have the spread in the way we did. So there's some things that are essentially, you know, just, just facts of life that were outside anybody's control. Obviously, that's not, you know, what you're getting at. And it's not the stuff that really affects

• 58:18Speaker 00

  how I think about it, because it's the it's the active decisions that we also need to, you know, we need to go through and learn from.

• 58:26Steven Bartlett?

  So would you, that's what I'm saying is, is the, the, the large number of deaths that we had versus other countries, a indicator that we made poor decisions in that first wave?

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Well, now you see, Stephen, you're getting into gotcha question.

• 58:39Steven Bartlett?

  No, genuinely, because, because we're going to come on to the good stuff, right? We're going to come on to the fact that we're out of lockdowns for everybody else.

• 58:45Speaker 00

  So the, but the way, the reason I, I reacted that way is that, is that it is self-evident and obvious that you've got to improve decisions and learn from them.

• 58:55Steven Bartlett?

  No, no.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  And the best, and the best proof point of this, and the best, um, sort of, it's, it's obvious from anybody who's run any organisation is you've constantly got to be asking, was that the best decision? And part of leadership is to allow your team to essentially learn from and change their decisions, not stay stuck with them just because that's the decision that we took. And in the second and subsequent waves, we have done relatively better internationally. So how I feel about all that is I feel, um, I feel sad that the performance in the first half, if you like, was not as good as it could have been.

• 59:37Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, that answers the question.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  And then I feel, and I, but I feel pleased that we learnt quite a few things. And in a way, you know, we did better second time round.

• 59:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  But the thing I felt at the time, and this is true in any organisation I've been in, is that if you want people to perform at their best, they have to know that if they screw up, they're not going to get shouted at. The question is not who did that, it's how do we fix it?

• 1:00:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  And that was a, that attitude was a big part of, um, of, of how things, you know, we managed to get better. You know, testing is another example, right? Testing first, it was, you know, it was far, we, we didn't have any, we built it as fast as we could. That needed to go much faster. By this Christmas, the Americans were saying, why can't we have a testing system like, uh, like the UK, you know? And my view is that, uh, Dido Harding did an amazing job. But every time we had a screw up, the question that we asked was, how do we fix it? Not whose fault is it?

• 1:00:36Steven Bartlett?

  Did you actually think that was a gotcha question? Cause you, do you think, do you think I'm the type of person that would sit here?

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  I don't think you are, which is why I called you out on it.

• 1:00:41Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, yeah, cause I, it's every question I ask is honestly, honestly? Genuine.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Steven Bartlett?

  Because and then you're right, there's so many things that we did better than all of these other nations. And I'll be honest, I'm sat here really lucky that we're able to do this in person.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:00:55Steven Bartlett?

  Because of the decisions that the UK took.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  So no, what I meant by gotcha is that, you know, the, the question of, um, will you get the guy to say he, that there was X screw up is a classic of the Today Programme.

• 1:01:11Steven Bartlett?

  I, I base, I'm.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  And that actually frankly makes some of the decision making harder.

• 1:01:14Steven Bartlett?

  No, I, I, no, I, I understand what you're saying. Um, my question was that is the, was the, the increase in death at the start, does, is that evidence as people claim that we made in hindsight, because that's all we have now, in hindsight, the, the decisions are wrong. And also there's this other exacerbating factor, which was, I mean, the World Health Organisation at the time, and even I tweeted it, said that there wasn't, we couldn't wait for a vaccine. They said that we, that's what they said. They said we couldn't wait for a vaccine because sometimes vaccines, I mean, there's not a vaccine for SARS still.

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  I never believe that.

• 1:01:46Steven Bartlett?

  Sometimes they take five or 10.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  I never believe that.

• 1:01:47Steven Bartlett?

  So you, so you, you, you thought there was always going to be a vaccine?

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and it's true that sometimes, yeah, in number 10, he was basically the only other person who agreed with me.

• 1:01:56Steven Bartlett?

  Why did he say the take it on the chin thing?

• 1:01:59Steven Bartlett?

  Cause I use that in my tweet.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  He was, I, I remember that. He was, he was actually trying to argue against that. He was saying, he was saying, it comes down to how difficult it is to communicate in uncertainty. He was saying, some people are saying we ought to take it on the chin. I don't agree with that. I think we need to act. But so one of the reasons it's hard to communicate in politics, and one of the reasons it's hard to communicate empathetically, is that you have to both have the actual conversation, but also every single word you say.

• 1:02:28Steven Bartlett?

  Can be twisted.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  Will be taken and analysed, for better or for worse, and I don't hold this against the media particularly, but they, they will look at them, those words, both within the context and out of context. And so, you know, this is true of this interview, but I knew that coming into it and have decided just to try to answer the questions. Um, the, um, but that is part of communication. So I, the, the, the, you know. Boris saying that some people say we should just, I can't remember the exact words, the last word or something, take it on the chin, right? But I don't think that's the way we should do it. Instead, we should do it that way. It was written up as Boris floats idea of taking it on chin. Well, he did float the idea, but he then immediately rejected it for a different proposition.

• 1:03:14Steven Bartlett?

  I did read this age minutes and to his and your credit, you don't mention herd immunity as the strategy to take forward in those minutes.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:03:23Steven Bartlett?

  From what I saw, so although that was a widespread narrative, it's not actually what was going on in the meetings.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  The truth there is that some people were pushing the herd immunity idea.

• 1:03:33Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  And then it bubbled up and came to a head.

• 1:03:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  And I went out and killed it. So it was like, no, we are not doing that.

• 1:03:46Steven Bartlett?

  So you knew that a vaccine was going to be.

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  I had, at first it was faith, right? At first it was faith and it gradually became more and more real.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  And I just, I knew that we'd got a vaccine for Ebola.

• 1:04:00Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:04:01Speaker 00

  And the Oxford vaccine actually comes from the work several years before to get an Ebola vaccine. And I had, I just had this belief and maybe it's because I'm an optimist. Once the data came out in about May that showed that only, you know, this tiny proportion of the public had had antibodies and had had exposure. And therefore it was obvious and categorically impossible to get to the levels of antibodies you need across society without a huge amount of suffering and death. I, the people who'd been promoting herd immunity were now evidently and scientifically wrong. It wasn't just, it was a bad idea. It was provably a bad idea.

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  Once we got to that point, there was only one way out and that was a vaccine. And, you know, I believe in the power of human ingenuity and I believed in the team in Oxford. And I also thought that when the whole world is searching for something, then.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  Then somebody was going to get it right. And so we brought in people to go and buy from around the world like Kate Bingham. And we took this attitude, which was sure, we backed the British one, but we absolutely, we're going shopping as well, right? And money is no object. And that's what we did. And thank God we did it.

• 1:05:27Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a tipping point where, because in the Sage Minutes, there's this, there's this understanding that this is going to go through the population and that really the central objective has to be to protect the NHS. And then was there a tipping point where you realised the vaccine was going to come and it was going to come quickly?

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Steven Bartlett?

  So the strategy then has to go to like, the vaccine's on its way. So now it's about actually limiting death as well.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  So it was, once we found out that only a small proportion of the population had had it, it was obvious from then on that the only way out was through a vaccine. And therefore the policy became to suppress the virus until a vaccine makes us safe. And I then repeated that all the way through the summer, the autumn. And in the autumn, I was arguing for, you know, to keep this thing under control because the vaccine's around the corner. And people were briefing against me that, no, Hancock's the only one who believes in the vaccine. And it's a running joke that there's only one person who thinks the vaccine's going to happen. And partly to try to stop some of the complications that had happened in testing. I just spoke directly to the Prime Minister on this one and didn't go through his then advisers in number 10.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  And it came good.

• 1:06:34Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about some of the procurement rumours there. One of them particularly that you wanted to mention about a pub, a friend that runs, is a publisher or something?

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, I mean, this is an example of why, of how you need to go through these things properly and how narratives can sort of spin out of control. And this is true on social media, which you're a great expert in, but it's also true in the mainstream media. So for some reason that is lost in the midst of time, some of the papers got the idea that the landlord in the village that I had previously lived in, in Suffolk, who had then gone on to run this factory, had got a contract that I had given him.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  And yeah, it was on the front page of The Guardian for several days and it was a and and it's just all it's not true. He didn't have a contract with the department. He didn't have a contract with the NHS. Um, he, yes, he, he, he flipped his factory to making those little plastic tubes. Uh, you know, the ones that you stick your, your test thing into, but we needed millions of these things and somebody had to. I didn't have anything to do with the contracting arrangements because he, he was a subcontractor to another business. So there's no way that we, I mean, it's just a total, it's a total nonsense. And so in, in a stressed period like a pandemic, a lot of conspiracy theories got going. This was one of them. There've been loads on, on vaccines from the anti-vaxers and dealing. So you've

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  got to deal with that misinformation at the same time as trying to make the best decisions as you can. And that is one of the, that is one of the hardest things to wrestle with in, in terms of how we communicate.

• 1:08:17Steven Bartlett?

  The, um, the rumor around that time was that he'd sent your WhatsApp message and you'd like forwarded him on to someone and that had led to him getting a, a deal.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. So he, he, I mean, these WhatsApps have been, have been published under FOI. The WhatsApp was about something incredibly banal. It was about standardizing the size of these tubes across different suppliers so that they could be made more efficiently. I mean, like a really in the weeds bit of policy.

• 1:08:43Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  And I just pinged this on to the people. I mean, I, I, it was.

• 1:08:47Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  It was, it was at a level of detail about eight below where I was.

• 1:08:52Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  Operating.

• 1:08:53Steven Bartlett?

  There was in 2000, May 2021, there was, there's some minor inadvertent breach because you held shares in a firm that had got a contract.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:09:03Steven Bartlett?

  No?

• 1:09:04Speaker 00

  So that's not true either. There you go. I mean, this is, um, I, I was, I was given some shares in my sister's company, right? Um, and they had a contract, an existing contract with the Welsh NHS and I wasn't responsible for the Welsh NHS. So it's another example.

• 1:09:21Steven Bartlett?

  How, you, you familiar with that rumor?

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 1:09:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Speaker 00

  I mean, I have to, I have to deal with the, these rumours all the time. And sometimes people stand up in Parliament and say it and you just have to hit it on the head every time it comes up. It's just not true. But the, but there's an underlying problem, which is that, you know, the people working to save lives in this period were working incredibly hard to just deliver that as best as they could. And all the people who now try to sort of say, oh, no, no, you were trying to contract for this. It's just all total rubbish. I mean, you can't, there, there is no other description of it.

• 1:09:56Steven Bartlett?

  On the eighth, I think it was the eighth of December.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  It was, yeah.

• 1:09:59Steven Bartlett?

  Where that, that first vaccine was administered and you were on TV and got very, you cried.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  I did, yeah.

• 1:10:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Steven Bartlett?

  Talk to me about that day and those feelings and what was going through your mind.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  Well, that was, it was incredibly emotional. It was because, because we'd put everything into this. And the very first vaccine down the track, so to speak, had worked, right? We bought six vaccines, including the Oxford one. Actually, one of them only got approved about two weeks ago. And imagine if, you know, imagine if that, that had been the case for all six. So the fact that the very first one sailed through and has worked brilliantly.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  And then the Oxford one, like the home, the home vaccine, that also has gone brilliantly. Although, you know, there was a load of noise in the politics of it and the Europeans getting shirty. But on a clinical basis has been amazing.

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  And so on the eighth of December,

• 1:11:10Speaker 00

  the first person receives it. And this is the way out of this terrible situation that we're all in. And all these people have died.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  And I knew that science was going to save us. But that wasn't the worst, you know, that was then the problem was at the same time, you know, we were having the second wave getting really big. So it was a really mixed period because we had the, the, the joy that the vaccine was working. But at the same time, you know, cases growing. And I was on, I was on Good Morning Britain and I hadn't seen the image, you know, the video of Margaret Keenan getting, I'm sure you're thinking of it now, right? We can all remember it and I had, but I hadn't seen that image. And they showed the image and I completely lost it. And I was, I was in floods of tears and totally lost control of my, um, of my, of my body and my voice.

• 1:12:04Speaker 00

  Um, and then I tried to pull it together and they said in my ear, you know, we're coming back to you in five. And, um, and I tried to pull it together. I just about got it together and then started talking to, I think it was Piers Morgan again. And on Twitter, they were like, this guy's making it up. He's not authentic. He was just trying to cry. The honest truth was if they'd come back to me like five seconds earlier, I would have been in a complete mess. And I was trying to hold myself together and maybe, maybe as politicians we do that too often. I was, maybe I should have just been more relaxed about it because I got a load of abuse for looking inauthentic. Cause I was trying to sort of be professional and, um, and, and, and not cry.

• 1:12:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, for me, that was actually the first time that I thought you, you did have empathy. I know that, right? Because, because I, I've said on this podcast, which you've listened to, I said that I thought you were an emotionless robot. And I genuinely, genuinely, do you know what I'm just being honest? Like genuinely, genuinely, I, I've, I think Jacinda in New Zealand has felt much more, I don't know, like human and emotional. And I think that gives, gives me as a muggle, as a normal person.

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Steven Bartlett?

  A sense that they understand me. So when I see politicians being a bit straight faced and tough.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:14Steven Bartlett?

  You know, who was really good at that Barack Obama, he would cry after Sandy Hook and these, these kids shootings. He would just cry, he would stand there in front of the nation and he would cry. And it made me realise that he felt the same way that I did. Whereas I, the reason I said you, I thought you were an emotionless robot and I know you heard it. Was because I'd never seen that. And part of the reason, I'll be honest, and I've got to be fair, part of the reason I'd never seen that is because you're put in situations where they are trying to always just get you like five, 10 minutes.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  Well, that's, that's part of the reason.

• 1:13:42Steven Bartlett?

  So you're defensive.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So one of the things I've learnt, without a shadow of a doubt, is that you've just, you've got to, you've just got to let that show. And I, you know, as a, I find that, I find it hard.

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  And you've just got to let that emotion show more. And, and, and just, just try to be, just try to say it as you feel it. The podium doesn't help, right? The very formal communication method, two Union Jacks, oak background. So the podium doesn't always help to, because it puts that a barrier in place. But then you mentioned Barack Obama, and you know, he's still, the podium wasn't a problem for him. But he is an extraordinary communicator, right? He is an extraordinary.

• 1:14:32Steven Bartlett?

  You said you find it hard to show that emotion?

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, because the, the natural instinct, when you're under, especially when you're under pressure in questioning, is to say, is to sort of go, go alpha male. It isn't always the best answer.

• 1:14:50Steven Bartlett?

  I think that is a problem with politics. I think that, I think that the political leaders, that probably will end up doing really well. And I don't, honestly, I don't see this on either side of the aisle.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  But you know, because, because I'm relaxed now and the way that we're talking, there'll probably be something on Mail Online tomorrow, you know, Hancock's in such and such a screw up, right? Because that's how, I don't know what it is, I mean, we've been talking for so long, but I, there is, there will be, that is how the media reacts. And so you, and so, once you, once you, once you're kind of experienced in seeing that reaction, right? You also then, it tempers how you talk. So actually coming in, one of the reasons I wanted to come in and talk to you was because I want to just talk freely. And I don't care if that is on, you know, item 10 of the Mail Online tomorrow. I'm just trying to answer the questions as best I can.

• 1:15:43Speaker 00

  And I genuinely think that is a better way of communicating in politics. And it's definitely something that I've learned.

• 1:15:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and it's something that I've just seen to be so absent on both sides of the aisle is a real sincere feeling of like empathy. And I think that makes politicians feel like they're not us.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, more distant.

• 1:16:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, no, and there ends up being a language of politics.

• 1:16:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:06Speaker 00

  And some people thinking that they don't understand the code of, you know, it's as if it's a code. And, you know, there is a, and it's just, it's not helpful because it puts a barrier up. I work really hard at trying to do that. That's why I was so upset when I heard you say it, something I really respect, saying that I'm an emotional wreck or whatever, not emotional wreck, the opposite.

• 1:16:27Steven Bartlett?

  Emotional robot.

• 1:16:29Speaker 00

  Thanks.

• 1:16:29Steven Bartlett?

  No, I've got to be honest. Honestly, for me, for me, it's important to say because A, it's what I said and what I felt, and B, it's actually not just you, it's generally like the politics as a whole. I'm like, what I see in normal people is real empathy. And do you know what, do you know what the other thing is? It's language.

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Steven Bartlett?

  When you, when you, when you do those interviews on Good Morning Britain or whatever.

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Steven Bartlett?

  The language is not human language. It's very political and very controlled. And I think PR training is honestly a curse in politics.

• 1:16:59Speaker 00

  I work so hard not to do that.

• 1:17:02Steven Bartlett?

  But it's political training.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  But it is, and it's, but it's in particular in response to the aggressive questions.

• 1:17:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  So you, you have not asked any aggressive questions. You've asked insightful questions instead. But when you're on, you know, when you get the da, da, da, da, da type question, you give the da, da, da, da, da type answer.

• 1:17:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and that, and I think that's the issue is how do we get to a state where politicians go, do you know what, that was a bit of a mistake and hindsight's a wonderful thing.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  Do you know, I'll tell, I'll tell you a story. The first time I did any questions, when I was new in Parliament, I, you go for a meal before you do any questions, and Nigel Farage was on as well, and he had two pints. And I, and I said to him, right, you had two pints before going on any questions. He said, yeah, because otherwise I can't talk freely.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  And I sat next to him and he managed to get every single question to answer to an answer about why awful, why Europe was awful. And but he just absolutely, you know, he had a couple of pints and he sounded like he'd had a couple of pints. Now, I don't, you know, whatever you think of his politics, his ability to communicate in a relaxed way. And I remember thinking every time I then saw him, that was years before the referendum. Every time I saw him, like, you've obviously been drinking.

• 1:18:25Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, maybe, maybe that's one way to, but I feel like it shouldn't have to. I think that the people that are really going to resonate with the public are going to be the normal people that break through without political PR training.

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Steven Bartlett?

  I think they'll resonate way more with people. I think Obama was, he felt like one of them to me. I know people, some people hate him and there's lots of things with drones and whatever, but he felt like someone in the way he spoke that I could relate to because I felt the sincere emotion. I don't really get that from Boris. I don't necessarily feel like Boris has the same. And then we go back.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  Oh, I disagree. I disagree with that. I think that one of the reasons that Boris relates to people and people relate to him is because he, he doesn't speak in, as you call it, political speak. One of the reasons he is such an effective communicator, whether you agree with him or not, is that, is that he, he, he doesn't play by those rules.

• 1:19:20Steven Bartlett?

  I, I, I understand what you're saying. He doesn't, he didn't entirely feel like a politician.

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  Because come back to this question about, you know, when we were talking about at the start about people's backgrounds.

• 1:19:29Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Speaker 00

  Right. Boris has a background as different from the voters of Hartley Paul as it's possible to get. But, you know, he can, he can reach people. And I think that's actually, I think he's a good, I put him in the Barack Obama category, actually.

• 1:19:48Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. For, yeah, for people of a different politics. Yeah, I would. Because he, because he's one of the few people who, who, who really just, you know, will withstand the sort of criticism of the, of the next day's press in order to try to actually say how he feels. He's a very, very emotionally engaged person.

• 1:20:10Steven Bartlett?

  Let's talk about some of the stuff that you haven't really been able to speak about at length, which was. In September 2020, we, there was laws established that, well, not laws, but there was guidance given to stop us engaging within, having casual sex with people outside of our household, et cetera, et cetera. Right?

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  Do you think you can ask the question in a little bit more respectful way?

• 1:20:31Steven Bartlett?

  So in September 2020, you said, this is what you said, established couples should be, shouldn't be having sex, there should be boundaries. You warned against casual sex, advising the public to stick to well-established relationships and joking, I know I'm in an established relationship. And you told us to remember the basics of hands, face, space.

• 1:20:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:49Steven Bartlett?

  And throughout that period, hugging was not, I remember you saying that you were looking for tugging your mum in the 17th of May. And then all of this stuff comes out with the sun, the CCTV leak and everything in between.

• 1:21:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Steven Bartlett?

  There's a couple, there's obviously-

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  Can we just start this section again?

• 1:21:05Steven Bartlett?

  How would you like to start it?

• 1:21:06Speaker 00

  I don't mind all of it, except the opening bit about casual sex.

• 1:21:10Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, fine.

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  I haven't had casual sex with anybody. I fell in love with somebody.

• 1:21:13Steven Bartlett?

  You weren't, so-

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  And we're gonna, and-

• 1:21:15Steven Bartlett?

  Let me ask the question and you can correct the question, right? So there's, there's all of this stuff, which what I'm saying is from the-

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Well, let's start this bit again and I'll, and I'll relax.

• 1:21:23Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, fine. But you've got to let me ask the question.

• 1:21:25Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:21:25Steven Bartlett?

  This is what we do here. We just, we just talk. There's no, this isn't-

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you've got, you've researched a bit about casual sex.

• 1:21:31Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, no, I've not even asked the question yet.

• 1:21:33Speaker 00

  Okay, let's do, get to that bit.

• 1:21:34Steven Bartlett?

  So in September 2020, you said that when, when asked that established couples,

• 1:21:43Steven Bartlett?

  only established couples should be having sex, there needs to be boundaries.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  No, no, no. Okay, so those rules-

• 1:21:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  Were not in place.

• 1:21:52Steven Bartlett?

  That was, that was advice on TV.

• 1:21:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, but those rules were not in place when this, all this happened. So there's a way that we can do this bit of the conversation, but we cannot do it with you starting talking about casual sex.

• 1:22:04Steven Bartlett?

  Can, can I ask the question?

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  You can ask a question, but let's ask a question in a reasonable way.

• 1:22:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so I'm gonna ask the question.

• 1:22:11Speaker 00

  Just, yeah, this bit is really hard for me as well.

• 1:22:13Steven Bartlett?

  I completely understand. I completely understand. I actually haven't asked the question yet.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  This is all just a preamble.

• 1:22:19Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, it's not. What, the point, the point that's been levelled at you is very simple. It's that there's a contradiction in what you said and how you behaved. That's what I'm

• 1:22:27Speaker 00

  I totally get that bit.

• 1:22:29Steven Bartlett?

  So can I ask that question?

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, go for it.

• 1:22:30Steven Bartlett?

  So the point that's been levelled at you is there's a contradiction in how you behaved.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Steven Bartlett?

  Versus what the guidance you were giving as Health Secretary.

• 1:22:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:22:39Steven Bartlett?

  This is not a revelation. I mean,

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  It is not a revelation.

• 1:22:41Steven Bartlett?

  Exactly. This is what everyone's been saying. Hugging was advised against,

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Steven Bartlett?

  Distance. There was this whole hands, face, space thing, which we were all told to obey.

• 1:22:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50Steven Bartlett?

  And couples were, when asked, you were said to stick within well-established relationships. And you jokingly said, I know I'm in an established relationship. Then this CCTV stuff comes out.

• 1:23:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03Steven Bartlett?

  My question is, you know, you talked earlier on about funerals and people going through immense hardship. People say you were a contradiction.

• 1:23:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Steven Bartlett?

  What's your response to that? How do you, how do you receive all of that? When everyone, this is what everyone says. This is not, Steve Bartlett has said it for the first time.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:23:17Steven Bartlett?

  It's what the whole world is saying at you. This is the central thing.

• 1:23:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Steven Bartlett?

  And this is ultimately why you resigned.

• 1:23:22Speaker 00

  That is my absolute, that is my response. So I resigned because I broke the social distancing guidelines.

• 1:23:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Speaker 00

  By then, they weren't actually rules. They weren't the law, but that's not the point. The point is they were the guidelines that I'd been proposing. And, you know, that happened because I fell in love with somebody.

• 1:23:51Speaker 00

  And, you know, I've known Gina for more than half of my life. And we first actually worked together on student radio back in the Oxford days. And I brought her into the department to help with public communications. In the same way, we brought loads of brilliant people in who were experts in their field. And so we spent a lot of time together, ironically, trying to, you know, get me to be able to communicate in a more emotionally intelligent way. And, and we fell in love and.

• 1:24:30Speaker 00

  You know, that's something that that was completely outside of my control. Um, and I, of course, I I regret the, you know, the the pain that that's caused. And the very, very, very public nature, you know, anybody who's been through this knows how difficult it is, how painful it is. Doing that in public is incredibly painful. And um, but but, you know, I I fell in love with someone.

• 1:25:02Steven Bartlett?

  You you did you fall in love while working together?

• 1:25:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:25:05Speaker 00

  So, you know, nobody, you know, we we it all happened quite, it all happened quite quickly. It actually happened after this sort of thing stopped being, after the rules were lifted. Um, but the guidance was still in place. So I'm not trying to claim that, you know, I hold no bitterness about about this because um, I broke the rules, you know, I fess up, I broke um, the uh, the the guidance. Um, and, you know, there were only two people responsible for this. Um, and and and ultimately, that's why I resigned. I I took responsibility for my decision and I resigned.

• 1:25:40Steven Bartlett?

  Um, when that CCTV stuff happens, and I'm not going to go into the details of, because I know I don't want to drag people into this, but I want to understand that how that feels. I can only imagine having dealt with a pandemic and they're getting this call from the sun.

• 1:25:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Steven Bartlett?

  They're about to leak something.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:55Steven Bartlett?

  I

• 1:25:56Speaker 00

  I'd had

• 1:25:56Steven Bartlett?

  For me, this is the, this is the, I would, I don't, like, I don't have the words to describe.

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:01Steven Bartlett?

  How that must have all felt.

• 1:26:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:03Steven Bartlett?

  But tell me, when you get that call.

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  It was, it was, it was awful. Um, it was awful because, you know, we obviously knew what was going on. Um, but we wanted to uh, to to do this as unpainfully as possible. And by and by the release of those images, obviously, that caused a huge amount of pain. And um, the uh, and and it was, it's, it's, it's been, I mean, anybody knows. Anybody knows how difficult it is, it, you know, ending a, ending a relationship.

• 1:26:47Speaker 00

  Um, and we have six children, you know, it's, it it it's tough, but, you know.

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  Juno and I love each other very deeply.

• 1:27:02Speaker 00

  And where are we? Seven, eight months later? It gets, it gets a bit easier with time.

• 1:27:12Speaker 00

  And, but I have no sort of, I don't hold it against anybody because I was, because, you know, we were,

• 1:27:23Speaker 00

  I take responsibility.

• 1:27:26Steven Bartlett?

  Have, have they figured out where that footage came from?

• 1:27:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, so many people ask me this question.

• 1:27:31Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone's asked the question.

• 1:27:32Speaker 00

  And, do you know, my honest, the honest feeling I have in response to that question is I just don't care. Right. The, actually, there's, there's a funny story, which is that

• 1:27:45Speaker 00

  the best I know is that it was one of the security guards in the department. There's a current ICO investigation. I don't know any of the details of that investigation. I haven't got any inside information other than that which is public. However, the investigation is based on a law, data protection law that I took through Parliament, into which I personally put a journalistic exemption. So

• 1:28:12Speaker 00

  I'm, I don't hold it against the, against the journalists for publishing it.

• 1:28:19Speaker 00

  But obviously, you know, it was a very serious data, data protection breach, if you like. The thing that we've learned, and I think all my other colleagues in Cabinet learned immediately is, why did you have a CCTV in the Secretary of State's office? Obviously, I didn't know about it.

• 1:28:38Speaker 00

  And because even who's in the office is a, is a, is an important fact and a, and a sensitive piece of information. But all of that is by them by because, you know, it is not the responsibility of others that, that those social distancing guidelines were broken. You know, that is, that is my responsibility and I took responsibility for having done that.

• 1:29:04Steven Bartlett?

  You took responsibility, you went to Boris, you said, you know, you'd apologized to him and he considered the matter closed. And then. That's kind of where people thought it had been left off. But then I think the media noise and the pressure built and eventually the narrative is that you then resigned after.

• 1:29:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, after 24, 48 hours. It wasn't really after the, it wasn't really the press. It was that, you know, some people I really respect got in contact and told me about things that they had been not able to do.

• 1:29:32Steven Bartlett?

  Like what?

• 1:29:33Speaker 00

  Like, you know, seeing dying relatives. And, you know, even though, you know, and, and, and I, and I realised that it was, it was unsustainable.

• 1:29:51Steven Bartlett?

  Would you class that as the, the worst time of your life?

• 1:29:58Speaker 00

  Being health secretary is not nearly as difficult as worrying about your children in a very public divorce. Undoubtedly, this, you know, going through that is undoubtedly the hardest thing I've ever done by a long, long way.

• 1:30:21Steven Bartlett?

  And as you go forward on that particular situation, what's your like strategy? Because you've come from a home where your parents weren't, they'd, they'd, they'd broken up, right? So what's your, what's your strategy going forward now to?

• 1:30:30Speaker 00

  To try to mend, to try to be kind, to try to, to try to,

• 1:30:41Speaker 00

  to try to make, you know, on the fact, obviously try to make things better.

• 1:30:47Speaker 00

  And then on the professional side, you know, I've got a, other things I'm interested in. I actually don't miss this job as much as I expected, right? I'm, I actually, I, I'm really enjoying the freedom of being on the back benches on the professional side. And I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm absolutely, you know,

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  I'm absolutely in love with Gina and that, that helps a bit.

• 1:31:16Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of the, since you've departed the front, the front bench, there's, I mean, now there's, there's a lot of party gate stuff going on and it's kind of almost reminiscent of your situation because the, the claim level that the government is that there was a contradiction. There was all these parties going on in 10 Downing Street. It sounds like it was a bit of a nightclub while the rest of the nation is, was, were locked down and obeying the rules.

• 1:31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:40Steven Bartlett?

  You've not really been brought into that as much.

• 1:31:42Speaker 00

  Well, I wasn't invited.

• 1:31:44Steven Bartlett?

  You weren't invited. But what's your, what's your take on that? What's your, because I'm sure you get asked about this.

• 1:31:48Speaker 00

  Well, that's obviously very difficult. But I do think you've got to look at the big picture of, you know, we're coming out of the pandemic now and that's in part, in large part because of the, the big calls.

• 1:32:01Steven Bartlett?

  But you resigned when, when you had the, I'll be honest, you had the decency to say, right, I have been a contradiction here and I've let people down. So you resigned, but.

• 1:32:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you know, the prime minister has so many other things on his plate as well, right? He's got Russia Crimea and he's got the, you know, getting out of the pandemic. That was a big call, especially the response to Omicron, getting that right and coming through first. So he's got all these other big things on his plate.

• 1:32:29Steven Bartlett?

  What do you make of, I, I don't really have much to talk about on this particular topic, but there's all this Dominic Cummins stuff. He's become a very interesting character, bit of a whistleblower, exposor type. And, you know, you're, you've been supportive of Boris Johnson pretty much the whole way, even as you say with the party gate stuff, you said, we need to look at the bigger picture. But he released some text messages that apparently were very critical of you where Boris said that you, you fucked up ventilators and that you're totally fucking hopeless.

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. But remember at that time, it subsequently transcribed that Dominic Cummings was trying to get me fired.

• 1:32:59Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:32:59Speaker 00

  And if you look at those text exchanges, they're like a diatribe against what I was up to.

• 1:33:05Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:33:05Speaker 00

  And that didn't actually reflect what was going on. So, you know, Boris has apologized for the way that came over, but actually if you, and for, you know, for sending those messages. But actually, if you look at it in context, the context is this guy was trying to get me fired. He sent a load of aggressive. Messages to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister responded as he did in a private setting, never expecting that to become public. So I'm completely, you know, what, what, yeah, there are, there are, there are people who really want to fix things and improve things in life. And, and I'd rather be that type of person.

• 1:33:46Steven Bartlett?

  Speaking of fixing things.

• 1:33:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:47Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things you're really focused on fixing at the moment, and I've seen you talk about this in Parliament and in several other places and a lot of the interviews you're doing on Twitter, is this issue of dyslexia in our country. Tell me why, you alluded to it earlier, why this is personal to you?

• 1:34:01Speaker 00

  So, so I was only identified as dyslexic at university. And I know, despite really good teachers, it would have been so much easier for me because before I was identified, I just thought I was stupid and bad at English. And some people say you shouldn't identify, you know, you shouldn't tell dyslexic kids they're dyslexic because then they'll be labelled. But I labelled myself as, as, as useless with words. And kids do that. But still today, only one in five children are identified at school. And I think this is ridiculous, especially in a world where you can have online assessments that can't then, they can't give you the formal diagnosis, but they can give you the data that says this person, this child's

• 1:34:46Speaker 00

  highly likely to be, highly likely to be dyslexic. So I'm campaigning for that. And in a way, it's one of these things that, you know, now that I've got, I can choose how I spend my time as a backbencher. This is something I really care about. I never got around to doing it in government. I actually had assembled a little team to push on this in the Department for Health after the election before, but those people got moved on to have to deal with the pandemic. So for me, this is unfinished business. And for the, you know, hundreds of thousands of dyslexic kids out there, if I can show them, if I can show just one of them, that you can, you can succeed as a dyslexic person, and you can make it, so long as you get the support you

• 1:35:29Speaker 00

  need, as long as you get, you know, you get identified, then, then that will have been worth it. So it really, really matters to me. And I'm sure we can make loads of progress.

• 1:35:42Steven Bartlett?

  When you, when we talked about you having this conversation with me here, there was, I remember you saying there was things that had been said that you wanted to kind of have a chance to address and rebuttal. Do you feel like you've had a chance to address and rebuttal those things?

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have. I feel like, you know, because we've been able to have a long conversation, you know, there's a few of those, a few things I've been able to explain, explain the thinking behind. But I also hope that we can have a proper debate about how this, how the pandemic side is dealt with properly in the future. And we can learn, learn the lessons as best we can. And I think that's important.

• 1:36:24Steven Bartlett?

  Every guest in this podcast, you might be aware of this tradition, leaves a question in the diary of a CEO. And I don't read it. And I swear on my, I swear on all my family that I, that I don't read it until I open the book. So forgive me if it takes me some time to read the handwriting. Okay, here we go. So the last guest on the driver CEO podcast left this question for you. If you were lying on your deathbed, what three things would you want to have achieved in life?

• 1:36:47Speaker 00

  Oh, well, that's a great three things.

• 1:36:49Steven Bartlett?

  Three things you would want to have achieved in your life.

• 1:36:52Speaker 00

  Pretty ambitious. The number one is I want my children to be happy and, and, and have fulfilling lives. That is, that is undoubtedly number one. The second is that I will have, I want to have a happy and loving and fulfilling life and relationship, you know, for the rest of my days.

• 1:37:20Steven Bartlett?

  Just because of what's happened with Gina, Gina's actually here today, it's worth saying.

• 1:37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:24Steven Bartlett?

  That's okay to say that.

• 1:37:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Steven Bartlett?

  Because of what's happened, I'm guessing it's made, it's the scrutiny around, because relationships are hard already.

• 1:37:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Steven Bartlett?

  But the, the context and the scrutiny around that.

• 1:37:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Steven Bartlett?

  What's happened must, can't make it easier.

• 1:37:38Speaker 00

  We've been through a lot together.

• 1:37:39Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:37:41Speaker 00

  And, you know, that's the, that's the joyous bit. That's the easy bit. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of very difficult things that I have to deal with, you know. And having fallen in love with Gina is the, that's the easy bit.

• 1:38:03Steven Bartlett?

  And the third one?

• 1:38:04Speaker 00

  And the third one, I hope to have, I mean, it's sort of both, it's so obvious. But it, and I'm going to put some, I'm going to try to answer it more specifically. I hope to have improved the country that I love.

• 1:38:23Speaker 00

  And, you know, if for instance, that is making sure that every single dyslexic child gets both the capability to read and write and be effective and the self-esteem that comes with that, then that would be, that would be wonderful. And I'm lucky to have a platform in Parliament and through the fact that I'm fairly well-known to be able to, to try to affect change. And that's what I want to do.

• 1:38:55Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you. Thank you for both your time, because I know it's in tremendous demand, but also thank you for choosing to have this conversation here. These conversations aren't easy, so it's often easier to avoid them. And, you know, we talked about the importance of emotion and relatability in politics. So I want to thank you for taking the time to have a conversation where you didn't set any restrictions on me, my line of questioning at all, and you let me ask the questions, which as a quite naive person who isn't really political would have. And I think that's a credit to you and I thank you for that.

• 1:39:28Speaker 00

  Well, thanks for giving me the chance. I don't think you're naive at all. You're self-knowing and yeah, that's the most important thing to know.

• 1:39:34Steven Bartlett?

  Well, thank you, Matt.