Did your views of the civil service change during your time in office?
I had no previous experience of being a minister in government. I attended the Institute for Government's 'teach-ins' for potential ministers, but with hindsight, they did not prepare me fully.
My only contact with the civil service had been during the purdah period when the permanent secretary of the department I was shadowing would come and discuss our plans for government, which was academic for most of my 13 years in opposition. So I was pleasantly surprised by how cooperative the civil service at Defra were with the coalition government.
There was no business plan ready for Defra, which was a department I had not shadowed, so we had to work it up together as ministers and managers. At the same time we had to identify how to save about 30% of Defra's running costs in order to help us reverse the planned 50% cut in capital which would have hit flood defences. I found civil servants ready with suggestions for how to do this and as a minister exercised my judgement about what we could afford to do politically.
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What challenges did you face in working with civil servants?
The speed of decision-making around Whitehall is unbelievably slow. I often would think that the decision I had made had been implemented only to find it was still held up by one department or another or even in-house. I did greatly value my second diary secretary who strove to get me a survivable agenda but I struggled to get over to parliament enough.
It is important for ministers to spend time there in order to stay connected with colleagues. The sheer volume of paperwork was overwhelming and the red boxes were a burden, but after a career-threatening experience when I had not seen a particular proposal, I adopted a one-two system where I saw everything my junior ministers saw so the volume was to some extent self-inflicted.
If you were Cabinet Office minister, how would you change the civil service?
The civil service employs very bright people, but I believe they might benefit from the experience of being seconded out to the private or third sector in order to feel what it is like to be on the receiving end of decisions in Whitehall. Two of my capable civil servants left for want of promotion and both said they were impressed by the speed of decision-making in the private sector and the lack of squeamishness over doing a U-turn.
So I think seconding out should be a normal part of a Fast Stream civil servant's training and they should be promoted for new skills and experience gained. I also think that smaller departments suffer from poaching by larger ones, which leaves them exposed with long delays in back-filling the vacant post. In the business world it is necessary to work a notice period and plans are made for succession. The civil service should be no different.
Can you tell us a story that reveals something about the civil service?
I will never forget the night I was sacked and I had an hour to clear my desk. It was late and I felt very low but the principal private secretary came back to help me pack up my possessions and get myself home. That touch of humanity speaks volumes about the decency of the civil service.