Rebecca Pow

Patrick McAlary (PM): You entered government in 2019 in DCMS [Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport], but you were quickly moved to Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs]. Can you tell us about any conversations you had upon your appointments?

Rebecca Pow (RP): I was first appointed in May 2019 as the minister for arts and heritage and they added tourism to it as well which was good for me. I had really wanted to be a minister – and I’d been a PPS [parliamentary private secretary] for a long time, I was one of the first appointed PPSs under David Cameron in 2016 when I think only 16 of us from our year [MPs first elected in 2015] were appointed – but then we had a whole lot of shenanigans with Brexit and all sorts of leadership elections. I was then finally appointed in 2019 to be an actual minister – shall I tell you the story of what happened?

My husband was very ill at this time, and I think that’s probably why I hadn’t been made a minister before – he was dying of terminal cancer, which had gone on throughout the whole time that I’d been in parliament. I got a call from No.10 saying, “Can you come into No.10 this morning?” and I just said, “Oh, I’m really sorry. I’m rushing home. I’ve got to get the train.” I just thought it would be some random meeting for PPSs, because it was a Thursday and most people had gone home. Anyway, then they said, “Well, no, we really do think you ought to come.” But there was some sort of demonstration going on and I couldn’t get into No.10, so then they said come round the back and a police officer will meet you and I thought this was all a bit weird. I still kept apologising saying, “I’m really sorry I’m late for the meeting, the others can tell me what happened!” 

We went all the way through No.10, through the bowels of the building, me thinking I’ll meet up with all my mates who were the other PPSs, and I was taken into this great big room, it was actually the cabinet room! I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ and I was looking out of the window looking into the garden and then in walks Theresa May! And I still didn’t clock it at all – I was waffling on about the garden because I know she likes gardening and she said “Sit down Rebecca! I want to offer you the role of minister in [the Department for] Culture, Media and Sport.” I was so gobsmacked I burst into tears and in fact she was pretty emotional too! It was very moving and very nice, because that is a fantastic ministerial role and it was actually really perfect for me because I’d been in the media for 25 years and I had done projects linked to tourism as well through my PR company before I got to parliament. 

“[Theresa May] said ‘Sit down Rebecca! I want to offer you the role of minister in Culture, Media and Sport.’”

But anyway, the short and the long of it was, I started that work and the civil servants were great – how they do the welcome, do the briefing and they always say, ‘Minister, is there anything in particular you’re interested in?’, and I was especially interested in getting the green agenda into that portfolio: parks, gardens, garden tourism etc., things that I knew about and where I felt there was some mileage for business development. So we were starting actually to add them in, but I wasn’t there for very long. I was on a visit about four months later to the Imperial War Museum as the minister in that department, and I got another call from No.10, you know, from switch as they call it [the Downing Street switchboard]. I was surrounded by a load of people, and they said, “We’d like to put you on to the prime minister”, who by then, of course, was Boris Johnson. And he comes on to the phone, “Ruh-Ruh-Rebecca, we’re looking for a new environment minister and I’ve been told you’re the only person for the job and I’d like to offer it to you.” And of course, actually, that was my dream role that I wanted to end up in if I could possibly have any influence on it. Because you can’t actually choose what you do, you have to be invited, so you just hope that the work you’ve done is enough to indicate your expertise and potential value. I went to parliament because I wanted to represent everything in my constituency, but I also wanted to try and work on this agenda if I got the opportunity, because that was my whole career beforehand and my interest, and I felt successive governments hadn’t given the environment enough attention, and the way to really get change is through policy – so I had grasped the opportunity with both hands – and indeed I’d focused on it as a backbencher, as you will see if you look through my CV. 

So I accepted and you move immediately. I cleared my desk in DCMS, straight into Defra – welcoming party and all that – and immediately I was tasked with, I think actually the prime minister mentioned it, steering the Environment Act through parliament. Which, by the way, was the biggest bill to go through our parliament in two decades, with 350 officials working on it – it was massive!

PM: You mentioned being a PPS. What did that role involve and did you find that experience was useful when you moved into ministerial career?

RP: Well, it’s the first rung of becoming a minister, so it’s basically an unpaid ministerial role – we sort of called ourselves the parliamentary private dogsbodies really. But it’s still great to be appointed, and you are the go-between for the ministers and the backbenchers – that’s your role. It depends on what you make of it and how hard working you are. I like to think I threw myself completely into it, so I started in the communities and local government department and I had four ministers to support – it was an enormous workload  because they had a lot of legislation and I don’t think people realise on the outside what your role is, because you have to be there for every debate, in all the committees, if you’ve got legislation and you have to get your colleagues to rock up into the chamber to support the government, you have to suggest questions, you have to understand all their concerns, you have to feed them into the minister so that you can circumvent problems as they go along. That’s the role of it. And I did communities and local government, and we had the Local Government Finance Bill with minister Marcus Jones [then minister for local government], and we had new neighbourhood plans coming through in the update of the National Planning Policy Framework with Gavin Barwell, who was the housing minister – a really heavy workload. And of course you are still your constituency MP and I continued to give that my all too – a lot of speaking up in the chamber included. In fact I think I was in the top 10 amongst our new intake for speaking in the chamber – I wanted to get Taunton Deane well and truly on the map. 

“we sort of called ourselves the parliamentary private dogsbodies really”

And then I got moved to be PPS for Defra, which was great and Michael Gove was the secretary of state then (fascinating to see him at work) and as a PPS I was sitting around the table with the other ministers and actually the ministers there at the time were really brilliant at helping me to learn things because they knew I was interested. George Eustice was a minister there and so was Thérèse Coffey and I was the PPS to both of those and actually they got me involved in lots of things – in fact, I think I took a couple of debates for Thérèse Coffey when she couldn’t make things, which I was pleased to do and she sent me out on a few events to talk to the Forestry Commission and various people.

 I was sitting on various select committees as well and you’re not really supposed to be on a select committee in a department for which you are the PPS. So I had to juggle that a bit because I was on the Defra select committee and the Environmental Audit Committee – so I stepped off those when I became the Defra PPS and I went on to the DCMS select committee again, appropriate because of my media background.

Then, after that, I got moved to DWP [Department for Work and Pensions], which if you’d asked me which department I’d least wanted to go to and be the PPS at, that was it! But, it was being PPS to Amber Rudd, the then secretary of state, and actually it was a fantastic learning curve and as a constituency MP, you are just deluged with issues that DWP handles, so it actually was really good for learning. And also it was a very, very challenging time because it was at the time when Universal Credit was being brought in and it was so controversial. Our Labour colleagues just went to town, telling us how dreadful it was all going to be and it was really exhausting – you have to get your colleagues to turn up to support [the government], but bit by bit they were less keen to come and support you, because it was so challenging and the press threw their two penneth in too! But it was a new, huge, huge system that we were rolling out, so, like anything, it’s going to take time to bed in and actually now nobody even talks about it, do they! But with any new system that you bring in, as Defra has done since I’ve been there with having left Europe and bringing in that new transition scheme for farm payments, it’s a similar thing.

Anyway, I was then made a minister, so I was able to leave DWP. But, actually, there are just a handful of people I’ve worked for that I think genuinely were really excellent and Amber Rudd was one of them. And she was really inclusive to me as well in terms of involving me, probably because she needed me as well [laughs].

PM: Jumping ahead, you led the Environment Act through parliament. Could you walk us through what your role was and the challenges that you faced in steering the bill through parliament?

RP: I’ve got it here – look how big it is, absolutely massive! I was designated to basically steer this piece of legislation through parliament. What I will point out though, on top of that (I said it was the biggest piece of legislation to go through parliament in two decades, 350 officials all working on tiny little pockets on it, you know, particular clauses, because, of course, they’re all specialists in their bit of the bill) I still had a huge portfolio that I had to steer as well and some other bits of legislation, so it was an absolutely massive workload. I don’t think anybody understands, I don’t even think our secretary of state did – and I had successive secretaries of state because it came and went because we had an election in the middle of it and I had to be reappointed by the next prime minister and then you wonder who the next secretary of state is going to be… you have to go through all of that.

And I had the water portfolio, the nature portfolio, the Environment Agency, Natural England, chemicals, the Forestry Commission with all the tree planting targets, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee arm’s-length body, waste and recycling, and more – it was enormous! I think I had two thirds of the Defra portfolio when I started there – again, something which I don’t think anybody had clocked until much later.

“I think I had two thirds of the Defra portfolio when I started there – again, something which I don’t think anybody had clocked until much later.”

The point was, we had a really great bill team, so given all the other areas you are also juggling, you rely heavily on your bill team with some real specialists who I got on really well with, which I think is absolutely essential. And of course I don’t come from a legal background, (although I had to have an understanding of the legal system in my previous career as a journalist and broadcaster), so I had to learn about that as well as the detail of the bill, and we were still at the stage of formulating clauses and agreements of what went into it as we went along. It was like a big wheel that was turning. 

I remember that when I first became the minister, we were going into first and second reading really soon and so my team, they were brilliant, gave me prep cards. Because I obviously had to learn it and memorise it and I’ve got videos of me actually, because I thought no one’s going to believe I’d be sitting at my kitchen table [memorising]. I worked all weekends because it’s a really nerve-wracking thing as well and people can ask you anything about any of it. It is a ground-breaking piece of legislation, it covers air, water, waste and recycling and nature – so it’s in four big chunks and it basically transitions us to a whole new sustainable way of living. It puts the environment much more up front in everything we do and in every future piece of legislation because of the environmental principles, that’s one of the parts of it, but also it really does escalate it up the agenda where it needs to be. What was amazing for me was that I had studied this agenda years and years ago in my environmental degree (Wye College, London University) and much of what I had learnt and which had subsequently informed my life and work was now being introduced into this legislation by the Conservatives at a time when I was there. It seemed to be ideal! And about time!

“when I first became the minister, we were going into first and second reading really soon and so my team, they were brilliant, gave me prep cards.”

We can talk forever about what’s happening now and what might change under future governments, but it is there and it was globally leading and one of the globally leading things in it was that it sets a lot of legally binding targets in each section – on air quality with the PM2.5 target [that measures] the particles in the air to determine air pollution. The amazing nature target was to halt the decline of nature by 2030 and reverse it – again that hadn’t been decided when I took on the bill, so we had to go through all of that scientific data, all of the discussions and debates and the meetings with stakeholders, meetings with not just Conservative MPs, but cross-party and with the House of Lords. I had Zac Goldsmith [then minister for Pacific and the environment] taking it through the Lords and I was doing the Commons, so we had to work really, really closely together. And in the middle of all that, we had Covid as well! It went into first and second reading when I was first appointed, got through that and then Covid struck, so we had to work from home. It meant that I had to do loads of this detail from home, which was even more challenging because I didn’t have any staff here, I didn’t have anyone in the room with me. I had to sort all my own papers out, I had to print stuff, and obviously then shred it. It was really massive. And then we went into committee and I was a key worker so I could go up and down on the train.

So that probably made it even more challenging than it needed to be, and I was very, very keen to do publicity and media on it, because I felt people needed to know about this, what this was doing, because it was going to affect everybody’s lives. It was setting in motion a whole change to our waste and recycling as well, our systems and setting targets for all of that as well, and it had lots of health links with air pollution and cleaning up our water and increasing supply. I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t get more coverage at the time because this would have helped peoples’ understanding of what was in motion and why it would help us, why it didn’t conflict with food production or net zero – but Covid and immigration issues were constantly dominating the headlines. 

“I was very, very keen to do publicity and media on [the Environment Act], because I felt people needed to know about this, what this was doing, because it was going to affect everybody’s lives.”

The big thing that then happened was in relation to the water section of the Bill – one clause on water was put in to reduce raw sewage spills in times of storm. Suddenly, this sparked the whole sewage debacle! There were some pollution incidents at the time too which brought it to a head, and we then had to work on what we could get into the Act to improve and clean up water even more than had been done before. So we set about that and on upgrades to waste treatment works – we had to liaise with all of the water industry and with Ofwat the regulator, because it’s so regulated and it’s all got to be costed and it’s got to be agreed what water companies can spend in which budget, which price review. So that opened up the whole can of worms connected with water and then the Duke of Wellington waded in on the sewage clause and the reducing harm from storm sewage overflows water clause and that sparked extensive media coverage. And I was finding myself in the middle of it all, having to steer this act through to see what we could get in through legislation that could start to change the dial where we needed to change it. So – on we went!

What was really exasperating was that the water problems we basically uncovered (largely through increased monitoring set in motion in 2016 by the Conservative government) were a culmination of decades of interventions and decisions made by successive governments, but because we were in government we had to carry the can for it! Even though we were the ones trying to change it! I still find it rather depressing that we did so much but the spin being put on it all now that we are out of government is so binary, so damning with no recognition of the progress made and there is really no one with enough knowledge speaking up for what has been set in train. Albeit I appreciate that more does need to be done and a full on review of the entire system would now be sensible. 

Tim Durrant (TD): This was a huge piece of legislation. Part of the reason why it was necessary was because we had left the European Union (EU) – some of these things had been done through EU membership and when we left we had to set up our own regimes for these kinds of things.

Defra, broadly speaking, was deeply affected by Brexit because so much environmental and farming regulation was set by Brussels for member states. Could you talk about how Brexit affected your role because you were there after the bulk of the negotiations were done and when we actually left?

RP: Yes. I think Defra was probably one of the departments most affected by Brexit. Because not only did we have the Environment Act, we had the Fisheries Act and the Agriculture Act which went through parliament before the Environment Act. They were really important, they were highly necessary – small compared to the Environment Act and in a way much more straight forward. They enabled us to take back control of our fisheries and to set up the system for us leaving the Common Agricultural Policy [CAP], which paid farmers through the CAP system in Europe for owning land – they didn’t have to do anything or deliver anything with their land, they simply got paid per acre they owned or managed. Having grown up on a farm and worked for the NFU [National Farmers’ Union] I was fully aware of how this operated. So the game-changing thing that we were able to introduce following Brexit was that we could tailor our whole new system, to still give farmers and landowners the money that they got under the Common Agricultural Policy, but for that they had to deliver something. So the big game-changing things that they had to deliver was something for the environment. I’d been very involved in all of that as a backbencher when Michael Gove was the secretary of state – it was the single most exciting thing about Brexit actually, because I was not a Brexiteer, I was a strident remainer. While we did a lot of good things on the environment in Europe, I could see, as could others, that there was a huge opportunity if we could get the framework right to improve the environment if we left the European system – and enable a switch of systems that was more sustainable and potentially less intensive with less reliance on chemicals, so restoring nature but at the same time producing good quality plenteous food. So that’s how the new Environmental Land Management [ELM] scheme was devised.

“I think Defra was probably one of the departments most affected by Brexit.”

While I was in Defra, obviously I was the environment minister, but it wasn’t just about food production. It was also about trying to achieve all of these other benefits that we had to achieve – cleaner water, cleaner air, more nature, and so measures in the Environment Act were going to link with a lot of those things and then set targets. The Act also established the Office for Environmental Protection – an independent body to hold government to account on all its targets – this in itself was a remarkable commitment. The target setting framework which has come through something called the environment improvement plan, which was laid out in the Environment Act, enabled us to set targets in all of these areas. Which meant that when the act was brought in, I had to start working on all of the targets. The Act enabled us to set targets, but didn’t specify what exactly the raft of individual targets were, excluding the main ones like the air pollution PM2.5 target and halting the decline of nature. But within those there were loads more targets! So that’s what I worked on a lot afterwards but, yes, it was a really crucial time in Defra and also for the government, and actually even handling that is always challenging, because you’ve got our conventional traditional agricultural industry all obviously concerned about the change: how would it affect them; how would they get their money; will they get the same money? I was involved with all of that and, importantly, I had to work with the other ministers and some of them I worked very closely with, like Victoria Prentis to start with – she was the farm minister – and George Eustice had become secretary of state. So we worked closely on these different measures because the act enabled us to deliver some of the Brexit benefits. But at the same time, a whole lot of staff were being redirected to work on all the other Brexit legislation and in our department there was masses of it! In particular determining which EU legislation could be removed, which sunsetted and which kept as it was. So I did loads and loads of these regulations – it was another enormous agenda to deal with, about which I could say a lot …

All of that reverberated through the whole time I was there because we started up what’s called tests and trials with all different types of people working on the land or water to test out some of the management systems that were proposed through scientists or through our work with different arm’s length bodies to see how and what they deliver in terms of soil carbon or emissions or restoring nature: what would the farmer need to do to change his system and how much would that cost? It is all based on evidence and data, so you couldn’t set up the tier in the ELM scheme or later the Sustainable Farming Initiative until you knew what you needed and what would work and what was going to be achieved by it. What to pay farmers to entice them to choose or carry out the particular actions, for example the soil management option, or planting wildflower margins or managing hedgerows in a certain wildlife friendly way. So all of that was going on. Reflecting back, closer co-ordination between the agricultural team and the environmental teams might have set a clearer trajectory on achieving the targets. 

There’s another area that I was significantly involved in which was waste and recycling – I was the waste and recycling minister. I was leading all the meetings on our new systems – Deposit Return Scheme, Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme, more controlled types of recycling and doorstep collections and food waste collections. All of that involved stakeholder meetings, including meetings with all our local authorities, because every one of them had a different system at that point. But we were trying to align the systems and get them the same, to improve the recycling rates, all of which were targets set through the Environment Act and our resources and waste strategy. This involved working with industry and business and the Food and Drink Federation because, again, there was real controversy about this especially when it came to which kind of containers did they want in the Deposit Return scheme. Glass manufacturers wanted glass out, for example, but others wanted glass in, and the Scottish government wanted glass in, but England wanted glass out. I had to work really closely with the devolved administrations, because they either had to agree to join us or do their own thing and all of that was very sensitive, as you can imagine, because obviously they want to be seen to be being in charge, but we also need to show solidarity as the UK on lots of areas. So all of that was going on and I did visits abroad to see how other systems were working and gradually, gradually, gradually, we moved on with that – but it was an absolutely enormous agenda as well.

“on the Environment Act, I had to work very much on the cross-party basis as well – I had to get opposite numbers to support.”

What I will say is that before I got to parliament I was sort of instrumental in setting up something called the Conservative Environment Network and the very first publication that they did, which I dredged up some funding for and worked on, was this document called, Thinking Differently about Our Environment: A Holistic Approach to Policy. There are essays in there by loads of my colleagues who were all then backbenchers, almost every single one of them later became a minister, and many areas that we tackled in the Environment Act were proposed in this publication which was satisfying.  We influenced the agenda etc. and it came into the Environment Act. And I must say on the Environment Act, I had to work very much on the cross-party basis as well – I had to get opposite numbers to support.

TD: You’ve talked about the importance of the science, the evidence, the technical expertise and you’ve also talked about the importance of stakeholder relationships – how a lot of people have quite strong views about the work of Defra. What is it like as a minister juggling those different, potentially competing, views on what you are doing?

RP: It is an interesting point because yes, you get lobbied left, right and centre and from every side. We had, all the green organisations, the NGOs, you know, RSPB, National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, Green Alliance, Country Alliance and all that over there. Then you’ve got the NFU, the Country Landowners Association, and all of those other people over here. And what you’re trying to do is get them to meet in the middle and I prided myself on having good relationships with every side and that was partly because I come from an agricultural background, but I also have a very environmental sort of skills base in terms of the things that I’ve worked on. 

I built up, I think, very strong relationships on both sides but you’ve still got to listen to your own party also because you are in government and if they’ve got a big majority, they’ve got the power to act. You need to balance all of that and convince them that it is the right thing or, sometimes, change your own views and soften things that you might have wanted to do and then you have to think about other departments. You need to have meetings with them and they are not always on the same page as you: they have different priorities and they’ve got their own targets, and they might not understand your priorities at all. And I definitely found that Defra in my view just did not get the credit for what it did and the size of the budget for what it was delivering was a factor – much of what it set in train would benefit many other departments as well (like health and well-being for example) and this wasn’t really taken into account.

“you get lobbied left, right and centre and from every side.”

If I can say this really honestly, a greater understanding of one another’s departments would pay dividends with an understanding about how one department could mutually help another to achieve their outcomes for society. This could be useful  particularly on energy and on housing – I worked with seven different housing ministers and it was really complicated because the whole issue of something called nutrient neutrality arose and we had to work out how we were going to sort that out in terms of the phosphate that comes from housing developments, even after waste water has been through a treatment works it still contains phosphate, and there was evidence the phosphate was negatively impacting the natural environment (triggered by a court case in the Netherlands referred to as ‘the Dutch Case’). And we did everything at our end to upgrade the treatment works to get rid of as much as possible. But we needed something on the other side, some understanding, and it took a long time to get all those people around the table and I can honestly say it wasn’t helped by having seven different housing ministers. It was very frustrating. The same on certain aspects of water and proposed house building targets, especially in already water stressed areas. So I really tried to build bridges, get teams to join up and civil servants [too], to ensure areas like this were factored in much earlier. It becomes much more effective if you can do that.

And I pushed to stay in Defra through successive leadership changes, but you could say this may have been to my own detriment because I didn’t get promoted to, you know, a ‘right honourable’ [member of the privy council] or this or that or the other title. But I do know that I probably was far more effective for society by staying there and I know that the people that knew, knew that [laughs]. So it depends on what your aim is, doesn’t it?

“I do know that I probably was far more effective for society by staying there and I know that the people that knew, knew that”

TD: You worked with four different secretaries of state at Defra. How did that churn impact all of these important policy areas that you were working on?

RP: Yes, well I can’t pretend that this was ideal! Because of course it’s a really important role, it’s a great honour, isn’t it, to be made secretary of state, but each one of them comes with their own agenda and although there’s a lot that still has to be driven forward that’s in the pipeline, each one has a different kind of way of approaching it or a different focus or something that they think is more important than the other thing. I watched with interest at how each one operated and their different approaches. As always, of course, the political agenda and how to achieve the necessary outcomes was a cornerstone. Life was sometimes complicated by their particular approaches – if it impacted on delivering one’s own agenda but you had to work around that – and it was definitely beneficial to try and develop a good working relationship with whoever was the boss. 

Some secretaries of state were just hooked up on one or two things that slowed us down because, as you can probably gather, a lot of what we were doing was incredibly complicated. Some were really good at the detail and others weren’t, some loved the nitty gritty and others just loved the top level. I imagine it was also quite testing for our civil servants to keep adapting to change and in terms of the teams of civil servants that I worked with, they  themselves increasingly worked flexibly, which was fine to a degree, but I began to specify that if we had key matters to discuss it was more constructive to sit around a table in person and so I asked them to come in. 

“Some [secretaries of state] were really good at the detail and others weren’t, some loved the nitty gritty and others just loved the top level.”

I would honestly say though that despite the churn of secretaries of state, on the whole we moved forward, we did go in a good direction of travel and we did, I think, really get a handle on water. But we didn’t get the credit for that from the press because it just got hooked on sewage. There was all the other stuff that we’ve driven forward, which obviously we had to work with as a team – the ministers, the civil servants, the secretaries of state. The Storm Sewage Overflows Reduction Plan which started to make a real difference. The Plan for Water, which I instigated, because upon inheriting the water portfolio when I first went to Defra, I began to have all of these different meetings relating to it, but it seemed to me that everyone seemed to work in silos: demand; supply; pollution; Ofwat; water companies; Thames tideway tunnel! And at that time (and even now), we had a lot of directives from Europe too plus a lot of our own regulations and we had all of these different plans – management plans, environment plans, all sorts of stuff – it was so hard to get my head around that. 

So I started a great big whiteboard all across the wall of my office on water much to the amusement of my private office and I thought, ‘I wonder if we should pull all this stuff together?’ So I went to the first secretary of state, who was Theresa [Villiers], and I said, “Look, would it be okay if I, aside from my other commitments, started to work on putting all of this together more holistically, because I think it would be more beneficial for everybody?” And that did include actually liaising with some other departments much more closely on things like water in relation to housing. I was pleased to get the go-ahead to pull together a team and to secure money for that. But then Theresa left fairly rapidly and then we got George Eustice in and I had to convince him again, but fortunately he agreed to let me keep the work going and then he went and in came Thérèse Coffey so I subsequently had to convince her of the need for this Plan and so it went. 

We finally produced the plan under the third secretary of state [Coffey], it basically outlined all the things that we felt needed doing to finally nail clean and plentiful water now and for the future – all aspects of it. It was a more holistic approach to all things water, drawing together all sides of this complex landscape – supply, demand, pollution, regulation and so forth. And then it was finally launched and, after a bit of behind the scenes messaging to explain how many years of blood, sweat and tears had gone into this, I was pleased that the plan was launched under both of our names. I am pleased that many measures in the plan are flowing through now in one way or another. It was a bit of a miracle that the work kept going given the demands on Defra which were always pulling staff in different directions. So it was really fortunate that we did manage to keep that going. Many measures now in place under the current government have come through as a result of the recommendations in this plan. It’s a bit gutting that they constantly criticise us! But I guess that’s politics. 

“Many measures now in place under the current government have come through as a result of the recommendations in this plan. It’s a bit gutting that they constantly criticise us!”

PM: Defra is a department that regularly has to deal with crises. Could you walk us through a crisis that you had to deal with as a minister?

RP: I had them all! Drought, flooding, chemicals, pollution, sewage. There literally wasn’t a moment to relax because every time you thought you might get a breather, flooding then struck and who’s going to deal with it? Rebecca is going out! And as soon as you’ve got over the flood season, we went into drought – it is a department that deals with these natural crises, plus man-made ones like chemicals, for example pollution. I would say Defra does have a very good crisis team that swings into operation and it’s really set up very quickly and I think other departments have been copying the Defra model as far as I understand it.

[When a crisis hits] you have to act immediately advised by all the available data and the evidence. It’s dealing with questions like, ‘is there any threat to human life?’ and making sure people are safe – so that’s the first priority. And then it moves through phases, whether it’s flooding or drought; water outages as well, when a water supply went offline or if there were pipe bursts – we had quite a number of those with the freezing and thawing after the winter. 

“I had them all! Drought, flooding, chemicals, pollution, sewage.”

And afterwards there was a protocol to go through the lessons learnt and to instigate change where necessary and appropriate. So that’s a really important piece of the work that I did. Plus I had updates on other potential risks that society may be facing – and working to ensure contingency plans are in place to handle any potential threat – biological, nuclear, chemical and so on. In fact, we had some really good practice runs with various scenarios working across departments. 

TD: Can you tell us what achievement you’re most proud of from your time in government and what your specific role in achieving that was?

RP: I’m super proud of steering the Environment Act through parliament. It literally is so game-changing and the things that it enables and brings forward will resonate for years to come and they will change how we live, they will transition us to a more sustainable way of living. I was particularly proud to have influenced the decline of nature by 2030 target – that’s something that I really stuck my neck out for. Also there’s another clause in there to try and stop deforestation in rainforests across the world from destroying precious habitats, so there’s a clause in there on that, and that wouldn’t have been in there if both Zac [Goldsmith] and I hadn’t really worked to try and see if we could come up with something that would influence what we could do as a country ourselves. You can’t tell other countries what to do or not to do, so we had to find a way of doing it through saying that if you import a product from one of these forests and it contravenes their own laws, you cannot do it, it’s illegal. Many countries have laws on protecting their environment, it’s just that they’re not policing them. The secondary legislation for this measure has still not been enacted – and I really hope the current government will see it through. 

So the Environment Act as a whole I’m super proud of, but also my work earlier to get the ban on microbeads and microplastics on cosmetics and wash-off care products. These things are always done in teams, but I started a campaign on that when I got in as a backbencher and my question on this at PMQs [prime minister’s questions] – when I asked the Speaker if he’d had a shower that morning, because if he had he’d probably inadvertently washed thousands of microplastics down the drain through the shower gel – got some helpful attention! Also soil – no one had ever mentioned soil in parliament before, I’m so proud of that. I know people slightly laughed at me, but it’s something I knew a lot about before I got there and I’d studied, so I persuaded the chair of the Environmental Audit Committee to do an inquiry on soil and then did the first ever debate on soil in parliament and we got a whole snowball going – eventually that was definitely something that influenced the Environment Land Management scheme where now we pay farmers to look after their soil and that wasn’t happening. So I’m really proud of all those things – at least they can’t take that away from me! [Laughs]

“I asked the Speaker if he’d had a shower that morning, because if he had he’d probably inadvertently washed thousands of microplastics down the drain through the shower gel”

You can achieve things if you really, really get stuck in. It can be pretty all-consuming though – because if you are a minister you are doing two jobs, because you are of course still, importantly and foremost a constituency MP, and in a constituency like mine it was vital to keep demonstrating that I could deliver successful projects and stand up for my constituents. So I was more of less working a 70-hour week covering both roles. Now that I look back I reflect and wonder how I actually managed this, especially in the light of all the other things that happened to me behind the scenes, while I was there, with a stalker for two years and a crown court case, harassment by one particular individual, horrid social media and the devastating illness my wonderful husband, Charles Clark, was afflicted by – his escalating illness and subsequent death in 2019. 

TD: When you are dealing with something like that, is the government good at helping you manage and supporting you in that way?

RP: No, not in my experience sadly, I’ve just written to the Speaker about it, because he’s taking evidence for some sort of report, and I thought, ‘Finally, I’m going to say something about all of this.’ Because I could have gone to the press to expose lots of these things that happened to me, but I didn’t want the story to be about that, I wanted my story to be about the good work I was doing, and our Conservative government was doing, and I didn’t want it to be about things like the fact that I’d had a stalker for two years who turned up at my house, who threatened my children, and going to court.

“I’m the 379th woman, ever, in the history of our parliament – I’m really proud of that!”

In another incident I was trapped in my car one night outside my constituency office by an individual which was really frightening and I had harassment from another individual linked to parliament for the whole time I was in parliament, as well as having a spoof gross sexually explicit YouTube video posted about me and some unacceptable social media. It was just horrible, all of that. It’s a bit better now, I think, for people, because some support measures have been taken and additional security etc. But I can honestly say I got virtually no support from within parliament. There was – at least at that time – no kind of HR support or go-to person to discuss these things and to help you through. Believe it or not, despite these ghastly background incidents, I would still encourage women to stand for parliament, especially representing rural areas because we genuinely need them. In fact I just spoke the other day at an International Women’s Day event covering my parliamentary experiences – especially relating to the environment – because I think it demonstrates that you can achieve things for the greater good. I am keen to talk about going to parliament because I am really proud of it. When you swear in you get a number and my number is 379. So I’m the 379th woman, ever, in the history of our parliament – I’m really proud of that! There were more men there that day when I swore in than there had ever been women in parliament. But if you think about all of the things that I put up with while I was there, it might discourage women getting there. So I hope they’re going to improve some of the unacceptable things that seem to be part and parcel of the job especially for women. 

And the whipping system, I mean, at times that was shocking really. The way I was treated when my husband was so ill, because they just needed me to turn up to vote – I was just fodder. He was going to have half a lung removed and he was just going into the operating theatre and the whips rang and said, “Fucking get on a train and get to London, you’ve got to vote!” It was really terrible. And if you’re a minister, of course, you are expected to turn up to vote and I was a team player, I’ve always been a team player!

“The way I was treated when my husband was so ill, because they just needed me to turn up to vote – I was just fodder.”

TD: Are there things that you think that could be done to improve the situation?

RP: I think they’re trying – I think that’s why the Speaker is doing this report that he’s working on. I have to admit, the voting system and the hours are really tricky. I just got used to it and you got used to living like that, but it’s not really normal is it? I personally couldn’t have gone to parliament a moment earlier than I did because of the ages of my three children and I wanted to be based near home for the earlier part of their lives. Parliament is trying to address the social media issues, because I think that’s all escalated in recent years, as more people use it, but that doesn’t help. It’s really tricky. 

One point I did want to make: there was not any handover from me to the new Labour ministers. Obviously a new government’s got its own agenda, but I think some kind of handover to highlight ongoing work would be useful and potentially have a value for money impact and an impact on civil servants, many of whom will have spent large amounts of time on particular projects. Many of these got stalled because of the election and then many never see the light of day often after months and months of work. 

“there was not any handover from me to the new Labour ministers”

I rang one of the new ministers in the end, because there were certain things we did years of work on, and I wanted to mention them. For example, we did a two-year review on chalk rivers, which was commissioned outside and so many people put so much work into it voluntarily to develop a long awaited and much needed chalk stream restoration plan. It was about to be launched – and then of course the election was called, so it wasn’t launched. But some kind of handover on this might have got it over the line – and in my view the environment will suffer, and this could have been avoided. Over 80% of the worlds chalk streams are in England and they are in desperate need of protection and restoration and the plan set out what steps need to be taken do this. Perhaps the new government might pick this up at some point, I hope so. In reality it’s not political, but sadly it’s been ditched. 

TD: What advice would you give to a new minister, whether in Defra doing the role you were doing or more broadly, about how to be effective and how to have positive impact?

RP: Everybody works in different ways. I always liked to listen and to make sure I had the whole picture. Then I learnt how to assimilate data really quickly, ask relevant questions and come up with a view. I also often asked what was it that I was not being told! What was the difficult thing? 

One thing I did learn was how to get my civil servants to hone down what they came to me with and not to deluge me with vast amounts of information that I simply didn’t have the time to wade through. I needed the relevant facts, the options, so that I could then make relevant decisions. I also tended to prefer human contact and Q&A sessions than endless paperwork to deal with on my own. 

And the sheer volume of information and subject areas a minister is expected to handle could be overwhelming, so I also devised a simple system of fact sheets on a wide range of subjects – a bit like crib sheets – that I could use when making speeches or addressing meetings. I would give all ministers an opportunity at some point to present to cabinet – so many have specialist knowledge and experience that might be worth being heard.

“I would give all ministers an opportunity at some point to present to cabinet – so many have specialist knowledge and experience that might be worth being heard.”

Although I have a comms and media background and I did push to do quite a lot of media, it was often in specialist media outlets and not necessarily the main press outlets because my subject areas didn’t necessarily coincide with the main communications ‘grid’. This meant that the public may have been predominantly exposed to only a limited number of subjects and didn’t get a broad picture of the extensive work of government which I believe would have been of interest (in my case things like the environment agenda, or work to cut plastic pollution, work to protect our hedgerows, or even work with our Overseas Territories to restore the nature in their seas). I think there is merit in many more of our politicians having the opportunity to publicise the areas that they are working on, which would help to demonstrate what government actually does and that more MPs are ‘real’ people who go into politics for the greater good, which is so often not the view of the public. This could help to dispel growing disenfranchisement with politics. 

TD: It’s a fascinating question – how can a government tell a positive story about the things that it’s doing as well as reacting to the negative stuff?

RP: Yes! So I started doing loads of my own comms, I set up my own Instagram (called powr_of_nature) to just talk about things related to nature that I did – I started making a load of videos. Actually, the last secretary of state [Steve Barclay] did task me with making one-minute videos on everything that Defra did to try and get the message out about the broad brush of amazing work done by the department, and he thought I could use my comms background, which I set up a dedicated team to do. Really, really useful stuff, but then of course the election was called so half of it was never really used, so that will all be wasted! And that was all about actually what Defra was doing rather than being stridently political: new forests, rewilding rivers, money for farmers to adopt technologies to cut pesticide use, putting salmon back – all fantastic stuff.

And also maybe this is something your Institute could look at – I lost my job overnight and yes, that’s how our political system goes and we all know that, but that meant that everything that you were working on – and I was at the top of my game on all of this stuff – it’s just gone, and you’re gone, and you feel like a social outcast. Because you’ve lost your job, but if you were a minister like me who really cared about what they were dealing with and knew about it, you have lost your entire identity overnight. And with there being no handover, so much work just disappears and it’s almost as if it all never happened! There has to be a slightly better way of handling this. 

“you’ve lost your job, but if you were a minister like me who really cared about what they were dealing with and knew about it, you have lost your entire identity overnight.”

And it’s also being made even harder for somebody like me to get back into any work in areas that they were an expert in because of ACOBA [Advisory Committee on Business Appointments]. You’ve got to run everything by them and, also, this is why I think that the publicity thing is so important and messaging about what we do and who we are – we are quite normal people with useful skills: we are not some weird person… well I hope you don’t think that! And yet it seems as though we are being penalised for and jeopardised for trying to do the right thing for society. I don’t think that happened in the old days. So for me to get roles – especially in this broad agenda where my expertise lies – is not that straight forward. I made a speech at an event last week on water, and one on the circular economy, as well as an interview on net zero, because I was invited to do so. I haven’t earned one penny since I left parliament, not one penny! And yet our political capital is in demand. I am doing and will always do some voluntary work for causes I believe in, but getting into world of work again is more challenging. I have to be careful whatever I do not to contravene the ministerial code, rightly so, but I think the system has gone too far erring on the side of caution. 

Somebody needs to look at this, because why would people who were experts want to go into parliament nd bring specialist knowledge to the table if they knew it might be so hard to get back into the real world to work in areas they worked in before if they lose their seat – which of course is a possibility always. We need a mixture of people in our parliament, but this is surely not helping. 

It [ACOBA] is there for the right reasons, because a few people blotted the copy book (mostly men), so I can see why it’s there. But I think it’s gone overboard because you’ve got to run everything by them, even if you’re asked to be a trustee, a voluntary unpaid trustee of a local charity, you’ve still got to go through them.

“Perhaps something simple like ‘Former Member of Parliament’ (FMP) after a former MP’s name would be fitting.”

One final point I’d like to make is that it’s striking that there is absolutely no recognition for a person who as been a member of parliament, should you not receive one of the various accolades or honours such as Rt Hon, Sir, Dame or various other titles. So there are a lot of people who have stepped up and passed through the system, but it could never be known in years to come. I think this is a great pity – to step forward for this really important part of public service is a very serious commitment, and to be honoured by being elected to service is tremendous, but whether you served one term or many there is nothing to acknowledge it. I think this adds to the sad situation that we seem to face today where many members of the public think politicians are in it for themselves, that they are all a waste of time or rogues – and this doesn’t help the whole issue of encouraging decent people to stand. Perhaps something simple like ‘Former Member of Parliament’ (FMP) after a former MP’s name would be fitting. At least we’d have something to write on our gravestones to acknowledge the effort!