Theresa Villiers

Theresa Villiers interview in 2025

Jack Pannell (JP): In our last Ministers Reflect interview, we covered your time in government up until when Theresa May became prime minister. You observed most of the May government from the backbenches and the challenges that government faced. What are your reflections on that period before going back into government?

Theresa Villiers (TV):It was a very difficult period in all sorts of ways. I'm sure that answer doesn't surprise you in the least. I know there was a general public sense of frustration that politics just wasn't working. I come at it from the perspective of someone who voted to leave the EU. I feel that at the heart of the problem was a significant number of MPs trying to stop us from leaving. That's what led to the continual stalemate. It was a stressful time because obviously I was very keen to make a success of the decision that the country had taken in the referendum and seeing week after week things not progressing, I found really difficult. Every conversation seemed to be dominated by the issue at that stage. I've always done a lot of doorstep calls, constituency work, and for that period there was just no conversation with anyone, under any circumstances, that didn't ultimately seem to have a Brexit element.

That changed dramatically after the 2019 general election. I think a lot of people felt like ‘Right, ok, the country has voted again to leave, and we ought to just get on with it’. Then the heat went out of the issue to some degree, although obviously there were still very important decisions that had to be made. But that is one of my enduring memories of the May premiership – the loss of the majority, the weakness of the government, and this continual clash between those who wanted to respect the referendum result and those who wanted to overturn it.

JP: That leads us onto 2019. You came back into government in July of that year as secretary of state at Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs]. Could you tell us about the conversation you had with the prime minister when you were appointed to that position?

TV: Yes, I can. When I got the call from Downing Street, I was assuming – and everyone I knew also seemed to be assuming – that they were going to send me back to Northern Ireland [the Northern Ireland Office]. I'd been summoned over to Downing Street, and I think I waited probably for an hour and a half or so. The level of anxiety and uncertainty and excitement obviously has time to intensify as you wait for the conversation. Then getting into the room and sitting opposite the prime minister at the cabinet table and hearing the words ‘I want you to go to Defra’. For a moment, I was just absolutely flabbergasted – a sort of ‘goldfish’ moment.

We had a pretty brief conversation, and as you would expect, one of the main instructions was to prepare the department for exit [from the EU] because Defra has huge Brexit facing responsibilities, given the sensitivity around food exports and agriculture and fisheries. That was the main priority. I can't remember all the details of the conversation. Subsequently I obviously worked with the prime minister on many natural and environment things, but I don't remember if they were highlighted in that conversation. Then I had to rush off because we had Defra questions at 9:30 the next day. I headed off to the department and be given the Q&A brief as a starter.

"I was determined to try to be resilient and to learn from my experiences the first time around and keep a real grip on all the decisions I needed to make."

JP: What was it like coming into that high level role, having already served as a cabinet minister? What was it like to come back into the cabinet, albeit with a new brief?

TV: Well, what surprised me was not just the choice of department, I was also surprised to be back at all. I'd assumed that I'd had my one shot at government. I was delighted to be given the environment brief because it's something that matters to me personally and I've been involved with campaigns to protect nature and our green spaces and animal welfare well since I was first elected as an MEP [member of the European Parliament] back in 1999. So I was thrilled, but also daunted, knowing the pressures that come with being in the cabinet. I was determined to try to be resilient and to learn from my experiences the first time around and keep a real grip on all the decisions I needed to make. I also appreciated the importance of getting the media issues right, given the impact they have on one’s effectiveness as secretary of state.

"I'd assumed that I'd had my one shot at government."

Rebecca McKee (RM): You entered Defra in July and the commitment from the prime minister then was to leave the EU by the end of October. At that time, the shape of the Brexit deal, or whether there would be a deal at all, was still very unclear. How did you approach that and prepare for the range of possible outcomes?

TV: It was absolutely the government's top priority, and one was told that again and again at the daily meeting in the COBR [the cabinet committee that is convened to handle matters of national emergency or major disruption] briefing room. This was the XO committee, with ministers from departments and key delivery agencies getting together every morning to mark progress and make decisions.

Just keeping up with that and making sure one serviced that meeting properly was a big, demanding challenge for me and for the department. It was a phenomenally complex exercise to prepare for a potential no deal exit. I mean, even a deal exit was complicated to organise. It meant organising new databases, new regimes for inspections, engaging with businesses affected by this to make sure they would understand new requirements, and multiple pieces of delegated legislation to make sure that all the appropriate rules were carried over.

We had the general carry-over legislation, but a remarkable amount needed individual statutory instruments. It was a really massive task, and I was always conscious that if something went wrong, it would be very visible and very difficult to deal with. One example from discussions in this morning XO meeting about something called day old chicks, which is an export that we have. There was a debate about whether, if there were delays as a result of a no-deal Brexit, these shipments should be given priority? Should you give priority to perishable seafood from Scotland? Or should you prioritise making sure these day-old chicks didn't die in a lorry waiting at Dover? So not only was there that complexity but there was also sensitivity because animal welfare was at stake.

RM: Did you feel that the department was well prepared for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit? And what was your approach to ensuring that Defra was prepared? 

TV: I think they were well prepared. They had obviously got bigger in order to deal with this issue and huge amount of resources within department was focused on it. There was a detailed structure of hierarchy in terms of who was responsible for what, and a regular set of meetings to enable me and for senior civil servants to monitor progress.

There were certain things which were very difficult to see how we would solve. For example, needing very many veterinary inspection certificates and how we would ensure that there were sufficient numbers of vets to deliver them. Also, not knowing how the EU would approach certain issues after exit made it difficult to plan. But there was a strong focus on these particular risks and how we managed them and dealt with them. I was impressed with how the department was rising to that challenge.

RM: You mentioned the cabinet committee meetings, how well did you think the department was working with the Cabinet Office, DExEU [Department for Exiting the European Union], Number 10 and across government generally on the no-deal preparations?

TV: I think pretty well on the no-deal preparations. Two areas where I experienced difficulties working with Number 10 were getting spads [special advisers] appointed and general problems getting media statements cleared. You'll appreciate that there's a vast specialist press out there who every day are wanting quotes from Defra or the secretary of state, whether it’s on bio security for tomatoes or whatever. All of that had to be cleared by Number 10 and sometimes it was quite difficult getting an answer from them. But in terms of the mechanics of Brexit preparations, it did feel like everyone was pulling in the same direction.

Certainly Dominic Cummings [then chief adviser to the prime minister] and parts of the Number 10 machine were very keen to hold us all to account and hold our feet to the fire in the context of Brexit preparations, in a way which I can entirely understand. So that in some ways was useful, even though sometimes they could be quite demanding, as you would expect in the circumstances.

"in terms of the mechanics of Brexit preparations, it did feel like everyone was pulling in the same direction."

JP: I wonder how did that feel compared to the first time you were in government and the way Number 10 approached the wider cabinet?

TV: It was a completely different world, I think. When I was secretary of state for Northern Ireland, I felt in large measure that the prime minister was happy to let me and my spad Jonathan Cain get on with it because he trusted the two of us to make the right decisions. Now, obviously there were formal clearance mechanisms for speeches and for the big decisions. Clearly, we needed support from other departments and that would sometimes involve Number 10. But to a significant degree, David Cameron [then prime minister] was willing to delegate decisions, discretions and responsibilities because he trusted me to do it correctly.

Now there was much, much more control exerted in those early months of the Boris [Johnson] administration. As I say, understandably in relation to holding our feet to the fire on Brexit preparations. Again, I think the point where it manifested itself and became a bit frustrating was the two issues I mentioned before - spad appointments and anything to do with getting permission to be on, and say anything to, the media. As I say, even pretty low-key quotations to specialist press. Sometimes it was just hard getting it out of the door because you had to wait for Number 10 to clear it.

"David Cameron was willing to delegate decisions, discretions and responsibilities because he trusted me to do it correctly. Now there was much, much more control exerted in those early months of the Boris administration."

RM: You talked about Defra being very important and having a lot more staff following the EU referendum. Was the growth of staff a challenge to manage by the time you came in? 

TV: I wasn't involved in recruitment, because that expansion had already happened by the time I arrived. I do remember thinking ‘Someday we're going to have to deal with this, and we're going to have to go back to similar levels of staff pre-referendum’ which indeed is very much the debate now. But beyond that, I think everyone just knew it was all hands to the pumps. We needed all these people to try and get through this huge task that we had. But certainly, there was inevitably going to come a time when we needed to slim down again following these Brexit-related matters being resolved.

JP: I wonder how different did it feel compared to the Northern Ireland Office which is a much smaller department than Defra? What was it like entering a department that was much larger in terms of the number of people, the number of ALBs [arm’s-length bodies], and where there were different things to get your head around and manage?

TV: It was exciting, but daunting. Suddenly you have an £8 billion budget and 27,000 people to manage. I was keen to learn the mechanics and understand how dealing with a big department was different from the Northern Ireland Office. Certainly, the volume of decisions was a lot greater. The red box work for Northern Ireland involved plenty to do, but the volume was not as great than at Defra. Every day in that Defra red box, there were multiple decisions to be made which were highly complex, technical, nuanced, complicated and potentially disastrous if you get it wrong. 

"Every day in that Defra red box, there were multiple decisions to be made which... potentially disastrous if you get it wrong." 

I think particularly the decisions on trade policy; that has a language all of its own. I found some of them quite technical and challenging to deal with. But more than anything else, it was the sheer volume of the work. These were not things you could just skim through and think ‘Oh well the civil servants have got it right. Just tick at the bottom’. You really had to think carefully and deeply about these things. And that was just gruelling in terms of hours. It was very tough to get through a long day, including speaking at the despatch box, and then make sure that you're on top form to make these tough decisions in the red box in the evening.

JP: How did you find that experience of working with your private office team to get to grips with the department and manage the huge numbers of decision?

TV: Well, I got a lot of excellent support from my private office. They were great. I mean, there was one appointment which didn't work out quite so well, but on the whole, they were incredibly supportive and worked really, really hard. As I was saying, there was a lot for me to get through, but I think they probably had a fairly massive burden as well. I pretty soon felt like I could trust them on a number of issues to get on with things. I certainly knew from my previous experience in government that having the right private office was really essential. It makes such a difference to your effectiveness as a minister and to your quality of life frankly. I was very pleased with the support that I got from them. 

JP: When you came into Defra, you succeeded Michael Gove who had been there for quite a long time and had put a lot of policies into motion – in particular, the 25-year environment plan. How did you manage picking up those policies while dealing with the Brexit questions?

TV: Well, it's good to be able to talk about some non-Brexit stuff because there was plenty of non-Brexit work going on thankfully. As any incoming secretary of state would do, I wanted to kick the tyres. I wanted to look in depth about what these policy choices had been and whether they were the right ones; and whether I needed to carry on what Michael was doing or change it. In the main, I found the decisions he'd made were sensible ones. I suppose in hindsight the neonicotinoids decision [further restrictions on neonicotinoid pesticides imposed in 2018] is probably the most controversial, but that didn't really come up during my time. That was in place. 

There were one or two areas where on the same page as Michael, but I would struggle to name them now. On balance, particularly when I arrived, I was quite wary about what was in the Environment Bill [introduced in October 2019, intended to enshrine environmental principles in law] which was going to become the Environment Act. I went through that very carefully. It is a huge piece of legislation, so that was another one of the challenging tasks to just understand it all and how it would operate in practice. I wanted to satisfy myself that it was going to be effective in delivering environmental outcomes but would do so in a way which wasn't too costly and problematic for other areas of government activity – particularly for the economy. Having had those discussions, I decided that the bill was in the right place. There were some changes that I did make to it and obviously that process continued during the parliamentary process. 

Some backbench colleagues had been discontented with some of the decisions that Michael took. But as I say, on balance, I think most of them were correct. Michael was a very helpful ally on a lot of issues, and I relied on him to quite a considerable degree, because obviously at that time he was at the heart of the government as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

JP: Could you tell us a little bit about what was the process by which you would, as you say, kick the tyres and make those changes?

TV: Firstly, I had the general briefing on everything the department was doing and would ask for further details on particular issues I was concerned about. The department also said that they were trying to carry out research me on me and my views, but that I'd been involved in so many environmental campaigns that they got a bit bogged down. 

vAnother very useful way to do that tyre kicking exercise of course was having introductory meetings with the stakeholders so I could ask them directly for their views. Obviously, a big project for the department was the transition away from the Common Agricultural Policy [CAP, the EU policy to provide financial support to farmers in member states] and the creation of new Farm Support Schemes [schemes requiring farmers to protect the environment] linked to environmental outcomes. The key was getting the balance right between ensuring that we delivered environmental improvements, particularly on nature. But that we did so in a way which was accessible for farmers, because if these schemes are difficult to get into, they'll have low uptake, and they won't have an impact. 

I was conscious that ultimately, the purpose of the Farm Support Scheme is to help people make a living by growing food. What I found quite bizarre was the Cabinet Office didn't want me to say that. The cabinet collective responsibility police kept trying to stop me saying that. I don't know if it was the Treasury, but the idea was that our new ELM schemes [Environmental Land Management schemes aimed at promoting sustainable farming] were supposed to be all about the environment. Predominantly they are, but I just thought that they can have a dual purpose. I never quite got that resolved, but I did occasionally push the envelope in the way I described the Farm Support Schemes. 

I remember one of the Defra civil servants, when we were discussing a speech I was about to give, said ‘No, you can't say that because the Cabinet Office won't let you’. And I asked ‘What? I can't say that a Farm Support Scheme helps people earn a living from growing food? Really?’ No one else seemed to have this problem, but that was one of the quirks of the operation of collective responsibility.

 "Farmers being farmers, it's a sort of eternal truth that they're frustrated with what governments do."

JP: You’ve spoken a little bit about farmers there. What was it like managing some very different stakeholders within the brief and how did you go about that? Where did you feel it went particularly well or where was it more challenging?

TV: I had many, many meetings with farmers both on my visits to the front line, but also with the NFU [National Farmers’ Union] and other farming groups coming to see me. Certainly, they are very good at putting their point of view across. They are highly effective at making the point that farmers do a crucial job. It's a difficult job and we need to recognise that and look after our farmers. There are so many ways in which Defra and the government obviously drive them mad. Farmers being farmers, it's a sort of eternal truth that they're frustrated with what governments do. 

I knew that they were a hugely important constituency, and I knew that to a degree it was a problem that I represented an entirely suburban area. That meant I had something to prove about how seriously I took the importance of defending food security and farmers. I certainly devoted a huge amount of my time whilst secretary of state to looking at farming matters and trying to make sure we got them right, including being fair to farmers.

JP: One of the other big issues that you had to deal with in your time as secretary of state was the flooding in November 2019 and some other flooding incidents. Can you tell us a bit about how you initially responded to the crisis when it first happened?

TV: Yes, the first thing I wanted to do was visit and meet the people impacted by it. There I ran into a few difficulties with Number 10 because, as I've mentioned before, they were sometimes reluctant to authorise any kind of media contact, and if you do a visit without media contact, it lessens its impact. But I was determined to visit and did so because being there is an important part of managing a situation like that. You have to talk to the people who were there, and the people who were working on the response. 

Obviously I was very focused on co-ordinating the different agencies which ultimately, we decided to do via a COBR meeting. We had a debate on that – the scale of the flooding wasn't such that it would have normally led to a COBR meeting – but the prime minister was kind enough to allow us to do that. He was going to chair but at the last minute, he was unavailable. So I had the somewhat daunting experience of chairing the COBR meeting. But it was incredibly useful in terms of making sure that we were doing everything we possibly could do to try and deal with the situation.  

The prime minister himself visited Fishlake [a village near Doncaster which was badly hit by floods in 2019] and had some very lengthy conversations with the residents there. He took a very close personal interest in making sure that we were doing everything that we could do in relation to the situation.

JP: You were also able to provide financial aid to those that were affected by the floods in the aftermath. I wonder if you could talk a bit about how you were able to get that decision and action it?

TV: Yes, there is always a transition – the immediate response to flooding is Defra, the clear up and the later response is, what was then DLUHC [the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities] and is now back at MHCLG [the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government]. 

So there were DLUHC schemes which we needed to get out as quickly as possible. But there were more than one set of funding streams that we were also anxious to get out straight away. You'll have to forgive me, I can't remember the detail of what they were. But I certainly remember a conversation in the COBR meeting with the man from the Treasury saying ‘No, we can't pay for these schemes. You'll have to find them from the Defra budget’. And we just had someone say the prime minister is really keen for these schemes to happen. So I remember saying to the man from the Treasury ‘Well, that just means the prime minister can't get these financial schemes because I don't have the money in my Defra budget’. At which point he gracefully conceded, and the schemes were authorised. Then you have the challenge of actually getting them out of the door. So that was a big priority to make sure that we did that as quickly as possible.

JP: Then in the aftermath, one of the actions you took was an independent review of the insurance for people in flood risk areas. Could you talk a bit about the decision to do that?

TV: The Flood Re [a joint initiative between government and insurers to make flood household insurance policies more affordable] had been, on balance, pretty successful and it was a good model. The floods demonstrated that there were still gaps and so this was all part of the determination to try and do as much as we could to learn from what had happened as a result of these floods. We wanted to try to make sure that we did as much as possible to prevent the same kind of misery being inflicted on other people in the future. So having a more readily accessible functional market for insurance was part of that.

RM: Bringing the focus back to Westminster and Whitehall, this was your second stint in government and the second prime minister that you were serving under. I’m interested in your reflections on how different you found it working with Boris Johnson compared to working with David Cameron?

TV: Well, I’ll refer back to my previous answer. At times on certain issues, Number 10 were quite controlling in a way that they hadn't been under the DC [David Cameron] era. But actually, one of my main recollections of the interrelationship with Number 10 was they were very, very helpful on a number of issues that I was trying to take through. So for example, I had a long-standing campaign to try to ban the live export of animals for slaughter because of the animal suffering that it involves in transit. The prime minister personally, and his team – his spad on environment and welfare was Sam Richards – were very helpful on that.

"when it came to the natural environment and animal welfare, I could always rely on Number 10 to back me up."

We also got some great decisions on overseas aid working with Zac Goldsmith [former minister of state in Defra]. Some big financial commitments to nature restoration as part of the overseas aid budget. I'm trying to think what else. I had a package of animal welfare reforms for the Conservative party conference in 2019. There were various issues where Number 10 were really helpful. I’m now, beyond those, struggling to remember all of them. But when it came to the natural environment and animal welfare, I could always rely on Number 10 to back me up.

Where it was more difficult was on trade. One of the controversial aspects of trade is if you entirely open and liberalise your food markets, does that mean you're effectively exporting animal cruelty? Cheaper exports from overseas undercut your domestic producers because they're produced without the same level of animal welfare standards. I tried to keep Number 10 on side on that, but I wasn't always successful. But those were some of the issues where I worked quite closely with Boris and his team.

RM: During Boris Johnson's time as prime minister, there were several controversies, not least the extent to which he consulted the cabinet over issues such as the prorogation of parliament. Were you happy with the approach he took to engage cabinet in some of the big strategic decisions that he was making?

TV: Yes, yes, I think so. They were extraordinary times, they really were. Withdrawing the whip from 30 or 40 colleagues seemed to me possibly to be counterproductive, given that it left us with a majority of about minus 45. I remember when I was taking the Environment Bill to the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee [a cabinet committee that considers government bills and recommends a legislative programme] to get it cleared. The chief whip was sitting there saying ‘Well, do you anticipate any problems with your bill with the backbenchers?’  and I said ‘Well, we've got a majority of minus 45, so yes, probably, maybe quite a lot!’

"I felt the cabinet operated pretty effectively during the time when I was part of it."

But I wouldn't say that I felt excluded on the tough decisions. You'll appreciate that the formal meetings around the cabinet table don't tend to make decisions. It's the write round process in advance of cabinet meetings where you iron out differences of view. I felt the cabinet operated pretty effectively during the time when I was part of it.

RM: In your first Ministers Reflect interview with us after your first stint in government, you talked about one of the biggest challenges being managing the workload as a minister. I wondered if you had any other reflections on the lessons that you brought from your first time in government to your second time in government?

TV: I certainly tried to delegate more, and I had some really fantastic ministers who kindly helped out in all sorts of ways. Looking at day-to-day practical issues, I certainly tried to be a bit more relaxed about the style of correspondence and to say ‘Okay, well, ultimately if the factual content is what I need it to be, even if it's not precisely in the language I would like, then I'm not going to sit here and rewrite it’. To survive, I couldn't have devoted the same kind of attention to correspondence at Defra as I did at the DfT [Department for Transport] back in my first government role.

Whilst I still did a fair amount of redrafting, I tried to do that only when the substance needed alteration rather than the overall tone. Certainly, the experience I'd had in government before was helpful in enabling me to know what I have to do personally, and what is something that either doesn't need to be done at all, or someone else can do on my behalf.

RM: What was your working relationship like with your junior ministers that you mentioned earlier when you were working in the department?

TV: It was very good. I hope they would feel the same. They were really excellent, particularly Rebecca [Pow],George [Eustice], Zac [Goldsmith] [all former ministers in Defra] and we had some very good support in the Lords as well. It really was a very able team, and we were all very much in line in terms of what we wanted to do.

I suppose the issue where we had not entirely the same views was on the badger cull [policy to cull badgers to reduce disease in cattle]. That was one of the more difficult issues. I personally was rather conflicted on it because I absolutely didn't want to continue culling an iconic species like badgers, but then again, I didn't want to inflict this terrible animal disease on cattle populations in the UK and the farmers whose lives were devastated by the disease.

We had lots of discussions about what was the right approach for phasing down the cull, which ultimately manifested as the decision announced. It had been cleared before the end of my time at Defra, but it was announced I think very shortly afterwards. It was a compromise, inevitably with issues of this complexity, which meant that the cull would come to an end, but only over a certain transition period. It is interesting to note that the current government seems to be grappling with pretty much the same issues and is in a similar situation to where we were all those years ago.

RM: Let’s talk a bit about your time outside government. You served as an MP for nearly 20 years in total. How do you feel things have changed for government and parliament across that time?

TV: When I was elected, I was one of only 17 Conservative women MPs and that made me very unusual. That had its advantages in that you stand out more, but also its disadvantages, in that you stand out more. I think parliament for me changed drastically in 2010, when so many more Conservative women MPs were elected. Now I know that's only one side of the house, but you will appreciate that in political life, much of what you do is within a party framework. The fact there were lots of Labour women MPs didn't have so much of an impact on me. With the influx of women Conservative MPs, it felt like things changed considerably over my time in parliament; I think very much for the better.

Clearly, it's not gender balanced and it's never likely to be a straight 50/50, but increased representation for women right across parliament, including in the Conservative Party, I think was a very positive development. It made it a more normal, more relaxed place to work in. So that's one change.

Of course, another big change is the social media revolution. For many of us, we didn’t get involved during its earlier years. I’m trying to think of the time I first went on to Facebook, that was maybe 2014? I was late on the uptake. It’s somewhat strange now to think back to a time when you did important things but didn’t always immediately announce them to the entire world. That obligation to communicate all the time via social media was obviously something that changed how politics works in quite a profound way. So those are two of the changes. I'm sure there are many others.

RM: In terms of the idea that more women Conservative MPs entered parliament, what did that change look like and how was it realised day to day?

TV: It’s hard to put your finger on it, really. I'm not sure. It was more a question of atmosphere. I think it just normalised women in politics in a way which hadn't been so much the case before. But it's still the case, unfortunately, that women are a target in politics for more social media abuse, and more critical treatment in the mainstream media as well. Sadly, some things haven't changed.

RM: One of the features that we were thinking about that had changed, particularly since the EU referendum, is the influence of parliamentary groupings in shaping and sometimes obstructing the government’s agenda. How did that affect your experience of being a backbench MP?

TV: Ah, the WhatsApp group revolution, yes. Those groups did have a phenomenal impact during those Brexit years. Steve Baker's ERG [European Research Group, the research group and caucus of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs] WhatsApp group, was how we put the votes together to defeat Theresa Mays's exit deal. History could have been very different in all sorts of ways if that deal had passed. Occasionally things pop up on that old group, it still exists. If something on Brexit comes up in the media, I occasionally stick something on the old group. Last time I did that I got a flurry of posts from people I hadn’t heard from in years. Sorry, I'm diverting. But you're right. They're very influential. They were absolutely pivotal to the informal whipping operation which defeated Mrs May’s exit deal three times.

I used my planning WhatsApp group to generate support for amendments to the Levelling Up Bill [a Conservative policy to reduce regional inequality through funding packages] in 2020 and 2021. That led to some significant changes to the National Planning Policy Framework after Michael Gove [then secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities] was kind enough to take note of the amendments from concerned backbenchers who were worried over development and excessive attacks on greenfield sites and green belt sites. That got quite a lot of pick-up in the national media.

It was written up in the media as the end of mandatory housing targets. It wasn't actually the end of mandatory housing targets, but it did mitigate them and extend the circumstances in which councils could depart from their mandatory housing targets. That campaign was supported by WhatsApp group on planning, which I built up over several months. It consisted of Conservative MPs who, like me, were worried that we were about to repeat the mistakes in the 60s and 70s by building houses in an unsustainable way which damages communities and for which there isn't infrastructure to support them.

RM: Could you tell us a little bit more about the process behind organising and leading that rebellion against the mandatory housing targets?

TV: I suppose it probably started with tearoom type conversations and people saying, ‘How is your council dealing with these mad housing targets?’ and hearing horror stories about 20 storey tower blocks being inflicted on previously agricultural land. I suppose the real starting point for it was Bob Seely [former Conservative MP] approaching me and saying that he was really worried about this issue, and he knew I was too. He said ‘Well, we should start organising on it’. So that's when I started compiling names for the WhatsApp group and getting people together and then getting ministers to come in to talk to backbench colleagues so that they could explain their concerns.

"it's votes that really make ministers and whips sit up and take notice."

Then happily, the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill was tabled and we realised that this was an opportunity to put our concerns down in an amendment which would go on the order paper. You can have all sorts of meetings, and talk, and write op-eds; but it's votes that really make ministers and whips sit up and take notice. Therefore, we had a legislative vehicle that presented itself quite conveniently. I, along with Bob Seeley and the House of Commons clerks, produced a set of amendments, including one which would have scrapped mandatory housing targets altogether. I started collecting names to go on that amendment. The end result was, I think it was 50 [names] or so. 

That meant that Michael Gove, in his own inimitable way, invited Bob and I and one or two other colleagues in to talk about whether there was some kind of compromise that we could come up with – was there common ground which would mean that we wouldn't need to try and divide the house on amendments? That led to some very lengthy discussions at his department. In late December – in the closing days of the parliamentary term - between us, Bob and I and the civil servants came up with this series of alterations to the National Planning Policy Framework [NPPF]. These alterations tried to give, as I was saying before, councils a bit more flexibility and to enable them to make the case to say ‘Well, this is the target which the mandatory mechanism sets us, but because of xyz reasons, we think we should set a lower target’. 

So we had amendments to the NPPF which provided for that. Also, as I think I mentioned before, it gave some extra protection to the green belt and to agricultural land. They were I think a helpful set of amendments. I wasn't entirely sure how much impact they would have. It's such a technical area, it's very hard to know in advance. 

But it was almost the first decision of the Labour government to reverse all those changes. It was pretty much on the day that Angela Rayner [former secretary of state for housing, communities and local government] was appointed that she made the announcement that she would do that. She issued a consultation which almost – I mean, some civil servant must have got the tracked edits out from our discussions on the NPPF. They literally took out every word that the discussion with Michael Gove had added into the NPPF. So clearly, they thought it was going to have an impact. I think it's a shame because they were moderate amendments. I think they struck a reasonable balance and would have facilitated home building but also give additional community and environmental protections. I was sad to see them removed by secretary of state Rayner. 

JP: What is the achievement you're most proud of from your ministerial career?

TV: I feel that my greatest achievement was securing two cross-party agreements in Northern Ireland. They were difficult processes, but the agreements that came out of the two sets of talks I chaired maintained political stability and kept the devolved institutions up and running. 

I think the second set of achievements that I'm proud of is my contribution on the Environment Act, which was in the end a truly groundbreaking piece of legislation and one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation for decades. Also, taking forward new Farm Support Schemes which genuinely deliver for the environment, which I think is absolutely pivotal for our ecological ambitions, and for protecting and handing on the natural environment in a better state than we found it.

I also take pride in the part I played in securing a ban on live export of animals, which is a campaign I was first involved with as MEP in the last 90s and which was finally achieved in 2024.

JP: What is one piece of advice you would give to a new minister on how they can be effective in their role?

TV: Get the right spads I think would be the most important advice that I would give. They are crucial to your success. And get the right private secretary as well because they are also a crucial part of the team. 

JP: And just before we wrap up, is there anything we haven't covered today that you would like to mention? 

TV: No, I don't think so. I suppose one area we haven't really covered is the work I did on the Intelligence and Security Committee. But then again, I'll probably go to prison if I talk too much about that! Given the constraints of the Official Secrets Act, I can see it’s probably best to focus on the other aspects of my work in parliament. So, I think that really covers things. 

Theresa Villiers interview in 2016

Nicola Hughes (NH): You first became a minister in 2010, straight into the Department for Transport [DfT]. You’d shadowed transport in opposition, so what was the experience of coming into government like?

Theresa Villiers (TV): It was high pressure. I think you have to learn a great deal very quickly. I came into the role as transport minister with quite an in-depth background knowledge about transport, but I still had a great deal to learn about making things happen in government and working with civil servants. One of the difficult things, I found, was that I was quite keen to continue to engage externally with stakeholders and experts, which you do in opposition, but it becomes rather more difficult in government; you get much more dependent on the advice of civil servants. I think that was one of the things that took quite a lot of adjusting to, in the early stages.

NH: How useful was knowledge of the brief? Did you go in knowing exactly what it was that you wanted to do with it?

TV: I did, yes. Much of what I wanted to do eventually did come to pass. Transport tends to have very long lead in times, so interestingly Chris Grayling [current transport secretary] was announcing developments on HS2 which I was quite involved with eight years ago. I think it really helped me that I had been doing the transport brief for about three or four years before going into government and I knew what I wanted to achieve and quite a substantial amount of that, I was either able to deliver or I started the process and progress is being made now. Not everything, but a substantial amount of what I had hoped would happen is now underway.

NH: OK, I think we will come back to HS2 and how you did that later as it is very interesting. You mentioned getting to know how government worked and how you got stuff done as being a bit more of a challenge as opposed to the policy brief, so how did you get your head around that stuff – how the civil service operated and the role of being a minister?

TV: I think one of the difficulties I found was no longer having support, because special advisers [spads] obviously worked to the secretary of state and I was the minister of state. In opposition, I had a number of political advisers around me – I suddenly had that taken away and that meant that I was much more dependent on my own political judgement. That took some getting used to. I suppose it was partly because when you first arrive in government, you tend to be quite suspicious of the advice civil servants are giving you. It took me a while to get to know the civil servants and to get a better understanding of their outlook on life and get to a point where I trusted their judgement in a way that I had not previously.

"…when you first arrive in government, you tend to be quite suspicious of the advice civil servants are giving you."

NH: Do you say suspicious because you just didn’t know them at that point or because of it was a change of administration, or something else?

TV: Suspicious is perhaps too pejorative a term! I think it was partly a hangover from opposition: whilst you may be opposing the politicians, the reality is you are very often scrutinising and opposing the institution, the department. So having been on the outside saying ‘You’re getting it wrong!’ for the previous few years and then suddenly being on the inside and being advised by them took some adjusting to.

I think the other thing, that I found probably the most demoralising thing about being a minister for the Department for Transport, was the grind of the correspondence. It is really important that an MP’s correspondence is right. If it goes out in a way which is substandard or there’s a mistake, it can have very significant consequences, not just for me as the minister but also for the MP concerned. Throughout my time at the DfT I was forever doing quite significant re-writes of correspondence. I remember going to an Institute for Government seminar actually, in my first few weeks in office and all of us, a selection of ministers, were all tearing our hair out about the hours and hours and hours we were all spending turning responses to MPs’ correspondence into a form that we were happy with.

"The most demoralising thing about being a minister for the Department for Transport, was the grind of the correspondence."

NH: Did it improve over time?

TV: To some degree, when you can provide a bit of guidance. But I still was doing significant amounts of re-drafting. In hindsight I think now I would just keep sending it back and also I would say ‘Don’t give me any letters which are longer than a page and a half’ because they had this frustrating tendency to produce six pages of obscure and rather impenetrable text and I probably should have been a bit firmer in just rejecting it until they came up with a better draft, rather than re-writing it myself.

NH: Yes. Moving on to the Northern Ireland Office in 2012 – did you know that the move was coming? Was it a job that you had wanted?

TV: I had been in regular discussion with any contacts I had at Number 10 as to whether there was a chance of me going into cabinet. I was starting to get a positive impression that the prospects looked OK. Nobody had ever talked about any particular post, but the Northern Ireland brief was one I had thought might possibly be one that they would consider me for. I am not quite sure why I did that, but certainly before reshuffles you tend to consider and look at the different roles that they might conceivably be reshuffling, so that was one that I had considered.

NH: It is quite a different sort of department to DfT; less operational and more about relationships and bridge-building between Westminster and Northern Ireland. How did you get your head around the new brief and also being a secretary of state?

TV: I felt that transition was not that difficult actually. It was far easier than the transition from opposition to government. When I arrived they gave me the whole transition set of papers, including a history of the island of Ireland from 1171, which says a lot! Some people think that is when the trouble started and others say it is much earlier than that. I was certainly relatively cautious at first in terms of saying anything in public, but right from the start I enjoyed the role. I found it really interesting and it was great to be at the higher level. There are lots of ways in which DfT and Northern Ireland are different, not least that the Northern Ireland Office is tiny in comparison to other government departments and it was good to get to know some good people they have working there. So it was, as I say, a much easier transition than the previous one I had taken on.

"When I arrived they gave me the whole transition set of papers, including a history of the island of Ireland from 1171, which says a lot!"

NH: And although they are quite different departments, what would you say are the key differences between a minister of state role and a secretary of state role?

TV: Well you have the ultimate responsibility for the activities of the department as a secretary of state. How do I best describe this? As a minister of state, you can, depending on the department, get quite a lot of responsibility, but ultimately you are working for the secretary of state and so you can frequently be over-ruled. That didn’t happen a huge amount of the time at DfT. But as a secretary of state, yes you can get over-ruled by the prime minister occasionally, but it’s a very different role. You have the chance to make judgements and take decisions in a way which you just don’t as a minister of state.

"As a secretary of state… you have the chance to make judgements and take decisions in a way which you just don’t as a minister of state"

NH: What were your big priorities at Northern Ireland Office?

TV: The economy was always a very high priority; I think partly because I wanted to change the mind-set of the department. Understandably, it had tended to be focused on maintaining political stability and that was crucially important, but I thought it was also good to remember that the UK government has very significant economic responsibilities for Northern Ireland, even though some economic matters had been devolved. I was always emphasising that we needed to keep doing everything we could to work with the [Northern Irish] executive on economic matters and also bring in inward investment, have the debate around corporation tax and things like that. So that was a key priority and then, of course, there was the continuing priority in terms of economic stability but also trying to persuade the devolved institutions to focus strongly on community cohesion and trying to eliminate some of the sectarian divisions which still exist in Northern Ireland; that was a particular priority for David Cameron. The difficulty is that almost all the levers for affecting those kind of matters are devolved, but it is still an important political job to try and keep them at the top of the agenda.

NH: How did you arrive at those as your priorities? How long did it take you and what was the process you went through to determine that the economy was the thing to focus on?

TV: I think it was by having a lot of conversations. I always find with a new role, one of the best ways to work out how to do it is a series of introductory meetings one must do and they were particularly useful in relation to Northern Ireland, because everyone comes in to their meeting with the secretary of state and they have their two or three key issues. So that starts to give you a pretty good understanding of where the pressure points are and where you need to prioritise.

One area where it took ten days or a couple of weeks to make up my mind on was the debate which had been taking place for a couple of years on the devolution of rate-setting powers for corporation tax. My predecessor, Owen Paterson, had been a great supporter of it but when I arrived it looked as if it was going nowhere. I had to take a decision whether to carry on where Owen Paterson left off or to subtly move away from it because it didn’t seem likely to happen. After talking to people and thinking about it, I decided that actually it could be a very powerful economic tool to rebalance the Northern Ireland economy and I took it up and supported it with enthusiasm. I decided I was going to make up my own mind on that, I did not rush into it because that is what my predecessor had done. I looked at the evidence and decided that he was right that we should go for it. And indeed, it may well happen now.

NH: Out of interest, in transport or Ireland did you ever do any sort of handover or discussion with predecessors? Or even another minister maybe to get advice from who was there to support you or be a role model?

TV: No, I mean I wish there was more of that really, particularly when you start out in a new government. There wasn’t really anyone I talked to about transport matters when I took over, except Philip Hammond who was the secretary of state, so that was quite useful that we’d had a good working relationship previously. If I was really stuck, I had him to go to but there was no kind of mentoring system for new ministers and I think it probably would be helpful if there was. The thing is, you are not realistically going to go to previous Labour ministers for advice and it was so long since the Conservatives had been in government that there weren’t many ministers who could give direct advice on transport matters. I think if the Institute for Government can come up with any ideas or suggestions on that kind of mentoring, that would be quite helpful.

"There was no kind of mentoring system for new ministers and I think it probably would be helpful if there was. The thing is, you are not realistically going to go to previous Labour ministers for advice…"

Oliver Ilott (OI): One of the questions that people in the public often ask is, what is it that actually fills a minister’s day? I wondered if you could talk us through, thinking about the day-to-day reality of being a minister, how did you actually spend your time? 

TV: OK, I always find that quite a difficult question to answer. It is rather different between the two jobs I did. At transport, I suppose, it was very often responding to a debate in Westminster Hall. A further proportion of the day trying to get out to see transport projects, talk to people on the ground. Always a succession of meetings with officials to help take decisions. In the role I did, there were multiple decisions on franchising and various different transport projects. So a lot of my diary was filled with, for example, meetings with officials on decisions to be made on different franchises. Then a fair bit of time grappling with responses to parliamentary questions, redrafting those, redrafting replies to MPs, then also physically moving from the department to the House of Commons later in the day, to carry on doing a lot of the DfT work but doing it in the Commons so I could vote at the same time. There was a lot of engagement with other MPs, frequently they would want to come and talk about a particular issue within their constituency, that kind of meeting was pretty regular as well.

With Northern Ireland, similarly there were a fair number of meetings with officials to take decisions. Because, as I think you mentioned, it is slightly more of a political and almost diplomatic relationship-building role, so there were lots of discussions with members of the department about how to approach relationships with the executive and engage on particular issues. Sometimes crises had come up, those kind of discussions took up quite a chunk of the day. Again, being out meeting people in Northern Ireland, visiting community projects, talking to people who were dealing with the consequences of sectarian separation that I was talking about before. Travelling took up a fair chunk of my time at the Northern Ireland Office. Less parliamentary work than in my previous role and an awful lot of meetings with Northern Ireland elected leaders, over and over and over again. There was a series of problems like the issue around On the Runs and then the budget crisis, problems with welfare reforms and in almost all of those instances, I as secretary of state had very little power, so the only way I was going to try and ensure we had a sensible outcome was by persuading the elected leaders of Northern Ireland that we needed a sensible outcome. A big chunk of my time was spent meeting and discussing important issues with the first and deputy first minister and the different Northern Ireland parties. If it was a parading time of the year, meeting the loyal orders and the residents’ groups who were involved in the sensitive parades. That covers quite a lot of the work.

"There was a series of problems like the issue around On the Runs and then the budget crisis, problems with welfare reforms and in almost all of those instances, I as secretary of state had very little power"

OI: Thinking perhaps, specifically on your transport brief, you were describing the work you do in parliament, speaking to MPs, doing letters to constituents, meetings in the department and going out and about. How did you strike the balance between those things and looking back, do you think that the right balance was struck between those competing demands?

TV: It was absolutely exhausting, it was just non-stop. Certainly one of the advantages of cabinet rank is that you are slightly more in control of your time than you are as a minister of state. As a minister of state you get everything thrown at you and you just have to swallow it and get on with it. Whereas, as a secretary of state, there are some options to delegate. I did find both roles had their exhausting moments, but particularly at the Department for Transport, I am sure it didn’t do my health a great deal of good because once you squeezed in all the departmental work and maintained a busy and active constituency campaigning diary it didn’t leave a great deal of time for anything else. I probably could have handled it a little bit more effectively, but I just worked massively, massively long hours. I wouldn’t say I had a great deal of work-life balance. I certainly think that once you have been in a particular role for a while, like with any other job, it gets a little bit easier. You work out what you need to do and what is possible to delegate, but there is no doubt those minister of state jobs in places like DfT or the Home Office or health are phenomenal in terms of the workload.

"As a minister of state you get everything thrown at you and you just have to swallow it and get on with it."

OI: Would you have advice for someone else who was going into that role in terms of how they could manage those things?

TV: Get yourself a good private secretary, that is a very important role. I inherited a private secretary from my Labour predecessor and I think I was much more effective when there were some changes and I was able to choose, from a shortlist, a new private secretary. Having someone effective who was on your side, which a private secretary is, is just crucial. I would say that would be my top tip: when you arrive in a department, if you feel that your private secretary isn’t the right person for you then ask to change and demand that you have a reasonable shortlist of good candidates from which to choose.

OI: You mentioned as well, with regard to the Northern Ireland brief, dealing with the unexpected, or crises. I wonder if you could talk us through a specific example of where something unexpected or a crisis happened and how you dealt with it.

TV: Right, where do I start? I suppose by way of illustration, the On the Runs [OTR] issue. The first I heard of this was when I was told an individual called John Downey had been arrested at Gatwick Airport in relation to the Hyde Park attacks back in the 1980s and had referred to a letter in which he’d been told that he wasn’t wanted by the police. Subsequently, he was charged with the Hyde Park bombings and the trial was dismissed as an abuse of process because Mr Downey had been in receipt of a letter from the Northern Ireland Office, under a previous administration, indicating that so far as they knew, he was not wanted by the police. But the reality was that he actually was wanted and a mistake had been made; he should never have received one of those letters. It transpired that there was a scheme which operated to inform individuals as to whether or not they were wanted by the police. In essence how I and my team dealt with that was to engage extensively with the individuals affected, in particular the victim groups, who were obviously very concerned about what had happened. There was a lot of misunderstanding about what this scheme involved. It was never an amnesty; it was simply a scheme to inform people who weren’t wanted by the police of that fact. It caused a huge amount of upset and concern and the first minister of Northern Ireland was on the point of resignation because of this. Within 24 hours or so we had put together a proposal for a judge-led review of the scheme so that exactly what had happened could be fully examined. I had some lengthy discussions with the chief justice who finally was persuaded to release justice Heather Hallett to conduct that review. She had also done the 7/7 inquest and so she was an expert in such things. She reported and was very clear that the scheme had very significant flaws and the risks weren’t managed, as was illustrated by the fact that unfortunately a very serious mistake had been made in relation to Mr Downey. She also identified that there were some 36 cases which should be re-examined as a matter of urgency, just in case another mistake had been made. But she found no evidence of political interference with the prosecution process.

"It caused a huge amount of upset and concern and the first minister of Northern Ireland was on the point of resignation"

There are groups in Northern Ireland who continue to be very concerned about the scheme, but having had it properly examined and making it clear that there was no amnesty and that no-one should rely on these letters in future was important. If there is evidence that comes to light, then people will be prosecuted in the normal way regardless of whether they have received a letter under the scheme or not. That took probably about six months, it dominated my time to a considerable degree and I think I had some of the most difficult discussions in meetings that I have ever had in my life with groups who had lost relatives as a result of terrorist attacks during the troubles, who were anxious and believed that there was an amnesty. Trying to reassure them and trying to explain to them what the scheme did and didn’t do was extremely difficult. It is difficult to really describe the extent to which it was all-consuming and also as a part of the process we were engaging with the Irish Government and the US authorities to some degree, both of whom have a continued interest in political stability in Northern Ireland. So that was also part of the challenge. And of course, engaging with Northern Ireland MPs, backbench Conservative MPs just to reiterate and emphasise that (a) all of this happened under the previous administration and (b) it was never an amnesty anyway. So that is a very broad brush summary of the OTR issue.

"I had some of the most difficult discussions in meetings that I have ever had in my life with groups who had lost relatives as a result of terrorist attacks during the troubles"

OI: If you think about the first 24-48 hours as that crisis was breaking, what was the division of your time between trying to manage the media and trying to turn your attention to fixing the problem?

TV: It’s always a dilemma. We had quite some time to prepare for this because there was a considerable gap between the notification of the arrest of Mr Downey and the trial and then the subsequent collapse of the prosecution case, so we had thought very carefully about how we would respond on the day. I suppose on the day itself my time was mainly taken up with talking to people in Northern Ireland about what had happened, managing and dealing with the problem. I don’t remember doing a huge amount of media. I probably did do a handful of news interviews but the real focus was trying to provide reassurance to those who were understandably upset by what looked to them like people somehow being let off. So it was very important for me to try and talk to as many people as possible amongst the opinion-formers, just to explain what the scheme was about. I did also spend some time talking to some of my predecessors who were in office at the time to explain what was happening as well.

OI: How do you think the civil service performed under the pressure of that crisis? Did it come off well?

TV: It was mixed to be honest. On the whole, I think they pretty much rose to the challenge. There were some instances where again it comes back to correspondence; there was some correspondence that was drafted in quite a thoughtless way, which if I had not picked up on it and rejected it then I would have been sending out something that was misleading. It wasn’t intentionally misleading, but the way it was drafted was sufficiently ambiguous that it would have misled people. So that was a concern and also, as the Hallett Review had identified, the scheme had not been well managed. It was not well documented; it was quite difficult to uncover the facts. Heather Hallett did it, but in terms of the work of the civil servants did at the early stages it was not terribly easy to work out the scale of the problem and the risks. Not because the civil servants were at fault, I think that was due to the systemic issues which Heather Hallett identified in relation to how the scheme had worked under the previous administration. There weren’t proper rules set out, it wasn’t properly documented, it wasn’t properly managed and there wasn’t a proper risk assessment. That meant that trying to pick up the pieces in the midst in the Downey crisis was not easy. There were some times when things didn’t go terribly well, as I say, there were one or two instances where I was not happy with the proposed drafting of the correspondence in relation to the OTR issue.

OI: Moving on from the crisis question, if you think back on your achievements in office, either at DfT or Northern Ireland, what are you most proud of?

TV: I think I am most proud of the Stormont House and Fresh Start cross-party agreements. Without securing agreement out of those two sets of cross-party talks, I think the devolved settlement would have collapsed, albeit it would have been temporary but it would have collapsed and would have seen a period of direct rule, which I think would have been a significant step backwards. I think the cross-party talks that I had chaired that delivered those two agreements really averted a serious budget crisis and I think it has got the Northern Ireland institutions back on a stable footing, so much so that they are a bit of beacon of stability at the moment in a rather unstable political world. I think that is in some contrast to the way they were when I first became secretary of state where we had the flags protests, then OTRs, then a budget crisis and the concern over welfare and ultimately, a crisis over suspected IRA involvement in a paramilitary murder; all of those issues conspired to produce a significant degree of instability. But the talks I chaired have helped deliver quite a resilient set of devolved institutions. I would almost hesitate to say so, because that might tempt fate, but they are working very well now. We have now had the longest period of unbroken devolved government since the 60s and I genuinely feel that chairing those talks was not easy and that personally I did, I hope, play a quite a significant role in delivering a successful outcome to those two sets of negotiations. There have been many, many instances over the years where cross-party negotiations have failed to reach any agreed outcome in Northern Ireland. We only tend to remember the ones that are successful; there were many attempts which were unsuccessful.

"…the talks I chaired have helped deliver quite a resilient set of devolved institutions"

OI: Thinking about your preparation going into chairing those talks or your performance during those talks, what do you think it was that contributed to that success? What were the lessons coming out of that experience?

TV: I suppose I have always felt that whilst I have very clear views about Northern Ireland and its status within the UK, I also feel that I may want to understand different perspectives and work with people who have a different outlook and to try and be fair and make sure that their concerns are listened to, as well as the concerns of people with whom I might have more in common politically. I think that patience and determination is really important. Every morning going in and making the same points, going over the same ground and hoping that today will be the breakthrough. I think George Mitchell [former US senator] described it as 500 days of failure and 1 day of success. Perhaps 500 is a slight exaggeration! But he did five years of cross-party talks and it is not an easy process. I think just being prepared to keep on and on and on and on and not be pushed off your ground and trying to keep the conversation focused, keep it going in a particular direction is important. Also trying to keep everyone at the table. One of the most difficult things about cross-party talks I found, is setting them up in such a way that you actually get people there. Once you get over that hurdle and you have got everyone turning up, that is a huge achievement. In both the two sets that I chaired it was very touch and go as to whether we would get all the parties turning up. And in fact, in the first one, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party got up halfway through the meeting and everyone immediately started wondering if this was the first walkout. But it turned up he was just getting up to take his jacket off.

"The leader of the Ulster Unionist Party got up halfway through the meeting and everyone immediately started wondering if this was the first walkout. But it turned up he was just getting up to take his jacket off…"

OI: You were saying there were lots of policy decisions that had to be made at DfT. I wondered if you could talk us through one of those examples and how you made a policy decision; what the process was, what evidence you were consulting and how the civil servants presented it to you?

TV: I suppose one illustration might be the Olympic Route Network. This was the system for segregated lanes for Olympic-related traffic which operated throughout the games and it was something I was most unenthusiastic about. It is contrary to everything Londoners think is just and fair: the idea of particular road space reserved for Olympic big-wigs. I am not sure that is quite the appropriate word. But I went through this in detail, I talked a lot with a range people about it and it was pretty clear that if you want the Olympics, you have to have this system of segregated road space. I kept trying to find reasons not to do it but ultimately, I could see that there was just no alternative, it was a compulsory requirement. So, slightly through gritted teeth, we went through and did the various statutory requirements and as you may recall, it turned out to be fine. The background to that decision was obviously a lot of work going on in relation to traffic management generally: encouraging people not to be driving their cars at that particular time, encouraging people to shift their travel patterns – it was part of a much bigger project to try and ensure that London kept running smoothly during the games. So that is one particularly difficult decision that I remember having to take.

The Olympics was this classic instance where because it was successful, my role in it is completely invisible but if it had gone horribly wrong I might have been one of the people who had to resign, since my signature was on the bottom of the orders that created the Olympic Route Network.

OI: In that specific example, did you look for advice or evidence outside the civil service? Were there third parties that you were talking to about that decision?

TV: As I said, that is one of the problems as a minister, it is very difficult to engage seriously with external third parties because you cannot show them any of the documents. I found that really frustrating, initially. When I first arrived at DfT, I found it very difficult because I had no spads, so no political advice and no ability to take sensible advice from external experts because I wasn’t allowed to show them any of the documents. So I was very dependent on civil servants and that continued, but you just get used to it and, you work out that actually some of them can give you good advice. I certainly talked through some of these issues with people who also did Olympic-related stuff, like some of the TfL people that I met in different contexts. We ran consultations as well, so I would have seen the feedback on them, so I did have some external input. But again, it was just a case of gritting my teeth and I did all I could to try and minimise the impact it would have on London.

"I found it very difficult because I had no spads, so no political advice and no ability to take sensible advice from external experts"

OI: On this example or potentially on others, how easy was it to make policy decisions where you needed the input of Treasury or of Number 10 and to coordinate that decision making process?

TV: I worked a lot with Treasury on my Northern Ireland stuff and to some degree on transport as well, particularly on the run up to a significant fiscal event – an autumn statement or a budget. Interestingly, contrary to what one might think in a period of austerity, they were always quite interested in transport projects that they could talk about. It was often a question of compiling wish-lists, almost the reverse of what people expect from the Treasury. With Number 10, David Cameron ran a government where to a significant extent he did trust his cabinet members and ministers to take many of their own decisions. I suppose there were the same issues that governments always have: sometimes Number 10 would engage at the last minute when you had done lots of work to go in a particular direction and then suddenly Number 10 says ‘What’s this all about?’ but usually, after a flurry, you generally end up in broadly the same place. At Northern Ireland, it was slightly different in that there were so many sensitive political things that I and my team were forever going back and forth to Number 10 to make sure they were happy with it. Also obviously, there were continuing negotiations between us, Number 10 and the Treasury about the corporation tax debate as well. It was a different relationship at Northern Ireland because, as I say, the vast bulk of the endless grind, the conveyor belt of decisions at transport largely would not be things that Number 10 or the Treasury were particularly interested in whereas a lot of the sensitive political decisions at the Northern Ireland Office we would certainly flag up with Number 10 and get input on before a final decision was taken.

"David Cameron ran a government where to a significant extent he did trust his cabinet members and ministers to take many of their own decisions."

NH: To take another transport issue, it seems from the outside like there are always delays over issues like airport capacity in the South East. Having done the job what are your reflections on why decisions like that seem so hard in government? Is it because you have competing evidence, political aspects of it, as well as the policy decisions?

TV: Well in my view, the reason why people have been talking about a third runway at Heathrow for 40 years and not built it is because it is a very bad idea. My views on this are fairly well known. I think, genuinely, that there is a problem with airport capacity in the South East because the establishment is hung up on the idea that ‘Oh, we must expand Heathrow as that is the best way to deliver economic growth.’ And (a) it isn’t and (b) it is such a difficult project to deliver it is going to be impossible. So people keep trying to build a third runway at Heathrow; Geoff Hoon did, for example, and that hit the rocks with a change of government. Each time the government of whichever persuasion tries and fails to expand Heathrow, that means another five, six, seven or eight years where no additional airport capacity is built. To be fair, London has got the capacity it needs up until 2030, so one of the reasons why we haven’t built an extra runway recently is because we didn’t actually need one but capacity pressure is growing and we will need one by the early 2030s and the lead in time is such that a decision needs to be made now.

I do think that airport capacity is bedevilled by the fact that there is all this focus on expanding Heathrow, which would have catastrophic environmental consequences, but it is also so impractical and so difficult as to be politically undeliverable. The fixation on Heathrow blinds some policy makers to the merits of expanding Gatwick, which is a perfectly reasonable solution to our aviation capacity pressures and is a whole lot easier, costs half the price and will take half as long. And it might actually end up with a new runway being built.

With other decisions I suppose it was very slow. As a country, we were quite slow to adopt high-speed rail. With the railways, perhaps decisions were a bit slow because of that mind-set in the 60s and 70s that railway was old tech and it was a managed decline. From the 1990s onwards, after privatisation, the number of people using the railways has expanded massively and it perhaps took policy makers a while to catch up with the fact that one of the key ways to support economic growth is to invest in the rail network. I think each of these questions are separate, there are different factors at play.

In terms of delivery, one of the problems is the legal process does mean that things are very slow, but that is partly because we are a very healthy democracy and any big transport project affects individuals and we give those individuals lots of opportunities to protest and change proposals. There are things that I am sure we could try to speed that up but, you know, in some ways it is an inevitable consequence of the fact that we are a vibrant, healthy democracy with lots of active campaign groups that want their voice heard in these controversial decisions.

NH: Final couple of questions. First of all, was there anything you found frustrating about being a minister?

TV: People will think I am fixated on correspondence! But I did get depressed at DfT by poorly written letters, partly because it is just so time consuming to turn them all around, but partly it was just frustrating to say 100 times that I wanted short sentences and short paragraphs, correct grammar and then not always to get it. Certainly one of the toughest things is the sheer volume of work. Just trying to keep on top of the regional visits, making sure you are available for your colleagues all the time, making sure that you are there to respond for the government in parliament very regularly; that certainly is quite stretching. As I said before, probably if I was doing it again now, I would be able to manage the workload more effectively. I think when you start out, it is quite tough grappling with all of that.

"…it was just frustrating to say 100 times that I wanted short sentences and short paragraphs, correct grammar and then not always to get it"

NH: I wanted to touch on the last year or so in government, because you had the EU referendum on the horizon and you were campaigning for Brexit, how did the campaign affect your work as a minister?

TV: I was able to balance the two. I had important continuing duties as secretary of state while the referendum was happening, I was able to continue with those. I was quite careful in terms of the Leave campaign related activity which impacted directly with Northern Ireland. I was asked about it a lot, inevitably because of the position I held, but I was always very careful in the way I expressed myself on Northern Ireland matters and Brexit matters and particularly careful about what debates I got involved with in Northern Ireland. Really throughout the referendum campaign, I was very keen to try to make sure that I always looked at things from a moderate, mainstream perspective. I tried to avoid anything that looked like it was an attack on a colleague or something like that. I felt it was very important that whilst I believed in the side I was campaigning for and I wanted to do all I could to persuade people to vote to become an independent country again, I felt it was perfectly possible to do that in a way in which it was respectful of people who had a different view. Not least because one of those happened to be the prime minister who had appointed me and who I have huge respect for. So it was difficult, but I really wanted to do as much as possible to maintain a sensible and civilised tone to the debate, knowing that I had very good friends on both sides.

NH: And finally, you have mentioned a couple of things already, but what would be your key pieces of advice to a new minister on how to do the job well?

TV: As I said before, I think getting a good private secretary is important. Preferably getting a [spad] as well, there are way more spads now than there were when I was first appointed at DfT, so that is easier. It is now feasible to get more time with them even though the spads work for the secretary of state primarily, hopefully most ministers have more direct engagement with them than I did. I think that you just have to be focused on your key priorities and keep pushing and pushing away at them, even if sometimes the civil servants tell you they are impossible. If you focus strongly enough on them, you can in the end help deliver them