Former ministers reveal experiences of Johnson, May, Cameron and Blair governments

Lord Frost, David Davis, Maria Miller, Caroline Dinenage and Jim Murphy have given candid interviews about their time as government ministers.

The Ministers Reflect interviews, which include David Davis’s candid assessment of Whitehall’s “really crap job of [Brexit] negotiations” and Theresa May’s failure to deliver Brexit, Lord Frost’s criticisms of special advisers and Whitehall officials, and Maria Miller’s view that women ministers get a “disproportionately” tough time in Parliament and from the media, are published today.

In the interviews:     

• Former Brexit secretary David Davis says “Whitehall did a really crap job of [Brexit] negotiation. I mean, really crap.” 
• David Davis says Theresa May failed to deliver Brexit because “she was a Remainer trying to carry out a Brexit thing.” 
• David Davis predicts that Brexit “will deliver”, but complains that “it’s just going to take five years longer than it should have done because of that bloody silly decision” to agree to the Northern Ireland backstop.
• Former Cabinet Office minister and chief Brexit negotiator Lord Frost complains that “there’s a tendency to employ people [as SpAds] in their mid-twenties as your eyes and ears. I think that’s a fundamentally wrong approach.” 
• Lord Frost admits that he should have realised he had “become a rather difficult figure for a lot of the Europeans.” 
• Lord Frost worries that “officials have got frightened of getting things wrong. It’s an organisation where you get relatively little credit for success and if you mess it up people know.”
• Former culture secretary Maria Miller says that “women ministers…disproportionately get adverse media comment. I think they get a disproportionately tough time in the House.” 
• Maria Miller recalls that as a woman she “found it a little challenging with the permanent secretaries.”  
• Maria Miller says it is “really important” that experts aren’t put in ministerial positions
• Former Scotland secretary Jim Murphy admits that Labour made the social democratic case for the union with “insufficient energy and intellectual commitment.” 
• Jim Murphy notes that “Whitehall and government, including a Labour government, institutionally hadn’t come to terms with devolution.”
• Former DWP and DCMS minister Caroline Dinenage admits that she was “utterly miserable” as DWP minister in a job that “made no sense to me.”
• Caroline Dinenage says she rewrote every speech drafted for her by civil servants to make sure “you’re speaking human.” 

Notes to editors 

1. The Institute for Government is an independent think tank that works to make government more effective. 
2. For more information, including data to reproduce any charts, please contact press@instituteforgovernment.org.uk / 0785 031 3791.