This article is an extended version of one that appeared in the January issue of Total Politics. To read other interviews from the 25 club feature, click here
How do you think the Labour Party is doing in Wales?
It’s doing relatively well in that we had a good result in the assembly elections last year. It faces considerable problems because of the current government’s insistence on cutting a quarter of the seats in Wales and the challenges, particular in West Wales, but in general I think the party has kept itself together as the only party that really represents people in every part of Wales.
So you think the problems are mainly from the cuts – is it to do with Labour Party?
There are three sets of problems. One is where the party has become run down although I think in general there have been a variety challenges that have woken people up in recent years. For instance Blaenau Gwent was a real problem area, the party had become very run down. We’d lost the seat both at assembly and parliamentary level. Sometimes it takes the shock of that sort to bring about revival in the party. I think in general there are still places where the party is a bit moribund. In general there’s been an upsurge in enthusiasm and of people coming into the party. The future’s bright but it’s challenging. The current government is doing everything it can to undermine the position of the Labour Party in Wales. To do those damages is quite naked ambition.
So you think the cutting of seats, it’s a political thing to damage the party?
Absolutely. It’s simply because of the number of Welsh seats that return Labour members and of course the whole point was that there seems to be an obsession with arismetic uniformity on the part of the Conservatives, although I think the cynicism behind that is shown by the fact that they’ve given two seats to the Isle of Wight. Quite deliberate exclusion from the legislation, whereas they won’t recognise the integrity of the Isle of Anglesey, which has been a single parliamentary seat I think since something like the sixteenth century, certainly centuries rather than decades.
You were a minister for about nine years
Over a nine year period I was initially deputy home secretary, I then went into the cabinet as secretary for state for Wales, then for a period I was first minister in Wales, then I returned to Westminster as a backbencher for a period of months but then I was bought back in as rural affairs minister at DEFRA, and finally minister for trade and industry at DTI.
Do you have any future ministerial ambitions?
I don’t think that’s realistic, no. There’s a new generation taking over and I suppose in some ways I’m doing my career backwards. Most people start at a select committee, I went straight onto the front benches as a whip in 1987. On arrival I was promoted to a select committee but didn’t even get to my first meeting before I was promoted to whip and had to stand down. Since being in government I’ve had the experience of being a member of the justice select committee where we did a superb piece of work on justice reinvestment, which is really being taken as a bit of a bible for the way the home office and the department for justice approach things, and then more recently on the home affairs select committee.
Are you happy with that? Is it that you’ve accepted that it might not be realistic? Is it inevitable or would you like to do more ministerial stuff if possible?
Most people who’ve had experience of ministerial office if they had the opportunity to do it again would accept it because I found in each successive office you’re bringing experience to bare. There were things that you’d have the confidence to question as result of having seen how things worked out previously so I think I was a lot more clinical in examining things that came to me. Being focused on what I was there to achieve and on not being pushed around by what others wanted to achieve. Harold Macmillan, when he was asked what was the biggest challenge you faced as Prime Minister said “events dear boy, events” and that’s true because a lot of the day to day stuff is where things have gone wrong or there’s a crisis. Foot and mouth disease, whatever it happens to be, and then expected consequences in the way you try to drive your policy through, rather than it all being very predictable, here’s my manifesto and I’ll just work my way through the things that need doing over the next year or two. It doesn’t really work like that.
You inherited your seat from James Callaghan in 1987. Did he give you any advice about being an MP, or coming into parliament?
He certainly did. Jim was absolutely the perfect person to succeed because I didn’t realise at first how lucky I’d been. I arrived here and found that some people were undermined by their predecessors rather than supported. Jim was absolutely perfect. He continued into his late 80s to come from time to time to visit the constituency. Last time was about two years before he died, when he was quite elderly. We had a meeting for him in the constituency and lots of old friends turned up and it was amazing because he looked very frail, and said “I need to sit down” and it was almost like the whiff of gunfire and he gave a superb talk to people. You saw that life and vigour coming back in. He maintained that affection and connection with the constituency long after he’d ceased to be MP and that’s a terrific model to be provided. Not in the sense of interfering or making it difficult for me as an MP, he was always enormously supportive of me. To have the support of the former Prime Minister in that generous way really did mean a lot.
Was there anything he said that stuck with you, or anything specific he helped you with?
He continued to take an interest and for instance we were very keen to get a good building for the Welsh Assembly so he chaired the design group for that is enormously important having his authority there. They actually did a terrific job because we ended up having a building which has no offices in it. It’s only for the meetings and the interface between the assembly members and the public. If you compare that to Scotland where the Scottish parliament, a very complicated building with all sorts of offices everywhere, it was a very good design. I found him an enormous help. Another thing was that interesting was he asked me on occasion a year to two after he’d gone he was giving a talk and he said how many pieces of correspondence do you get now? I can’t remember, it was about 150 a week and he said when I was first elected I used to pick up my mail from the post office, open it and there would be perhaps two letters which required...so I would hand write a cover letter and send it off to the relevant minister and send a not by hand to the two constituents who’d written saying thank you for your letter, I’ve taken the matter up with minister. That means by eleven o’clock coffee time he’s done all his constituency business for the day, whereas that was at a time before emails started to add to the communications you get. We get about normally 150-200 emails a day. Obviously some are ones you can ignore but you’ve got to go through them to see what you need to ignore. I think the continued exponential growth in communications is something that he made me aware of at that stage.
You’re chair of the Christian Socialist Movement. How comfortable do you feel with religion being a part of your politics?
Well it isn’t a part of my politics, it’s something that’s a part of life and one of the things that we’ve done within CSM is to talk with people of other religions, not about the religion so much as about the values that come out of their faith. We’ve found a lot of similarity in Labour members who are Jewish or Muslim or from a variety of other faiths, Hindu, Sikh and so on, that where as the faith itself may be very different in terms of their sets of religious beliefs the values and the beliefs in social justice and fairness and integrity and things like that are shared. The interesting thing for a politician to think is not be engaging in interface dialogue about faiths because there are plenty of people who do that but to be making sure that faith communities understand the way that political credos come out of people’s personal beliefs about the world, about relationships, about their responsibility, about the community. I’ve found that very productive.
If there was a general election tomorrow what advice would you give to an MP coming into parliament? What’s the biggest thing you’ve learnt?
I think it’s that aspire to contribute to getting the right strategies and policies in to place but relate everything back to your constituency. It’s not an archaic aberration that in the House of Commons you’re referred to by the name of the constituency rather than our own name. I’m referred to as the Right Hon. Member of Cardiff South and Penarth and that’s a constant reminder that you’re here as a representative of your constituency. As long as they delegate from the constituency. It’s not a question of having to take a straw poll on each issue and follow opinion, I don’t believe in that, I wouldn’t have put up the battle to get the Cardiff Bay Barrage built if that had been the case but it is a question of relating it back to the experiences and the needs of people in your constituency and if you have the right relationship with them, which as I say is being a representative, not a delegate, that will help to keep things in perspective. I suppose the second thing would be that laws rarely prevent what they forbid, as Giddens said, but also laws rarely achieve what they’re meant to achieve and therefore looking at the way that Whitehall works, which very often is in an ivory tower unconnected with the real world one of the things that MPs can do by using the fact that we’re here for four days a week and in the constituency for three or four days a week is to make the connection between parliamentary and Whitehall life and reality. Civil servants don’t have that opportunity. Some of the best spend some time outside Whitehall and use that experience well. I can think of some very good examples but far too many of them don’t have the understanding of small businesses, what it’s like to live on a council estate, what it’s like to work in the voluntary and community sector, they don’t understand cooperatives and so on. It’s part of our job to make those connections.
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