Women in Westminster: In Conversation With Baroness Louise Casey
Baroness Louise Casey’s landmark reviews have taken a forensic look at some of the most difficult and politically charged issues in modern British society. As part of our Women in Westminster series, we sat down with Louise Casey to learn why she believes change is always possible
It increasingly feels that whenever a thorny, complex, and seemingly unsolvable problem lands on a minister’s desk, the standard response is, “Let’s get Louise Casey to look at it.”
During the Women in Westminster sit-down conversation with the former Victim’s Commissioner and Homelessness Tsar, it is easy to see why. Casey has a nuanced and insightful understanding of complex systems and the negative impact that they can have on people’s lives.
That focus on impact is a common strand across all of Casey’s work. She is utterly unflinching in her desire to make a difference to the lives of those who are disadvantaged by failures of the state.
“I've been able to work in causes that are about trying to do right by people who have less power,” she explained to Women in Westminster. “Most of the work is behind the scenes. It's moving things on. It's talking to people. It's learning and learning and listening and listening.”
Listening intently to people whose voices may not always be heard is something that Casey does extremely well. Her various reviews explore complex and systemic problems, but they never lose sight of the way organisational failures damage people’s lives. Whether it is survivors of sexual violence or Black and minority police officers, Casey always foregrounds the perspectives and experiences of those affected when public services fail.
It is that level of insight that has led to Casey being selected by successive governments to carry out reviews that address deep systemic problems in the way our public services operate. In recent years, Casey has led major inquiries into the culture of the Metropolitan Police and the institutional failures that allowed vulnerable girls to be groomed in Rotherham.
Now, Casey is turning her gaze onto adult social care, having been asked to chair an independent commission to look at the future of the sector. It is a hugely difficult and important role that will potentially affect millions of lives. Casey is relishing the task.
“I think this review will look at the sort of society we want,” she told Women in Westminster. “I don't know the answer to that yet. I do know that it's time for us to have a bloody good look at it.”
Casey’s entire career has involved having “a bloody good look” at things. She firmly situates the review within the context of other work she has carried out, describing social care as being “as much a justice issue” as anything else she has explored.
“I simply believe that we're not doing right by each other when it comes to social care at the moment,” she says. “I feel every child is my responsibility as a citizen. I want them to be healthy and well. We should think about old people in the same way.”
With such an overflowing in-tray, it is easy to wonder how Casey finds time to carry out such high-profile, complex, and thorough reviews. “Well, I try not to work on Saturdays,” is all that she offers Women in Westminster by way of explanation.
That drive and commitment have been the hallmark of a career that has seen Casey move from frontline homelessness services, through a range of high-profile national advisory roles to five different Prime Ministers.
Casey is very aware that her career trajectory has been partly shaped by the support of several “formidable women” who taught her the importance of speaking truth to power.
“There are women that go up and don't throw the ladder down, and there are women that go up and throw the ladder down and try and pull people onto it,” she explains, describing the pivotal role that a succession of senior women played during her early career. “I think if you're in public service, you've always got to think, ‘How do I throw the ladder down to pull more people up?’”
The women that Casey admires, and who helped shape her career, all share an uncompromising approach and a willingness to speak truth to power. It is easy to see how that has informed how Casey approaches her work. Her review of the culture of the Metropolitan Police was utterly unflinching in its analysis of an organisation that Casey ultimately concluded was institutionally racist, misogynist, and homophobic.
“You can call it institutional, you can call it organisational, or you can call it systemic. You can call it whatever you want to call it, but it is something that's built into the systems,” she explains. “We ask people to be police officers, we support them being police officers but what goes with that is a massive responsibility to do the right thing.”
Casey comes across as impatient, but it is an impatience founded on an essentially optimistic belief that change is always possible. She cites the pandemic as a proof point of the ability of society to implement major changes where there is a political will.
That belief that systems are not fixed and can be improved is something that Casey has applied to homelessness, troubled families, victims of sexual violence, and the Metropolitan Police. That essential optimism has been a constant since the start of her career and she strives to hold onto it even in the face of organisational inertia.
“When I was 18, I had this unbelievably unshakable belief that change is possible and can be done quickly,” she reflects. “I sometimes have to remind myself to be more of the 18-year-old Louise Casey. I have to remind myself to be the person that’s starting work and thinking I can change the world.”
Casey believes that looking at major organisations that have failed to address systemic problems is also an important reminder that progress on achieving equality can be uneven and painfully slow.
“At some level, you think, oh, we're done here, aren't we?” she says reflecting on the progress society has made in addressing equalities issues in public life. “And then you go somewhere like the Met and you realise that women are still not equal to men, that the ladders haven't been thrown down. There's a bigger job to be done. That job isn't done. It isn't over.”
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