Liz Truss: I love being at the Treasury. When I talk to other departments, I know where their bodies are buried
8 min read
After stints at Education, Defra and the MoJ, Liz Truss says she feels at home in the Treasury – but believes her time in other departments means she knows all about ‘what people get up to’. The Chief Secretary tells John Ashmore why it’s time for the Treasury to ditch the ‘box-ticking’ and build a more collaborative approach across government
If Philip Hammond has developed a reputation as a gloomy, Eeyore-ish figure, the same cannot be said of his number two. We meet a month out from the first of the new Autumn Budgets and if she is feeling under pressure, Liz Truss is not letting it show. Indeed, after stints in Education, Environment and most recently the Ministry of Justice, you get the sense the former economist has landed on her feet at the Treasury.
“I love being at the Treasury, it is fantastic,” she says. “When I first went to university and did economics I had an epiphany, because I think economics is a great way of understanding the world and really, really exciting, so it’s great to be at the Treasury.”
She observes that her cross-Whitehall experience is a big advantage in her current role. “I think having been at other departments is fantastic experience because when I talk to other departments I know a bit where the bodies are buried and the things people get up to.
“But I also think that the Treasury and departments should develop a more collaborative arrangement and that’s what I’m working on – rather than the Treasury being a micro-manager and ticking boxes, how do we work together to make sure we’re getting the best value for public money? And because I’ve been in government departments I do understand where my colleagues are coming from.”
While the role of Chief Secretary could be seen as the height of dour bean-counting, the South West Norfolk MP seems genuinely enthused by the challenge. At times during our interview she sounds more like a Trade Minister than Chief Secretary, repeatedly stressing the importance of letting people know how well Britain is really doing.
“What is just incredibly important now is we get the message across that Britain continues to be open for business, we continue to be the most innovative, enterprising country in the world. That’s the message we need to get out not just to people in the UK but to people around the world.”
Truss argues that the wider public might not be aware of all of the developments going on in the economy. She gives the example of four companies in her own Norfolk patch who are listed on the Alternative Investment Market. “But how many people know about that? What we need to do to get the message out to people that there’s opportunities with those companies, there’s opportunities to set up a company yourself.
“That’s I think what we need to say to the whole of Britain, but particularly to the generation coming through.”
Now on her fourth ministerial job, it’s easy to forget that the 42-year-old has only been an MP since 2010. She was very much in the vanguard of a group of reform-minded new intake MPs, founding the Free Enterprise group and co-authoring two books offering a blueprint for Tory government – After the Coalition and Britannia Unchained. “First of all we wrote After the Coalition and then we got a majority government, and then we wrote Britannia Unchained and Britannia’s become unchained. But I’m not predicting the future again!”
That reforming zeal is still evident from the almost evangelical way Truss describes her current role. “We spend £28,500 per household on public spending, and my absolute obsession is how are we going to make that money work much better for the public who consume services, but also for the people who work in the public sector? Because I think if we help people in the frontline have more impact then we’re going to get better services but we’re also going to use our budget much better. That’s what I’m working on.”
Nor does she hold back when asked if she finds the Whitehall machine frustrating to deal with. “Yes, in an answer,” she says.
“I always think government has to force itself to become more nimble in the modern age. If you look at the huge changes in the way businesses operate, the delayering, much less hierarchical, much more instantaneous in the way businesses use social media, I do think government should be moving in that direction. That’s the way people want to engage with government in the modern world.”
At the same time she underlines a number of innovations that are helping services become more efficient and embrace new technology. The new flood warning system, for instance, relying on the ‘internet of things’ or the NHS Ask the Midwife service for expectant mothers.
For all her ebullient tone, there’s no escaping the spectre of Brexit. Truss campaigned for Remain but has since become a Leave convert – and to hear her talking of the “opportunities” of leaving the EU, you would be forgiven for mistaking her for a dyed-in-the-wool eurosceptic.
She plays a predictably straight bat when asked if Theresa May is the right leader to take the Tories beyond Brexit and into the next election, while sounding a warning to feuding colleagues to get on to the day job.
“Absolutely, absolutely and you know, she’s got a tough job. Brexit is a challenging thing to be doing but we need to get on with it, the country don’t want to hear the Conservative party wrangling with each other, what they want to see is us taking advantage of all these opportunities that are open to us as a country.
“We’ve got new freedoms when we leave the EU to do things differently, which I think is really exciting and we need to paint out that future. We need to talk to people about the opportunities and not be talking about the internal politics of the Tory party, which I think’s quite boring to most people.”
Much of the recent talk has been about the prospect of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. While she is clear that the Treasury is preparing for all eventualities, Truss seems much more relaxed about the prospect of a WTO rules scenario, arguing that the inherent strengths of the British economy mean a prosperous future whatever the outcome of the negotiations.
“When I was in Japan and Korea people were telling me about the huge admiration for our start-up culture, how easy it is to set up a business in Britain, how exciting and creative and innovative the UK is, and we have all those strengths and we will continue to have those strengths regardless of the arrangements by which we leave Europe. It’s that sense of positivity that I think it’s really important to cultivate over the next few years.”
Why, then, will the government not let the public and MPs know what assessments have been made about the impact of no deal? “I’ve been asked all kinds of questions about the forecasts that governments have made. The fact is we build our own future, it is by the actions of businesses across the country, it’s about the way we raise our performance as a country, that’s what will impact the future.”
Pushed on whether there is a transparency issue with not publishing the information, she replies simply: “I personally haven’t seen any such forecasts.”
We meet in a week where the treatment of women is firmly in the spotlight, with several female MPs coming forward with stories of sexual harassment. While Parliament has more women than ever, and several of them sit around the Cabinet table, Truss agrees there is still a long way to go in the battle for equality. “Yeah I do. I think that society as a whole still has some way to go and you know there are still things that hold women and girls back.
She says she is “obsessive” about getting her two young daughters interested in computer programming. But she adds that there is still work to do to unpick the sort of gender stereotypes that are holding women and girls back, and illustrates the point with the story of a recent visit to a primary school in her constituency.
“I just asked the kids ‘what do you want to do when you grow up?’ and most of the boys said, first of all ‘footballer’, but then they said ‘engineer’ or ‘astronaut’. The girls were like ‘I want to be a hairdresser or a dancer’, but none of them selected a career that was technology or enterprise.
“It’s not that any of those professions are wrong, but I think that we do limit people’s potential and options by the way we talk about some of these things.
“I asked the kids to put their hands up if they thought boys were better at maths, and all the boys put their hands up and some of the girls put their hands up – and that was a class of eight-year-olds. So we’ve still got a long way to go.”
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