YouSaid · the spoken record

Clare Moriarty

lines on the record: 56
first: 2022-11-18
most recent: 2022-11-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes, and that is definitely an issue at the moment because some of the tools that we would traditionally use, debt advice is predicated on the idea that if you can make sure that people can get all the income they're entitled to and you can help them access support and budget, then they will have the ability to repay debt. We're now seeing that half of the people who come to us for debt advice actually can't make ends meet. But I think that, again, that goes back to the great strength of systems advice is that we help people individually, but we also use their experiences to be able to bring policy solutions grounded in experience and evidence to government. So the balance changes a bit when we feel that our ability to help people want to one is a bit on the wane, then we really put our foot to the floor on making the case to government through the evidence that we have. So it's that balance of advice and...”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, I'm really worried about the situations being faced by the people who are coming to us because as I was saying at the start, we are in a situation where we have both got probably everything we could have hoped for from the autumn statement, but we know it's not going to be enough. And we know as we go through the winter, you know, the number of people who are not going to be able to keep their homes warm is really serious. I'm hopeful that we will continue to find ways of helping people. I mean, Citizens Advice has been around for 84 years. It was founded just at the start of the Second World War. It has evolved and changed as society has changed.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So many, many years ago, I was working on reorganisation of the NHS, and we worked very, very hard on a document that we were going to put out. And in those days, things were printed and you had to have the exact text. I was working quite late tonight in my fabulous assistant had got somebody to bike it over to the printer and harry the printer was going to print it. And we finished it off and got this thing and it was printed. It came back. And I opened it up the next day. And there was this kind of string of gobbledyke in the middle of a line. And I think what has happened was I was so tired doing it that I just kind of put my elbow on the keyboard. And this gobbledy goke got inserted and nobody, I mean, I was the last eye on the document, so nobody had noticed it. And we printed this little correction slip to go, went out with the document because you couldn't change things in those days. But for years afterwards, there was a kind of conspiracy theory that there was something hidden in. There was a hidden meaning.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never met the blob. I never met people who kind of clocked off work on a Wednesday afternoon saying, I've done for the week. The civil servants that I worked with across many departments over 35 years worked really, really committed to delivering. I think there is a difference of perception about whether civil servants are when civil servants try to give advice that says this might be a bit more difficult than you think, Minister, that can be heard as you're trying to frustrate me, but I genuinely don't think that's what's happening.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That goes back a bit to the Liam McCunstry article you were talking about. So I genuinely believe that civil servants, because at the core, what you're trying to do is to deliver.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there's clearly, you know, when I talk to my children, they are very passionate about things, rightly. I don't think that impartiality is inconsistent with feeling passionate about things. I think if you are an impartial civil servant or an impartial journalist, you may channel that passion into some of the things. I used to say to people, often we can't decide, you know, it's not for us to decide the what, but we can always influence the how. And so you channel that passion into the how. And, you know, we all choose where we want to work and we choose the subjects we're going to focus on. So I don't think it's dead. I think, I mean, I don't think my children are very different in their attitudes and their sort of degree of strength of opinion to what I was.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly in the civil service, and I think it does a lot of it does go back precisely to that Alison Campbell we don't do God. And interestingly, although he was talking about Tony Blair, a politician, it became a sort of an article of faith for the civil servant that we didn't talk about faith. I think the reason for that is that there is this underlying anxiety that somebody might be saying, people of a specific faith or people of faith make better policy than people of not faith. And so the kind of collective thing was let's just not talk about it. But faith is really important. And for people of faith, of whom among whom I count myself, it is part of how we are. And if they get us a subliminal message saying, don't talk about faith, leave it at the door, don't bother other people with it. And other people get the message that you don't ask people about faith and religious practice, then it's another way that we kind of shut off an important aspect of people.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the thing about faith for me is that it's deep in my bones, so I didn't think, you know, I need the help of God to get through this, but the person that I am and my ability to cope with things and to deal with moral challenges and practical challenges and keep putting one foot in front of the other, I'm sure is rooted in values which are in turn rooted in faith.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't see why I would ever not have worked through it, but it's really, really different. That's the thing it's taught me that everybody's experience is different. And for some people, it's impossible to work through. And for some people, it's quite straightforward. And I know some people who have had particularly breast cancer without even their colleagues knowing.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Including Dominic Cummings and probably also Prime Minister. I know people had been told that I wasn't going to come back because I had, you know, I was terribly ill and I had cancer. Actually, managing other people's responses, whether it was people thinking I was going to die or people thinking that we were going to fight this, was much harder than, I mean, you know, as a cancer patient, I found, you just do what you're told. And when they say you need radiotherapy, you say, yes, fine, when shall I show up?”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so one of the interesting things is actually, I wasn't sick at all. You can have breast cancer and have a significant size lump and actually it doesn't affect how you feel generally. And one of the things I found that was most difficult to deal with was everybody else made their own assumptions about whether I was ill or not. So I remember when I had to have my mastectomy, I remember going off and saying really clearly, I have got breast cancer. And I said openly to the department because it would have been unconscionable just to disappear. So I said, I've got breast cancer. I'm going to have a mastectomy. I will have two weeks recovery time as advised by doctors, assuming all goes well. I will be back on the 1st of September. And at some later point, I may need chemotherapy or radiotherapy. That will come two weeks, two weeks. It's quite a straightforward operation. It is really quite straightforward. You manage the two weeks. And I managed the two weeks and I came back. And then I discovered that senior people in the government...”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And not just that. So my mother also was diagnosed with lung cancer, and in fact, the same day that I got my diagnosis, I went to a hospital in the morning to get my diagnosis, and I went with her to a different hospital in the afternoon, and she had her final diagnosis. Now, I mean, the nature of cancer is that you know that you have cancer well before you know precisely what it is. So it's kind of quite a slow process. And in fact, the fact that I had been supporting my mother through discussions with doctors meant that when it happened to me, I was able much more quickly to go, I can tell by what you're saying and what you're not saying, that this is cancer, isn't it? And they said yes. So that got me to third base much more quickly.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so 2019 was quite a year. So I was diagnosed with breast cancer in July and I had my final diagnosis on, I think it was two days before Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. I had a mastectomy over the summer and later on I had radiotherapy. There was a lot going on.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I don't actually remember ever having conversations with people about, index you about what he'd been like as a secretary of state.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think you can, you know, there are many aspects of life where people say in my day, you know, it was all tough and people got on with it. And I don't think that's a reason to say that our understanding of bullying and harassment and the impact that it has on people is much greater. And we know that it's something that shouldn't be tolerated. And in all sorts of areas, sexist behaviour, the fact that it was rife 25 years ago doesn't mean that we accept it now. We have to respect people and provide working conditions that work for them.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I say, I mean It's really important that people can feel safe operating. I mean, the stories about people being worried about going in to see ministers, I mean, if I look back on my time as a permanent secretary, I mean, that's the kind of thing where you can't have a situation where people don't feel comfortable. They've got those situations have got to be dealt with. But as I say, within the context of that larger picture.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, I mean, as I say, I think all ministers would. I think it would be an interesting thing to do for all ministers.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think the idea of the servant of the political master. I think that is quite fundamental because ministers are democratically elected and it's absolutely fundamental that they have to be the people who get to make the decisions. But I think over the years, training for ministers has come on a long way. Ministers just used to turn up and hope that they could get on with this and now there are all sorts of good people like the Institute for Government who help ministers think about training but I don't think the training's really got into the question of what is the nature of the relationship and what's going on for the person that's”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cannot do as a civil servant is express your frustration to a minister. So, ministers do rightly not always in the right way, but it's perfectly all right for ministers to say, you know, I'm quite frustrated this isn't going fast enough or, you know, we need to do this differently. Civil servants do not get to express frustration to ministers because it's just not part of how the deal is set up. The effort of building the relationship, maintaining the relationship falls very much more on civil servants and particularly, I know in a kind of permanent secretary of state relationship, it's the permanent secretary who does the heavy lifting on the relationship. And that's not fundamentally a kind of healthy way to operate.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so. I mean, I just have never seen civil servants trying to block ministers' policies. I think there's a debate that we don't have about the nature of the relationship between ministers and officials and about particularly about the balance of power because the word servant is there, it has meaning and civil servants don't get to challenge ministers as equals. So I remember working with a minister many years ago who was not at all a bully, very, very courteous and polite, but gave their, it was quite difficult working in the private office. And I remember them saying, well, I treat the private office like my family. And it was quite a light bulb moment because I thought, actually, I'm sure that's right. And that feels fine to you, but the private office don't get to treat you like family. I mean, because one of the things you...”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The nuclear button is, I mean, not necessarily resigning. There are all sorts of sort of subsidiary steps where you could go to somebody in the department and say, I feel that my values are under too much stress and working in this place. I mean, people make decisions all the time about where they want to work. So you could just look for a job somewhere else, you could ask to be moved, you could move to another department. But ultimately, the way in which you bring your values has to be about how things are done. It's not fundamentally for civil servants to say to politicians, you know, I don't like your policy because I don't agree with it. That's just not part of the deal.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, fundamentally, as a civil servant, you have a nuclear button. So if you think that something is intolerable, then you have to leave. There is a kind of proper conflict at the heart of the Civil Service Code because it says you must give ministers your best advice. And it says you must implement what minister decides to do. And that means that if the advice isn't accepted, you need to be able to deliver what's been asked of you.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think, I mean, both in Defra and let's talk about Dexu, I don't think people felt that that was the tension. I think the tension was simply trying to operate in an environment where nobody could take decisions. Government became unable to take decisions. Dexu was a department which probably in hindsight should never have happened because the conditions for it to be successful weren't there. So people were operating the most difficult circumstances, but it was because they were doing work, they didn't know whether the work was going to be valued. They did a lot of work they got put in the bin and a lot of work, if it was good, somebody else took credit for it.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think within DEFRA, people did see it as a really serious thing that could happen because quite early on we went through the process of thinking, so there was a point when government was saying, we're going to negotiate what we want, so let's write down what we'd like to negotiate. And then if we can't negotiate that, then let's think about what to do next. And we went through a process very early on, like early 2017 of saying this is what we would like to negotiate. But if we can't negotiate, we're going to need systems. And if we need to build the systems, we need to start building them now. So let's get on and do that.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I don't know what you are imagining. Metaphorical, exactly. I like my metaphors. So it was a metaphorical virtual reality headset and we said we're just going to prepare as if we know we're going to leave without a deal. We'll do that for three months, September to December. Then we'll lift it up. And if there's a deal, then that's fine. We won't put it back on again. But if there isn't a deal, we'll put it on and we will just focus on delivering.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meaning, so that was a very, very interesting thing. So as we got into summer of 2018 and the preparation that we've done for no deal was generally speaking inadequate, we had actually in DEFRA, we had really bitten into it, but there was this sense of half the cabinet was saying, well, no deal might happen, but it's not going to be that bad. And the other half was saying, it's so bad that it can't be allowed to happen. So there were all sorts of psychological reasons why people wouldn't prepare. Not to be fair. Michael Gave was very focused on the fact that we needed to prepare. But people were uncertain and anxious, and they kept thinking, you know, I don't know if I can make this decision because if no deal doesn't happen, then it won't be necessary. So I came up with the virtual reality headset was, we're going to put a virtual reality headset on the entire department inside the virtual reality headset. We are definitely leaving without a deal on the 29th of March, and we're going to do everything we possibly can to be prepared.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our Lego, yes. Yes. Well, Lego actually came from my DEFRA day. So obviously, at the point when we started Brexit, the Brexit journey, I was the Ponent Secretary in DEFRA. And DEFRA was one of the departments that was actually at a practical level most affected by Brexit. And huge amounts of work to do. I like metaphors. So I started reaching for metaphors quite, quite quickly. At a point when much of Whitehall felt like it was a bit paralysed waiting for someone to say, now this is what we're going to do, let's get on with it. I thought we've got to do something. And so I came up with this metaphor of making Lego bricks. So I said, well, let's, you know, let's get on and make some Lego bricks. And then at the point when they're ready to tell us whether they want a pink fairy castle or a LS submarine, we'll have the Lego bricks, but there's things that we know are going to be needed, the kind of detailed work on things like tariffs that we can get on with now”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So a lot of it I did just by endlessly standing up and saying we don't know what's happening, it's a time of great uncertainty, hopefully in two weeks time we might have a better idea of what's happening. In the meantime, I value, other people value the work that we're doing, let's keep going.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was phenomenally difficult, so I started in Dexu on the 1st of April 2019, which should have been the first working day of Brexit if we'd left on the 29th of March. And I was, in the end, only there for 10 months because the last thing I did was close the department down. I mean, at all sorts of levels, it was the most difficult experience, partly because the level of uncertainty was huge. So I started on the 1st of April. At that point, we'd had the second exit date of the 11th of April, so the first kind of 10 days were, what's happening with that. Within that period, we went into the cross-party talks. We then had the 31st of October. We then had Theresa May trying to push the thing forward, trying to get the bill through, then resigning. And it was just a constant. There was nothing that you could hold on to in terms of we actually know what's going to happen.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and as I say, speaking up in meetings, being the person who intervenes, who has the smart point to make, but that isn't necessarily the person who's got the most important thing to say.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there is a version of good which is actually, and the attributes of good are things like speaking up in meetings, being confident in a way that looks like men being confident. And actually, when you really deconstruct it, it's not only kind of white male, it's also probably particular educational backgrounds, it's a set of things. It's people who have got that slight sense of entitlement that that is what is often regarded as good. And then people are encouraged towards it, rewarded for the things they do which are most like it, and just moved away. I mean, it's what's sometimes called the deficit model. So, you know, if there aren't enough women, people of colour, disabled people in a particular environment, then we need to help them to get there by making them more like the people who are there already, rather than saying, you know what, maybe the model's wrong.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. There was a time when there was lots of encouragement to women to succeed, but I sat in so many conversations where a man would say, well, of course, the problem is, you know, women should be more confident. And it occurred to me one day that they didn't mean women should be more confident. They meant confident women should look more like confident men because then we'll know that we're confident they're confident because we can deal with them. They live in the space that we recognize. And it's sort of starting me on a journey of really trying to say there is such a strong normative tendency in all sorts of areas and I noticed it for women because I was on the wrong side of it.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can get through the door. I think there's a really interesting thing about what you have to do to get through the door. Do you compromise your principles to get through the door in order to be able to do something afterwards?”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incense to be waived, absolutely. You know, the smallest boy carried the little boat with the incense in, and then larger people waved the incense. But it was absolutely, you know, this was boys and, you know, I mean, supported very much by my mother, I started to kind of agitate a bit about this, and they kept saying, no, no, no, you can't. Eventually, while I was about 14, because I had short hair and it was a very large church, and most of the people who objected most greatly had quite poor eyesight. And they said, it's okay, you know, once you've got a cascade on, it will be invisible that you were a girl because you'll be right up there. They won't be able to see you. And they let it happen.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. I did. Yes. We went to a very Anglo-Catholic church where attitudes to women were, you know, you should wear a hat in church and you really shouldn't talk. And there was a great deal of ritual and lots and lots of servers. that you dress up in cassocks and surpluses and all sorts of things. And this was entirely, only boys were allowed to do it. And boys were kind of inducted into this from the age of about four or five.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't know if there were even deaconesses, but a woman with a couple of carrying out that and my sister and I were dressed up as bridesmaids to add very similitude to this and then somebody came in and said no you may not marry this people you know you're a woman you cannot be a priest which was one of the kind of the lighter moments but it wasn't there was a kind of endless debate about you know why women couldn't do that and and i think for my mother um it was part of a broader picture but that was something that she was personally very involved in”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. And so on my mother's side, I come from a long line of campaigning feminists of all kinds. I had a lot of great aunts. One of them was a sheep farmer, one of them was a matron in the hospital. And my mother very much was very clear about women should be able to do things. And in the church, the long, long struggle for the alternation of women, my mother was very much part of that. And quite a young child, there was a BBC two. Remember Open Doors? There was a documentary series. And they did one on the ordination of women. And they mocked up a wedding with a female...”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it was as formulated as that. So at university thinking about what I wanted to do, I was, all the things I looked at were in public service. So I was quite hardwired into, you know, public servants get up in the morning to make the world a better place. I wasn't particularly, I didn't think I must be a civil servant. And I remember my father carefully not pushing me towards the civil service. I was what I was really interested in doing things that were interesting and carried the opportunity to get some responsibility. I distinctly remember thinking I've got to...”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know that I fully understood quite what was going on and the depth and the significance, but it was certainly, it felt like the kind of huge burden that was being carried around.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. I think it was. It was an incredibly difficult period. So he was in, he went into the Northern Ireland office in 1979, murder of Elmount Batten, Warren Point, the Hunger Strikes. I mean, I became very interested in Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland politics, and indeed through my father, I used to go to the Coromila community, which is a reconciliation community. I can remember being there in, I think, 1981. I was after Bobby Sands died, but when one of the other hunger strikers died. And there was, I mean, you just existed in this state of permanent tension. If you walked into the centre of Belfast, you walked into the centre of Belfast and you got completely searched. You walked into any shop in Belfast and it became a reflex. You just went in and you put your hands up because you knew you were going to be, you know, they would come a waver metal detector. And looking back, I don't.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was the home secretary for Market Thatcher. I mean, Willie Whitelaw's view was not in favour of capital punishment. Margaret Thatcher's, I think, was. So there was a kind of conflict right at an attention right at the heart there. But that sense of it was a really important thing. And we did definitely know what was the right answer there.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's right. Christian arguments Yes, exactly. And so all of those three things, I think, sat together. But I remember very distinctly in 1979, so the Conservative manifesto, there was a conservative manifesto commitment to have a debate on making capital punishment available to the courts again. And they moved very quickly because the election was May, and in July they had this vote. I just done my O-levels, my sister was just done her A-levels, and we went to listen to the debate. And I can remember the night before my father brought the speech home, you know, Willie Whitelaw's speech.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think we did because that early period, I was very young and I don't remember, but I can quite distinctly remember having to prepare something for a school debate and about capital punishment and having that discussion and understanding there was both the, you know, there's the deterrent argument, does capital punishment actually deter people? There's the irreversibility argument. If there's a miscarriage of justice, there's not the moral.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yeah. So, in fact, my father was in the late 60s. He was in charge of the team that dealt with capital punishment. And so the 1965 act that abolished capital punishment actually had a sunset clause on it, so it had to be either properly concretized or abandoned within five years. And the Labour government in the late 60s decided it didn't want to leave that to the uncertainty of the next election. So my father was responsible for the process that led to those votes that did finally say capital punishment is abolished.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They didn't talk. I mean, we talked a lot about kind of the business of politics, but they didn't, you know, we were definitely not, you know, we weren't a Labour household or a conservative household or even a Lib Dem household.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't remember him bringing the stresses and strains home, but I do. I mean, looking back, we grew up in this atmosphere of very, very determined impartiality. So my parents would never have kind of declared a party political allegiance. It would have been utterly unthinkable to put up a poster.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. So I am a proud third generation civil servant. One of my grandfathers started as a boy clerk in 1916. One of them was an aeronautical engineer. Both my parents joined the civil service as in what we would today call the Fast Stream. My mother, when my older sister was born, left because generally people women, although women could work when they were married, most people resigned when they had children. My father stayed most of his career in the home office with a couple of stints in the cabin office and the Northern Ireland office. So it was very much, that was what I grew up in.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really, really interesting. And because, I mean, values are really important to me and I have exactly the same values as I had all the time in the civil service. And I don't think I thought our heart finally, I can kind of pursue this in a different way. I'm kind of unshackled from the sort of constraints of operating in the political environment. But, I mean, I spent a lot of time when I was a civil servant thinking about this. And there is a values dilemma sitting at the heart of the civil service operation because as a civil servant, you're kind of told what your values are, you know, honesty, integrity, impartiality and objectivity are values which are now written into legislation. But actually on a day-to-day basis, what you're there for is to deliver things for ministers. And ministers quite properly have a set of values which overlap in many ways with the values of civil servants, but are different as well.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, and I think it is very much the ex civil servant having sat listening to this because what's the most important thing? The most important thing is action, that decisions are made which cause different things to happen. And if you feel that you are...”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we can never know the combination of factors that cause ministers to take decisions is many and varied. But what we will always do as citizens advice is make the case on behalf of the people who are coming to us for help. And one of the things I call assistance of our superpower is that because we're seeing two and a half million people, we help two and a half million people one-to-one every year, we can tell our individual stories in a way which actually lands with people. We have incredible data so we can say this is what's happening. And when we talk about policy solutions and the things that are needed, we're not doing it in a, I'm going to shout from the rooftops. It's my opinion this is what's needed. We are saying we can see the problem. This is something that would help fix it.”
2022-11-18 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Clare Moriarty One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source