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Life as minister is hectic and demanding
SIX weeks – to the day - into the life of the government I thought might be timely to write about life as a minister.
It's really hectic, varied and demanding. I'm writing on the day after the Budget, a really difficult tough package assembled in rapid time by the Coalition Treasury team to tackle the dreadful legacy of a record budget deficit.
We've got to make severe cuts to public spending and to take as much as possible out of the internal costs of government so we can protect the front line services to the greatest extent we can.
No pressure then for me, in the work I'm leading across Whitehall to drive efficiency and reform!
So what did this Monday look like for me? First thing was looking ahead over the next few weeks with my private office team, so we can plan, tweak the diary, make sure we've got the right meetings and visits organised.
Then next door to No 10 for a meeting in the cabinet room with the CEO of Facebook and his team.
We talk about how the social media can be central to the new post-bureaucratic age, where the Big Society replaces the age of big government.
Next I chair a meeting to work out how we create a single address register.
Sounds mundane – but there are three! Royal Mail have one, local government another and the Ordnance Survey a third.
They'll be brought together next year for the ten yearly census – and then disbanded again – for reasons I still don't understand!
There are huge social, financial and economic advantages from cracking this one. We will overcome!
Typical of what ministers have to do, this one. No glamour, no plaudits. Just relentless work to crack an apparently intractable problem.
Next a meeting with the National Security Adviser, Sir Peter Ricketts, who's based in the Cabinet Office; with my deputy, Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society; and then with the whole team, advisers, other ministers, my PPS and the whips.
Then a long session with four of Whitehall's most senior commercial directors, to talk about taking cost out by renegotiating contracts across government, and by using government's scale to buy goods and services jointly.
Not rocket science – but it hasn't been done before. Impressive people with a real determination that we can do things differently.
After lunch – and I've run out of space! More next week.
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Weather for Horsham
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 6 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -7 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: East
