Alan Johnson

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson. His rise to the top tier of government has been remarkable, not just for its speed, but for the uniqueness of the journey, too. It reads like a, frankly unbelievable, plot to a blockbuster novel. Brought up among the deprivation, squalor, and race riots of 1950s Notting Hill, his dad walked out on the family when little Alan was still in short trousers. His mother died when he was twelve, leaving him to be brought up by his teenage sister. He left school planning to be a rock star and without an O-level to his credit, which is quite something for a man who has gone on to be one of our most influential politicians. I'm not over-egging your significance there, because of course, as we know, the Prime Minister says he says he intends to fight the next election on health.

Alan Johnson1:10

Mr. Smith.

Presenter1:15

No pressure, then?

Alan Johnson1:16

No, in that sense, yes, it's a very important job. Whether I describe myself as one of the most significant politicians, I I don't know. But you know, as I didn't expect to be a politician, any job they offer me is a is a joy.

Presenter1:28

So this brief, the the Secretary of State for Health, do you feel the pressure of that?

Alan Johnson1:33

Mm.

Alan Johnson1:34

I do, but I'm used to pressure. You know, I was the general secretary of a trade union for a long time.

Alan Johnson1:40

And if you want pressure, you know, when one hundred eighty thousand of your members are out on strike, they're all looking to you to settle the dispute. You know, that's big pressure. So I'm used to pressure.

Presenter1:52

Um a year ago, of course, you would have been touted as a possible leader yourself, someone who might inherit Tony Blair's mantle. You didn't stand in the end. Why did you decide not to?

Alan Johnson2:02

Well, I don't think I'd have been good enough, frankly. I don't think I've got the capabilities. I've got to kind of every level where I became an executive member of the union and thought, oh, I could be a national officer. I became a national officer and thought, well, perhaps I could be general secretary. I got, you know, MP, I thought maybe I could be a minister. You get to a level and you look around and think, perhaps, I could go to the next level. I don't think I could go to that level, which is kind of the only level up from being a cabinet minister. I can be a very good Secretary of State, I'm sure of that. I hope I can.

Alan Johnson2:34

There'll be lots of my close political advisers tearing their hair out and keep your options open and all this. I think Gordon was the best man to be the Prime Minister and I don't think I can't see myself doing that job.

Presenter2:44

So you're ruling it out for the future, then?

Alan Johnson2:46

Uh yeah, I kind of am, yeah.

Alan Johnson2:48

Yeah.

Presenter2:49

Enough of politics, then tell me about your first record.

Alan Johnson2:52

My first record is The Beatles, the great love of my life. I was interested in music from a very early age. Uh my sister and I used to buy something called the Record Songbook and do two part harmonies to the Everley brothers. But, you know, British pop music was Tommy Steele singing Little White Bull and, you know,

Alan Johnson3:08

Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard copying Elwis Presley. I mean, you had to be there when the Beatles actually came out, and they just changed my life. I think they changed the world, actually. So I picked this one, Angel Bird Can Sing, because I think it epitomizes their great musicianship. But, you know, this was released this week. People would say, this is fantastic. This is a phenomenon. They stuck it away as kind of whatever it was, track seven.

Alan Johnson3:34

On on revolver. It's brilliant.

Speaker 23:44

I know that you got everything you want.

Speaker 23:48

The old bag can sing, she don't get me

Speaker 23:54

Don't get

Speaker 23:55

Me so you've seen seven wonders And your bed is green but you can't see me

Presenter4:07

The Beatles with And Your Bird Can Sing. All politicians, of course, like to lay claim to popular culture, don't they? But you did at one point. Uh you you had a band yourself. Did you in fact cut a single?

Alan Johnson4:18

Two bands.

Alan Johnson4:19

I was in a band called The Area and the single A-side Hard Life.

Alan Johnson4:25

B-side written by me, uh I have seen.

Alan Johnson4:28

And what happened to it?

Alan Johnson4:31

The lead singer was a guy called Danny Curtis, who's actually just got in touch with me. I've seen him for 40 odd years. And he went around trying to sell this.

Alan Johnson4:37

Unfortunately, we didn't manage to sell the single, so it wasn't released. So all we've got is the forty five RPM version, about eight copies that have gradually disappeared. I haven't got mine anymore. Danny's still got it, apparently.

Presenter4:50

You must have intended to include that in your aid today, really?

Alan Johnson4:52

I wasn't, no, no. I want records I can listen to over and over again and quite frankly, Hard Life would, you know, drive me balmy on a desert island.

Presenter5:00

So, you're talking now, as you say, when you were about 16. Let's rewind a bit to your earlier childhood. As I said in the introduction, West London in the 1950s. What was life like?

Alan Johnson5:09

Um

Alan Johnson5:10

Well, it w it was rough, a lot of s squalor. The street I lived in, Southam Street, actually happens to be the street that the Roger Mayne, the photographer, took these famous photographs of, and we think my sister's in the background are one of them.

Presenter5:21

That's the the photographs of the sort of raggedy, skinny children standing in door-night buildings and slums.

Alan Johnson5:24

And these West Indians walking down the road just arrived.

Alan Johnson5:29

And what you notice on those photographs, which I'd forgotten about, was the teeming streets, so many people on the streets. And of course, one of the reasons for that, you didn't want to stay in your home.

Alan Johnson5:39

The places were condemned in the twenties and thirties. I mean, they were awful slums. Four or five families in one house on different kind of levels of the house. You know, I remember hunger and I remember cold. Uh you know, you you you put used to put old coats on your bed.

Alan Johnson5:56

You know, the lack of a bathroom, didn't have a bathroom to this sounds like Monty Python. But at the time, that's the way everyone around me lived. You know, it was violence. I remember women fighting bare knuckle in the street. I remember, you know, I was attacked lots of times. I had to look after myself and all that. It, you know, it wasn't this world of sedate gentility that people suggest the fifties was. It was a very, I remember it as quite a violent time.

Presenter6:24

And then one day you went to the shops and you came back and your dad wasn't there. I mean, literally, it was as as sudden as that, was it?

Alan Johnson6:30

Um, yeah. Um

Alan Johnson6:32

It was, but, you know, we celebrated. And this was a happy day for me and my sister. I'm not sure how my mum felt about it. Um you know, he'd gone, he'd cleared out. It was a Saturday, I remember it. Um

Alan Johnson6:44

And

Alan Johnson6:45

You know, we were pleased about that. Me and my sister

Speaker 26:48

Why?

Alan Johnson6:49

Wow.

Alan Johnson6:50

I don't think he was a very pleasant person.

Presenter6:54

Okay, so something of a relief then for you and your sister, if not for your mother. Your mother had a she had a cleaning job to to keep the show on the road.

Alan Johnson7:01

She had lots of cleaning jobs. She she was kind of what was called then a char lady. You know, she had three or four different jobs on the go at any one time.

Alan Johnson7:09

which was the only way she could get any money in.

Presenter7:11

And um, what sort of ambition, I may maybe it sounds ridiculous to characterize it like that, but did she have for you? What did she want for her son?

Alan Johnson7:19

She wanted me to be um a draftsman.

Presenter7:22

So insofar, not really a trade, a sort of rarefied trade, something that was a clean job.

Alan Johnson7:26

A clean job, yes. And, you know, she pushed me and Linda, my sister, was two of us. Um

Alan Johnson7:32

She came from a family of twelve and from the slums of Liverpool. She was a scouser and uh

Alan Johnson7:39

She had a real, real urge to make sure that we did well at school and ended up, you know.

Alan Johnson7:47

Linda not having to be a char lady and me perhaps not having to sweep the streets or whatever.

Presenter7:51

And if that's what she wanted for you, what did you want for yourself as a little boy?

Alan Johnson7:56

I I think I just drifted along. I don't think I had a clear vision until I got to my kind of early teens.

Alan Johnson8:03

when music, being a writer, wanted to be a writer, all these kind of things came in.

Presenter8:07

More of that in a moment, but for now tell me about your second piece of music.

Alan Johnson8:09

Well, this is undoubtedly the greatest songwriter of his generation, Elvis Costello. I've been with Elvis from the start, you know, right back from My Aim Is True. And Elvis Costello does little slices of life in his songs, none better than You Little Fool.

Speaker 28:25

Talks on the telephone for hours and hours with a card in his hand

Speaker 28:34

Words of love have a limitation with

Speaker 28:44

I suppose that you're going to stay all night

Presenter8:54

Elvis Costello and You Little Fool. So you passed the Eleven Plus and you won a place that was at Sloan Grammar School over in Chelsea? Grammar School, yeah. Um so not quite the other side of town, but certainly the other side of the tracks. I mean, how how did how do you remember hearing the news that you'd won a place?

Alan Johnson9:01

Yeah.

Alan Johnson9:11

Um well, I was traips around to several grammar schools. Uh they decided they'd have me, uh with three other kids from my school, uh from Bevington.

Alan Johnson9:21

And I was very pleased. I was pleased because the alternative, if I'd failed my eleven plus, was to go to this dreadful, god awful school called Isaac Newton. Even I knew at eleven that if you went to Isaac Newton, that was the kind of end of year.

Alan Johnson9:35

Any aspirations you had in life.

Presenter9:36

You see, I wonder about this because of course you were part of that generation that then that was lifted out of your poverty each day and and given this opportunity to see a life beyond you were part of the selective system. I mean that wouldn't happen, would it? People would be left to go to

Alan Johnson9:48

Yeah, that wouldn't happen.

Alan Johnson9:50

No, but it wouldn't. But it wouldn't. But, you know, all those kids I left behind, you know, putting eighty percent of kids into schools that were underfunded, that had the poorest teachers. Uh so yeah, you creamed off a few. Linda passed her eleven plus as well, went to Fulham County. You creamed off a few, but what you did with the rest was an horrific waste.

Presenter10:10

How aware were you of the difference between your day-to-day life and the day-to-day life of most of the people you were going to school with? How aware were you of your own poverty?

Alan Johnson10:18

Yeah.

Alan Johnson10:20

When you got changed in the dressing room, you noticed, you know, the state of my underwear compared to them. Uh it was quite embarrassing. I was on free school meals and the teacher every week did say, Johnson, to come up and give your money, and I always had to say, Free, sir.

Alan Johnson10:36

He shouldn't have done that. They should have just known if you're on free school meals. He shouldn't have made you go through this every week. But apart from that, you know, it was great to mix with kids who came from other backgrounds.

Presenter10:45

Did you savour the education? Did you enjoy being taught?

Alan Johnson10:47

No, no. I I mean, you know, me and Sloane did not have a happy partnership. Why not?

Presenter10:52

Bueno.

Alan Johnson10:54

Well, I spent a lot of time off of school in those first few years. Um I mean my mum was ill and in in hospital. I didn't like school. I wouldn't say I was unhappy, but I didn't like it.

Alan Johnson11:06

When you don't get off that starting blocks when you first go when you're eleven, it's very difficult to catch up.

Presenter11:11

And as you say then, your your mother had been ill for for quite some time. What was it was a heart problem, was it she hit?

Alan Johnson11:17

Yeah, I've just kind of found out what it was. I mean, my sister was older at the time. She knows all of this, but it was something called mitral stenosis.

Alan Johnson11:25

And she went into hospital on various occasions for long periods, which meant Linda was kind of bringing me up from about the age she would have been twelve, thirteen, when all this started.

Presenter11:35

And so your mother died and your sister was left to bring you up. I mean, you could have gone into foster care, but but your sis

Alan Johnson11:41

Sister resistant.

Presenter11:42

Uh

Alan Johnson11:43

My mum wasn't very good with money. You know, she didn't have a lot of money, but she used to go down payments or lots of things she couldn't keep the payments up on. And we were always hiding from someone we called the tally man who was coming round for the payments. Uh Linda sorted all that out. I I don't know how I still don't know how she did it.

Alan Johnson12:01

We then got a child welfare officer, wonderful mister Pepper, and because we'd had this long period where Linda had been looking after me when my mum was in hospital, he said, Look, Linda is perfectly capable, though she was only fifteen.

Alan Johnson12:14

keep them together. And Linda really battled uh for me not to go into a home. And Mr Pepper won the day and they put us in a council flat. My mum spent her whole life waiting to get a council house.

Alan Johnson12:25

and didn't manage it. They gave us a council flat in Battersea, the two of us.

Alan Johnson12:30

Which was extraordinary.

Presenter12:32

Huge strength of character and determination on your sister's part.

Alan Johnson12:35

Well, yeah, you haven't met her. She is very strong. Oh, she's just incredible. I mean, you really should be interviewing her. She's great.

Presenter12:45

Maybe next time, tell me about your next record.

Alan Johnson12:47

The next record takes me back to the 60s. This is 1966. You know, I was in this band.

Alan Johnson12:55

I'd left school, I was convinced it was going to be a rock life for me. Now what epitomises the 60s for me is this song, and it's not a British group, it's an Australian group. They're a one hit wonder, never heard of again. It didn't even get to number one. I think it's fantastic. It's the Easy Beats with Friday on My Mind.

Speaker 213:10

Moment Tuesday, I feel better.

Speaker 213:15

Even my own man looks good.

Speaker 213:20

When it just don't go

Speaker 213:22

But they talk too slow.

Speaker 213:25

I'll be fine up my mind

Presenter13:40

The Easy Beats and Friday on My Mind. Yes, very sort of naive, optimistic lyrics in that. And y as you say, much of your teenage years were spent playing in bands full of this sort of optimism of music and all the things that it brings. How close do you feel now to that optimism? I mean that's must be.

Alan Johnson13:53

Yeah.

Alan Johnson13:57

Well, I've always been optimistic. I've always been optimistic. And uh I I it didn't last that long, by the way. I went from the area to bank called the in betweens and then I had so much of my gear nicked.

Alan Johnson14:09

And by then, I was going to join the post office. I had kids, got married very young. Yes, I was going to see.

Presenter14:14

Yes, I was going to say, I mean, that was my next question, but it wasn't all rock and roll. I mean, by the time you were twenty, you had three children. Yeah, yeah. And you were working then at the the post office. Did you see your life sort of mapped out in front of you? Did you think this is how it is now? I'm a family man. These are the harsh realities of life, and I'll just get on with it.

Alan Johnson14:20

Three children, yeah.

Alan Johnson14:32

Well, it wasn't that harsh for me. It seemed quite good actually. You know, we got put into a council house that had a bathroom and everything. I had a steady job. I could bring home some money. I mean, having children is just wonderful.

Alan Johnson14:44

I always thought I'd be a writer or a musician and it was dawning on me in the early twenties, in my early twenties, that I wasn't going to be any of those things. That's when I started to get more interested in the union.

Presenter14:55

You were at the same time, is it true, devouring English literature? You loved to read it.

Alan Johnson14:59

I'd always done that, um, from a very you know, I just picked up there were no books in the house, you just picked up what came along, but a fabulous teacher called Peter Carlin at Sloan, my English teacher.

Alan Johnson15:10

He kind of structured things and suggested books. He got me into George Orwell, he got me into P G Woodhouse. And I'd been reading Dickens and all that. It was a passion for me reading.

Presenter15:19

And so where did the politics in you begin? The germination of that was as you began to work in the post office.

Alan Johnson15:25

Um, yeah, I think so. When I joined the Post Service we had a big strike when I was twenty, just before my son was born, you know, three days before Jamie was born.

Alan Johnson15:34

I was just a twenty-year-old postman going up to London to the rallies, marching around slough and all that. That really got me involved.

Presenter15:41

But never attracted by the far less.

Alan Johnson15:44

No, much though they tried to attract people like me, you know, usually you know, middle class kids from college used to come to our strike rallies and dress down. We were trying to dress up. I mean, we were mods trying to look smart, but they were dressing down. But I knew, you know, they wanted me to be Cannon Fodder in the class war. That's that was their only interest in me.

Presenter16:03

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Alan Johnson16:05

Um, well, I I was a Bowie freak for a while. I didn't exactly paint, you know, my face and all that'cause married with three kids, it wouldn't have looked right. But uh I I really loved Bowie and this is from Aladdin saying, I think it's a great record's driving setting.

Speaker 216:19

She's uncertain if she likes him But she knows she really loves him It's a crash course for the Ravers It's a drone Saturday

Speaker 216:37

His name was always Buddy And he was shrugging as mistakes and see the side

Presenter16:46

David Bowie and Drive in Saturday. So you were, what, forty three when you became the youngest ever General Secretary of the Union of Communications Workers, as it was then?

Alan Johnson16:55

Uh 40 left, just correct you for 42, I think. I'm a little bit more.

Presenter16:58

I do beg your pardon. It was the year after Labour had lost this election that it thought it had in the bag. Where did your ambitions lie at that point?

Alan Johnson17:07

I didn't have any ambitions at all to do anything other than

Alan Johnson17:12

Doing three things with the union, lifting the pay of postmen and postwomen. I was a postman. Their pay was appalling. They worked six days a week. I wanted to save the post office from privatisation, which was being mooted.

Alan Johnson17:22

even at the time, and I wanted to merge. There was another union around that was crazy that the two unions were separate. I wanted them to merge. So I set out a kind of five year plan to do that without much thought of what happened after that.

Presenter17:33

Now you mentioned there this privatization of the the Royal Mail. That was very much on the the Tory agenda. I mean they'd done it with gas and rail and water. They were going to do it to the Royal Mail. You decided they weren't. I mean, what was your plan?

Alan Johnson17:47

Um

Alan Johnson17:48

I was very conscious of the fact there'd been all these glorious defeats. So I decided, look, we're going to have it's not going to be marches and rallies and strikes, it's going to be a sophisticated campaign. The rallies and the marches were a bit of it, but actually we had to get behind Tory lines and exploit the fact that they were very worried. Lots of Conservatives had a small majority and they were very worried.

Alan Johnson18:11

about post office privatization.

Presenter18:13

I mean, you revealed yourself during this encounter to be a highly effective tactician. Can can you give us a description of just a couple of the sort of tactics that you employed that were entirely untypical of what unions had done up until then?

Alan Johnson18:25

Well, we targeted the members of the Conservative Party that we knew were they were on our A list, were worried about this. And we worked in their constituencies and we formed an organization called Protecting Postal Services, and then we had we formed it and then we had nothing to do with it. So people didn't see it as a union organisation. It was led by the Women's Institute and

Alan Johnson18:48

all kinds of charities, etc. So it's one thing that we do.

Presenter18:50

Yeah.

Alan Johnson18:52

Well, I don't think it's duplicitous. It's ju that all these people were really, really keen to oppose post office privatization. We just provided the facility for them to come together under this organization. I went to the Tory Party conference and spoke to Tory MPs and sought to persuade them that this was madness.

Presenter19:08

So the Royal Mill was not privatised. That marked you out as somebody special and somebody who was able to be effective in battle. How long after that was it that Tony Blair called you and said, Can I have a word?

Alan Johnson19:22

Well I was on the NEC of the Labour Party so I'd known Tony and he'd helped us during the campaign as well. It was when the 97 election was coming up that suddenly the Member of Parliament for Hull West and Hessel decided to spend more time with his peerage and Tony said

Alan Johnson19:43

I understand you're interested in being an MP. And I said, no, I've never been interested in being an MP. And he said, well, I'd quite like you to be an MP. And I thought, well.

Alan Johnson19:51

This might be quite exciting.

Presenter19:53

Good time for a break. Tell me about your next piece of music.

Alan Johnson19:56

Well, this is Neil Young. This was a time of my life in the early 70s when I was thinking about maybe I should be doing something different with my life. And this song, I just remember this as being in the background while I was thinking, should I go for a promotion in the post office? Am I ever going to get back into the music business, which I still and still do. So it's a lovely song as well, one of Neil Young's best, but it does remind me of that period.

Presenter20:49

Neil Young with the London Symphony Orchestra and A Man Needs a Maid. As you said then, just to recap, it was three weeks before the nineteen ninety seven election and you were well, some people would say parachuted into a seat. Uh you say Tony Blair had plans for you politically, even though you didn't have plans for yourself politically.

Alan Johnson21:06

Well no, it was three weeks into the 1997 election campaign. It was a long six-week campaign, if you remember. And then halfway through, that's when my predecessor in Hull stepped down. And so I got through that process, joined the Parachute Regiment, landed in Hull West and Hessel, which I've never regretted at all. Fabulous constituency and wonderful place. And so I had to pick it up.

Presenter21:28

This was a big, juicy, plum Labour seat. I mean, you must have known that when Tony Blair asked you to come into politics, he had something in mind for you.

Alan Johnson21:34

Uh

Alan Johnson21:37

He had something in mind. I think Tony's view was he wanted as many people who were MPs thinking we were going to go into government, who hadn't spent their whole lives trying to be MPs. So he wanted people from different backgrounds. But he made it clear to me, look, you have to cut the mustard. I'm not saying to you, I'm promising you any ministerial job, you know, because it's a difficult life in Parliament.

Presenter21:58

What about the mood in'ninety seven then? What what can you remember from those heady days?

Alan Johnson22:02

Oh gosh. Well I mean well I'd been through the 18 years, you know, in opposition. I'd been a member of the party right through that. I'd been a member since the early 70s. I'd been a trade unionist, battling away, seeing lost causes. It was just amazingly exciting. And that's why I wanted to be part of it. I thought even if I don't get a ministerial job, even if I'm just an MP on the backbenches, it will be the backbenches on the government side.

Presenter22:26

I wonder how comfortable you felt around the Cabinet table, because of course it is still the case that the majority of people who sit around that table have only known a life of privilege, in essence, when it comes to their background and and education. Were there ever memories there of uh the little chap going on the tube in the bus to the grammar school over in Sloane Square?

Alan Johnson22:44

Not really. I know this is quite kind of romantic to people for people to feel like that. I can I I can understand that. But, you know, I've I don't want to be defined by my class or my background.

Alan Johnson22:54

I've never had that. Neither has my sister. We've just got on with life and, you know, where we came from was where we came from. And it, you know, it's important part of people we are. But it doesn't mean we're looking around at toe and saying, Oh, I'm somehow superior for y to you'cause you had a silver spoon in your mouth.

Presenter23:08

But you c you can be different in some ways from your colleagues, and you are. I mean John Monks, I think, summed it up with great effervescence when he said there's still a bit of the old London mod about him, a bit of flash and swagger, and a very sharp wit.

Alan Johnson23:19

and a very sharp

Alan Johnson23:20

Do you like that description? I love it, very much like that description. I like the man who made that description.

Alan Johnson23:26

Well, I'm just me. And I think the thing that defines us that's different from us is that they went to university and it never ceases to amaze me the networks that people build up from university and the friends they have and all of that. I've not been part of the dinner party circuit and I'm not part of that. And that kind of separates you a bit.

Presenter23:47

Yeah.

Alan Johnson23:47

Tell me about your sixth piece of music. To me, I'm in the Howard Goodall School of Music. You know, I don't see these dividing lines between classical and pop.

Alan Johnson23:56

I got into classical music by listening to the third programme on our radio rental stuff.

Alan Johnson24:03

Marla uh is is one of my favorite composers, and I picked here the Fifth Symphony in C sharp minor uh just to show I know the key. Just to show somebody else didn't choose it for you. Because it's the most luscious and most beautiful piece of music. And on my desert island this will be me sitting back reflecting about the past and perhaps the future.

Presenter24:12

Just assured somebody else didn't choose it for you.

Presenter25:16

The opening of the final part of Mahler's Symphony No. five, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Frank Shipway. So here you are now then, leading the Department of Health. What what do you see your greatest challenge to be there?

Alan Johnson25:30

Well, I think it's simply improving health outcomes. We've got to a stage now where we've increased capacity, there's more staff, waiting times are down, we've had very good improvements in cancer care, cardiovascular care, etc. I see us moving into a new phase now where we can concentrate remorselessly how do we have an NHS that's clinically led, locally driven.

Presenter25:55

You yourself then mentioned cancer, Kate. I'm sure there'll be lots of people listening at home, given that one in three of us is affected by cancer and will be diagnosed with cancer.

Presenter26:04

Maybe screaming at the radio set saying we're not even reaching the European averages on cancer care in Great Britain, and this is a disgrace. If we did reach the averages, there would be twenty-four people each day who would be alive who are currently dying because they're being treated in Britain. After ten years of a Labour government, that is not just embarrassing by some people's standards, it's a visible situation.

Alan Johnson26:24

But you have to look at where we came in and what needed to be done. And it needed to be done over a long period of time. And we're still not at the place we want to be on cancer care, but the improvement since 1997 is amazing. So if you look at what's happened since 1997, you'll see huge improvements. Is it where we, you know, have we reached Valhalla yet? No, we haven't.

Presenter26:46

But if you've spent, as you have, forty three billion of our pounds, of taxpayers' pounds into the NHS, not just by the contention of the opposition, but by people who've been helping you try to restructure the NHS, there is no sense in which that money that's been put in, we've seen adequate outcomes at the other end.

Alan Johnson27:06

Well, I think there has been adequate outcomes actually, and more than adequate outcomes. Wherever you look, if you look at the hospital building programme, if you look at the number of GPs now, if you look at the number of operations we're carrying out, a million more operations than in 1997, other countries have had this level of investment in their NHS services for many, many years. The disgrace was that we had such poor investment into our health services.

Presenter27:32

But you yourself, of course, will know about Sir Derek Mons's analysis, and he said that this forty three billion pounds in funding was not proportional to the amount of results that we've seen in terms of investment. He himself said that.

Alan Johnson27:46

Yeah, but he's but Derek Wandless set out a ten-year plan and we're five years through. And what Derek Wandless also said is that there are notable improvements in healthcare, notable, and that our direction is going in the right way. His big point, and I think he was absolutely right on this, is that health prevention and public health has to be a much bigger factor. And he's absolutely right, and there needs to be a concentration on that. But the Wandless report did have some criticisms, and I accept those completely. We need to look at them, but it's wrong to suggest that he was saying that the direction of government policy is wrong or that he wasn't accepting that there's been huge improvement.

Presenter28:21

Tell me about your next record.

Alan Johnson28:23

This is um

Alan Johnson28:24

A Super Furry Animals. This is Doystoyski coming up here. You know, this is a song.

Alan Johnson28:30

That begins with the line She came in smelling of cabbages, Pumpkin Roots and All Winter's Ravages.

Alan Johnson28:37

Just listen to it, it's beautiful.

Speaker 128:40

She came in smelling of capital.

Alan Johnson28:43

Smelly

Speaker 128:47

Helping roots and olive ravages She came in around door

Speaker 128:59

Took a coat of burdened down by the Russian wheel

Presenter29:06

The Super Furry Animals and Cityscape Sky Baby. Is it true that your son Jamie said you'd rather be the lead singer with the he called it he called him, I think, the Super Furries, so I'll say that too th than be Prime Minister.

Alan Johnson29:20

Yes, it's true that Jamie said that. And was he right? Well, number one, they wouldn't have me, but he was probably right in the sense that, you know, I still hanker for a musical.

Presenter29:23

Yeah.

Alan Johnson29:30

Yeah.

Presenter29:32

Do you imagine you might have one one day?

Alan Johnson29:33

No, I don't. And I haven't picked up guitar since I became a minister, which I'm trying to do something about.

Presenter29:35

Do you still write songs?

Presenter29:42

Where do you find time to do that in amongst all these red boxes and this supposed forensic understanding of your brief?

Alan Johnson29:47

Stupid.

Alan Johnson29:49

You have to make sure you find time. Work-life balance is a terrible phrase, but actually you you really have to be remorseless with your diary.

Presenter29:58

And what about family time? You you had your first family, you had uh three children and your marriage broke down in the eighties, you married again and you've got a son who's now, what, about, six?

Alan Johnson30:02

Yeah.

Alan Johnson30:06

Seven, yeah, yeah.

Presenter30:06

Yeah, yeah.

Alan Johnson30:07

Um

Presenter30:07

I mean, are you are you very conscious of trying to spend time with him, or do you think, okay, when I'm out of this job, I'll still have time to spend with him?

Alan Johnson30:14

No, I'm very conscious of spending time with him now.

Alan Johnson30:17

And you know, the last thing you want in the Department of Health, I don't want everyone thinking that they have to be there all hours because that's the only way you judge them to be worthy of working, you know. So I make sure I do that, not just

Alan Johnson30:30

You know, because I want to set an example to the Department of Health, because I want to see my son and I think that's a good idea.

Presenter30:34

Is that different from the first time around, though, when you had your first three children? Yes, it was.

Alan Johnson30:38

Yes, it well it's different in the sense that, you know, I was I was very young and I was a bit immature and I was a London mod and London mods didn't get seen walking around the streets pushing prams.

Alan Johnson30:49

Now, you know, God, when Oliver was born, I just wanted to be out there with a buggy all the time. So you yeah, you know, I'm lucky to be able to go through this again.

Presenter30:58

I I don't wish to be too sentimental, but given that your mother wanted you to be a draftsman, if she was still here, what do you think she'd make of it all?

Alan Johnson31:04

What do you think she'd make of it all? Oh, goodness knows. Yeah, she'd be just beep amused. But all her you know, her sisters and I was talking to my Auntie Peggy in the week up in Liverpool, this big Liverpool family. My Auntie Peggy lives in the house that my mum was born in still.

Alan Johnson31:19

I kind of think they replicate how my mum would have felt, which is very proud of me, and I'm, you know, I'm conscious of that and try and live up to it.

Presenter31:27

Tell me about your final choice.

Alan Johnson31:28

Final choice is Jamie. I live my musical life now vicariously through my son, and he as uh s he was probably the first of the Johnsons to go to university, but never used his degree, went straight into music, and this is a song, one of his songs, that he did with an artist called Halima.

Alan Johnson31:46

And I'd love to have this on a desert island. It would remind me of Jamie, but I actually think it's a bloody good song, Beneath the Sun.

Speaker 231:53

And so I chose the longer road, left alone to find my dreams again.

Speaker 232:05

Till the corner swung around to brighter tones here.

Presenter32:22

Halima and Beneath the Sun. So, of course, I will give you the Bible on this island and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you're allowed to take a book. What will that book be?

Alan Johnson32:30

Pepys Diaries. I'm fascinated by Pepys. When I was at the Department of Education and I had to walk across to the House of Commons, I did what I called my Pepys walk. I walked alongside Westminster Abbey, exactly as Pepys would have done. I walked past St Margaret's Church, where he was married. I walked across into Westminster Hall, where he spent, you know, all night queuing up for the restoration of Charles II. And my office in the colonnade at the House of Commons is practically, I reckon, where Pepys lived, because he lived in what's now New Palace Yard. And I feel a kind of empathy, but it's so much entertainment. You've got history, you've got drama, you've got a crime thriller, everything in Pepys' diaries.

Presenter33:10

You may have that. And a luxury to make life a little more bearable.

Alan Johnson33:14

My luxury would be a digital radio on which I can hear the programmes I like now, which includes BBC Seven, incidentally, which I think is great. It's it's enhanced my life. So if I could.

Presenter33:24

So if I could.

Presenter33:25

It's Borderline Practical. I'm going to give you it. And which one of the eight records would you save?

Alan Johnson33:27

Yeah.

Alan Johnson33:28

Okay.

Alan Johnson33:32

Ah the Beatles.

Presenter33:34

Alan Johnson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Alan Johnson33:37

Thank you, Kirsty.

Presenter33:45

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio four.