Playing a foolhardy prediction game is not natural territory for Savid Javid. But with crunch time fast approaching, like David Cameron, he dares to dream. “Yes, I do”, the new secretary of state for culture, media and sport declares as he surveys the contest ahead.
He’s not talking about the 2015 general election, however, but England’s chances at the world cup in Brazil.
“I think England will do really well,” he predicts. How well? “I think the whole country is behind them, the whole nation. I even heard Alex Salmond on the radio saying he’s rooting for England. The whole United Kingdom is behind England. I think they are going to do very well.”
It’s a business-like answer from a business-like politician, and one who has risen faster and further than any member of the 2010 intake of Tory MPs. Talent-spotted by George Osborne when serving as a lowly parliamentary private secretary at the business department, fast-tracked through the ministerial ranks at the Treasury by the chancellor and, for just over a month now, in charge of his own department, Javid is the first elected British Asian to make it into the Cabinet.
With Maria Miller resigning after her expenses run-in, Javid was the biggest beneficiary of the enforced reshuffle that followed. “It is a big change,” he admits, when asked to describe the shift in position. “Moving from having set responsibilities, albeit in a big department, to running your own department, being a secretary of state, you are ultimately responsible for everything that takes place in your department and one thing you immediately have to get used to is keeping your eye on so many different things.”
That shouldn’t be a problem for him. There’s a seriousness to Sajid Javid that rarely slips. The only attempt at humour in our interview comes when he explains how he juggles his work demands with spending time with his wife and four children. “I learn to manage my time carefully and make sure any interviews I do with the press don’t over-run…” A stare follows, before Javid adds: “I’m just kidding.” He might be, though I’m not totally sure.
He may have inherited a department often dismissed as the ministry for fun, but it’s clear that Sajid Javid means business.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is not quite what it used to be. Recently relocated along Whitehall, the department is no longer housed in a multi-storeyed grand office of its own just a stone’s throw from Trafalgar Square, instead the downsized DCMS now lodges in the Treasury where it shares a floor with the revenues and customs team.
The secretary of state’s quarters aren’t exactly cramped, but they’re a long way from grand too, with Javid’s neat and simple desk modestly tucked to the side of the room. A non-descript sofa suite and a television share the office, but there’s little in the way of a personal stamp here.
Except, that is, for the trusty portrait above his desk.
Staring regally down, decked out in classic Tory blue, is the watchful face of Margaret Thatcher, her portrait accompanying Javid when he moved upstairs from the Treasury.
Javid has described his admiration for the former Conservative prime minister as instinctive, with every part of his journey to Westminster a template for all that the Iron Lady would wish for.
Abdul Javid, Sajid’s late father, arrived from Pakistan with just £1 in his pocket, working so hard as a bus-driver that he became known as “Mr Night and Day”. The family moved from Rochdale to Bristol when Javid was just four, and he grew up with his parents and four brothers in a two bedroom flat in one of the city’s toughest neighbourhoods. Educated at a local state school, Javid ignored suggestions that he quit at 16 and instead enrolled at a sixth form college and won a place at Exeter University.
Though he joined a student Conservative Society whose members included future MPs Robert Halfon and David Burrowes, and the founder of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie, Javid only entered the political world after a highly successful – and lucrative – career in the financial sector. He started as a trader in New York for Chase Manhattan, and by the age of 25 was the youngest vice-president in the bank’s history. Head-hunted to join Deutschebank, Javid’s stellar rise was well remunerated, with his personal wealth said to be comfortably in the millions.
The story can be portrayed as the very model of hard-working, entrepreneurial Tory values, and Thatcher, you would imagine, would have been quite happy to have a Sajid Javid framed photo on her wall – his self-made success, from humble origins, would have struck a chord with the Grantham-born grocer’s daughter.
As would a hinterland apparently as empty as his heroine’s: Javid lists no pastimes in his Who’s Who entry. Described as more Thatcherite than Thatcher, his arrival at the DCMS was greeted with panicking swoons from the arts sector and a rubbing of hands from the dryer parts of the Tory Party. Fraser Nelson, the Spectator editor, wrote on Javid’s appointment that the new secretary of state could well “ask why on earth Britain’s thriving arts need state funding at all… [He’s] the sort of hard-headed radical who may conclude that there is no need for a culture department and that a lot of money can be saved in returning things to the pre-Major days. Here’s hoping.”
He may have to hope a little longer. Javid, it turns out, is all for public funding of the arts.
“Yeah, I think it’s important”, he declares. “It’s been with us for a while under successive governments. The principle itself is something that I think is important.”
And where Maria Miller argued that the arts world must “hammer home the value of culture to our economy”, Javid seems to be taking an even softer line. While acknowledging that the arts sector, taken with creative industries, including the film and TV industries, is “hugely important for the activity it provides in our economy: it helps generate about £70bn of the economy, employ over 1.7 million people” – Javid is, perhaps to the surprise of many, prepared to look past the balance the sheet.
“I think it goes beyond just pounds and pence,” he says of the contribution of the arts. “You have the intrinsic value of the arts, the social value. It is hard to, you don’t want to, put a number on that. You don’t need to necessarily. But everyone knows the social value. Everyone knows the intrinsic value. All governments have understood that. This government does. That’s part of the reason why you have public sector involvements. That’s something that has been in important in the period we’ve been in government.”
Opponents would point to the huge cuts to the arts budgets which the coalition instigated – 24% in 2010, 30% to the Arts Council budget, 19 quangos, including the Film Council, abolished – but Javid disagrees.
“If you look back in 2010, the period we came to office, as we set our emergency budget, the state of the public budget meant we had to find savings... if you look at what happened, despite those massive pressures, the government cut 5% roughly of grant funding from government but that’s almost been made up entirely by lottery funding. Funding is virtually unchanged. I think that’s quite a significant achievement and shows where this government’s priorities are.”
He won’t rule out further cuts after the general election – “The government at the time will have to decide how it manages its spending commitments but I think that’s a decision to be made at that time, not right now” – but the tone of Javid’s answer, and his commitment to his brief, might raise a few luvvie-ish eyebrows.
With the roll-out of broadband a part of the DCMS brief, Javid will still play a key role in helping to drive Britain’s economic recovery, but one of the policies he was involved with while part of George Osborne’s team is coming under scrutiny in the arts world. As house prices in London continue to rise, closer attention is being paid to the government’s Help to Buy scheme, which critics say has fuelled the price rise. And that, artists complain, is forcing them out of central London – with potential knock-on consequences for the capital’s cultural vibe. Can the culture secretary can see the problem?
“No one has raised it with me… that’s not to say people aren’t thinking about it,” Javid replies. “In a similar vein people have raised the issue about people that are in what are called key jobs, nurses for example. There are people naturally concerned about house prices. There has been a debate. A housing boom followed by bust is in no-one’s interest and certainly something this government is not interested in returning back to.”
Asked whether Help to Buy, which Javid was said to be deeply sceptical about while at the Treasury, should be stopped or least reduced from its current £600,000 ceiling, he sounds persuadable.
“When the Help to Buy – the mortgage guarantee bit – was put in place there were certain parameters around that, for example the maximum mortgage you could get. We deliberately set up a review process with the Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England, to make recommendations… and the Chancellor has already said that if they were to recommend a change on that we would accept it.”
The culture secretary still sounds more comfortable when the questions turn to the economy, and when he arrived at the DCMS all that was known about the new secretary of state’s cultural concerns was a student soft spot for Star Trek. So he’s been making up for lost time. Officials have packed his diary, with Javid taking in visits to the Tate Modern’s Matisse exhibition, the Vikings exhibition at the British Museum, performances of A View from the Bridge at the Young Vic and Hamlet at the Globe, a trip to Jersey for the arrival of the Queen’s Baton relay, a Lancashire cricket match at Old Trafford, and a performance of Haydn’s Creation, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, at the Royal Festival Hall. Next up in the diary is the Brighton Festival and a trip to the National Gallery.
As demands on ministerial time go, it’s a list which must be the envy of most of Javid’s colleagues. Downsized it may be, but the Ministry of Fun sounds as though it is still living up to its name.
“I certainly enjoyed going to the FA Cup final on the weekend”, Javid adds for good measure. “One of the best things I have done so far since I took this job – on the job! I was there representing the government...”
At the other end of the scale was a rather more sombre private visit to the First World War battlefields at Ypres, where Javid visited the Menin Gate memorial and attended one of the daily remembrance services. With four years of educational, cultural and commemorative events beginning on August 4th – the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I – Javid will be fully engaged in finalising preparations for what he calls “a very important moment for the country.”
When asked about the debate over the merits of the war – a row which threatened to turn sour when education secretary Michael Gove attacked “left-wing academics” who portrayed the war as “a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite” – it is clear that Javid wants a line drawn.
“I don’t think that’s what people are focused on,” he replies. “It’s very important to get the tone right. This is a commemoration, in no way a celebration or anything. For example, there’s an event in Saint-Symphorien where the Germans are involved as well as allies at the time of the war, and it’s a moment of reflection for everyone to look back and learn the lessons of that conflict. It’s important to get the right tone. It’s a learning experience. And it’s time to reflect on the thousands of people that made sacrifices for us.”
If Maria Miller had prepared much of the work for the WWI events, at the top of Javid’s in-tray is something which was unexpected: how to replace Chris Patten, who recently stood down due to ill health, as chairman of the BBC Trust. The appointment is the government’s to make, though Harriet Harman, who shadows the DCMS brief for Labour, has asked Javid for a “consensual” approach to the selection process. However, Javid doesn’t sound like he will be inviting Harman to help pick Patten’s replacement.
“I think the approach of every government, when it comes to important public appointments, just as when Labour was in office and made these important appointments, I think it’s important to have a transparent process to look at a broad range of candidates.”
So working with Labour, or alone? “It will be a decision that is ultimately taken by this government, as it should be,” he replies. That sounds clear. What is less certain, however, is the future of the BBC itself. The current charter expires in December 2016, meaning a charter review process will kick in soon. Politicians of all parties wonder whether this is a chance for the current system of governance to be refreshed, while some of Javid’s Tory colleagues question the existence of the licence fee itself. The new secretary of state rules nothing in or out.
“We will announce plans in due course. That will be a time to look at all aspects of the BBC: governance arrangements, licence fees and so forth. That’s where we plan to look at everything.”
When it comes to the future of print media, Javid is keen to take a step back. It’s now 18 months since Lord Leveson published his report on the ethics and culture of the press, and this summer the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) should begin work as the new press regulator. Problem solved? Not quite. Though backed by papers in the Rupert Murdoch stable, and the Mail and Telegraph titles, IPSO has yet to win the backing of The Guardian or the Financial Times, while Hacked Off, the campaigning group for the victims of phone hacking, has dismissed IPSO as a “stitch up” run by the press, for the press. But, says Javid, it’s not for him to tell the press what to do.
“The press have to decide. We’ve done what we set out to do. Now it’s time for the press to respond to that,” he argues. “Our commitment, on a cross-party basis, was to set up the Royal Charter and to set up a recognition panel, which is taking place now.
“I think we have done what we set out to do in government, now it’s up to the press to decide how to respond to that.” Hacked Off, who dismiss IPSO as lacking the independence to act effectively, won’t be happy. Will Javid meet the victims of phone-hacking to explain his position? “I haven’t been asked. If I was approached I would certainly consider it,” he replies.
If the BBC, Leveson and the WWI centenary were inherited, Javid is also looking at what he can bring to the department. With just a year until the general election, he hasn’t got long to make his mark. Typically, however, he is thinking big.
“The way my approach has been… is to focus on two or three things, to find two or three things I think I can really make a difference in and focus on, [and] to keep a watching brief on the others,” he explains. “I have some very good ministers in this department working with me, very experienced. They are able to keep an eye on other things and collectively we’ll get a much better outcome.”
He won’t reveal what those projects will be – “I’m still thinking about them” – and admits that they could be a “small initiative or a big initiative”, but Javid wants the DCMS, and beyond, to remember him when he’s gone.
“I would like to feel by the time I eventually, one day, leave this department, there is something I can look back to and say ‘look, this is a big achievement and some change I managed to bring about,’” he declares.
It’s admirable, but not always easy in government, especially at one of the smaller departments and with trimmed budgets. Of Javid’s Conservative successors, Miller would point to her steering through of the same sex marriage bill – though that fell under her equalities brief – while Jeremy Hunt’s most lasting legacy, for now, is the creation of local television networks. Go back to the Labour government, however, and Tessa Jowell wins plaudits for her involvement in winning the 2012 Olympics for London while Chris Smith, Tony Blair’s first culture secretary, will forever be associated with bringing in free museum entry. And however tight the budgets get, that seems to be something of a sacred cow – as one shadow Tory minister, Hugo Swire, found to his cost in 2007 when he lost his job for suggesting that museums should be allowed to charge. “I think free museum entry is very important and something we are very committed to, despite all these spending pressures,” Javid is quick to make clear. “It’s very important for our museum sector.”
It’s also the type of lasting legacy that Javid is aiming at, if even he doesn’t have the money to make it happen.
“The time when Chris Smith was here…” Javid tails off, perhaps reflecting on easier, financially unconstrained times. “Clearly it can’t be expensive but there’s lots of change you can bring about without spending more money. It’s still early days for me to come out and make some big commitment about what I hope to change but I would like to think that there is a legacy I can point to and say ‘here is where I made a difference’.”
Sport will dominate Javid’s diary this summer. First up is a trip to Glasgow for the Commonwealth games. The two week event, he says, is “hugely important for Britain”, as “all the Commonwealth family will come together – there’s a huge significance for us.” But while the sporting contests are played out, outside of Hampden Park and the other sparkling new venues, a rather less healthy competition is approaching: the referendum on Scottish Independence. Isn’t Javid a little concerned that Alex Salmond, the Scottish first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, might just use the Games for little bit of jingoistic Saltire-waving?
“He hasn’t done so far and I don’t see any reason why he should,” is the secretary of state’s diplomatic reply. “The Scottish government has done an excellent job in preparing for the games. I don’t see any reason why it should be political in any way. It’s not political between England and Scotland and it’s certainly not political between the UK and any Commonwealth country. This is one of those moments that is above politics and everyone is focused on it for the right reasons. Let’s just have a great games and wish everyone well.”
Perhaps there should be a campaigning truce?
“I think during those two weeks people will be focused on the games regardless.”
Once the games close, attention turns to South America for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
England manager Roy Hodgson has picked a squad which has caught the eye because of its emphasis on youth, but as a representation of the country it falls short. It’s now 38 years since Viv Anderson became the first black footballer to play for England, but not one British Asian has so far made the breakthrough at international level and just a tiny number have made it in the professional game. Is Britain’s first British Asian secretary of state disappointed?
He admits it isn’t an area he has “given much thought to”, and points to other sports like “cricket or boxing [where] you couldn’t say the same thing”, but Javid is determined that football is a sport that is open to all.
“Whatever sport it is, whether it’s football or any other, we’ve got to make sure it’s open to everyone of every background. I don’t think there’s any reason particularly to think that football isn’t open to everyone. It’s one of the great sports in Britain that so many people love. It’s important we make sure, through the work the government does and a number of sporting bodies out there, not just football, but many others, to always feel comfortable that they are doing everything they can to increase participation by people of all backgrounds” he replies, stating: “I’d like to see more people of all backgrounds in every sport.”
There’s not even one BME manager amongst the 92 league clubs in England.
“In terms of having more people participating from different backgrounds it doesn’t just mean players,” Javid adds. “It’s the football space in general. I think the more people who get involved from different backgrounds – it can only help sport.”
Straying from sport, doesn’t the rise of UKIP, with its increasingly shrill warnings of excessive immigration, suggest a country still ill at ease with its ever changing demographic? Javid dismisses the suggestion, but admits that his party needs to respond to immigration concerns.
“When I was campaigning in the 2010 election, long before this European election, a number of people on the doorstep would raise the issue of immigration with you, not in a ‘for or against’ way, just concerns about the numbers. That’s a legitimate issue. If that’s what people are concerned about, politicians do need to listen and they do need to react. That’s something this government is trying to do, it’s something the Conservative Party is trying to do. I think that’s very important.”
And it’s a subject which Javid, more than any other member of this government, is able to talk about. Given that, does he think a net immigration target – the prime minister has vowed to bring the annual figure down to the “tens of thousands” – is sensible?
“We’ve set a target and that remains in place. It hasn’t changed. We will continue to work towards to it,” Javid replies, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “We do recognise that we as a country today have much more control over non–EU immigration – and we have virtually no control over EU immigration. That’s something that we’d like to change but that is much easier said than done at this point and requires renegotiating with our European partners and that’s something that Conservatives are committed to.”
Perhaps these are areas that Sajid Javid will one day be asked to take on. Spend any time with him, or glance at his CV, and it’s obvious that he doesn’t lack ambition. Most politicians don’t, but then most don’t move through the ranks at the speed that this one has. Westminster observers say he’s far from sated either. The first elected British Asian to make it to Cabinet could, some suggest, one day make it to Downing Street. When asked whether Britain is ready for a black or Asian prime minister, Javid doesn’t skip a beat.
“I think Britain is the most open, tolerant country in the world,” he replies. “That’s my experience. That’s the experience of other people, friends inside and outside of politics, feel. In Britain if you’ve got the merit and the energy I think anyone can achieve anything, regardless of their colour and their race.”
The new man at the DCMS may be going through a rigorous cultural and sporting training regime, but as a politician he seems to be in peak fitness. In politics, as in sport, the predictions game should probably be avoided, but having tackled the group stages, and made it through to the next round, it’s a safe bet to suggest that Sajid Javid may yet go all the way.