Former Conservative Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said in the I'm a Celebrity jungle that you don't have to be an expert to be a health minister. The serving MP was discussing cabinet reshuffles with DJ Chris Moyles in the latest episode of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!
Moyles was asking how the act of cabinet reshuffling, when the Prime Minister choose members of the cabinet and what portfolios they should be given, and said: "If you’re an MP and you’re tootling along doing your MP job, how does it work? Do you get a phone call saying, ‘Hi, would you like to be Minister of Transport?’"
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While Matt said in the Bush Telegraph that he found Chris's interest in politics "really enjoyable" - Chris was keen to challenge Matt on exactly how much knowledge Ministers had to have to take on their roles. After asking Matt if MPs get paid more for taking on ministerial roles, Chris asked: "But how many MPs have got quite a decent knowledge of defence?"
"The job of the minister is not to be the subject matter expert," said the MP for West Suffolk, who served as Health Secretary during the coronavirus pandemic. "Of course, you need to get to grips with the subject matter, but that is only half the job. There’s a load of transferable skills - handling parliament, communicating with the public, taking decisions effectively - and then you have the subject matter experts who advise you on it all," Matt said.
Chris chatted in the Bush Telegraph, saying: "I’m starting to think now, to be Minister of Transport, all you need is a car. And to be Minister of Health all you need is to be breathing."
Chris said: "If I was head of Culture and Sport and Digital and then got the phone call saying, 'We want you to be in charge of the health of the nations’ I’d be like, ‘I can’t do that… I don’t know anything about that. I know a few doctors, but I think I’d need a bigger team of advisors.'"
Matt responded by saying that ministers have a team of advisers and that "literally nobody" is a specialist in the "whole health service" - even the Chief Executive of the Health Service.
Matt had earlier explained the process of the Prime Minster reshuffling the cabinet, he said: "I’ll tell you exactly what happens. It’s reshuffle day and the first thing the Prime Minister does is call the people who he or she is going to fire and invites them into the office in the House of Commons. That way the cameras can’t see them coming and going. Face-to-face. These are very sensitive conversations.
"Then they go into Downing Street and they call people in in order of seniority. They have a whiteboard with all of the cabinet positions on it and they go from senior down. Sometimes people say, ‘No, I don’t want to be Defence Secretary, I’d take Transport’ and it is literally a reshuffle as in they’re moving names across this whiteboard."
Seann interjected in the conversation, asking: "do you have any questions for Chris" and there was an awkward silence.
Hancock and Moyles are joined by former rugby star Mike Tindall, Hollyoaks actor Owen Warner, Lionness Jill Scott and Seann Walsh, with just three of those celebrities making it to the final to battle for the title of King or Queen of the jungle. Comedian Babatúndé Aléshé became the fifth celebrity to leave the jungle. You can read more about what happened to him during his chat with Ant and Dec here.
Watch the next live episode of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! tomorrow at 9.15pm (Friday) on ITV1 and ITV Hub
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