Baroness Catherine MacLeod

Sounds like to an extent you did, but I wondered whether you could explain whether or not you really appreciated at the time just how significant that crisis was.

I mean, I think it's also worth saying the financial crisis was certainly a crisis and was terrible.

However, the country also had to be run.

So there were all these other things, policy issues going on about education and health and defence, as well as dealing with this terrible smash.

At the time, I myself would have...

I realized it was fairly serious that the banking world was in real trouble and could collapse.

know how far reaching the impact would.

I mean, I think you've interviewed Ed Balls.

Ed Balls had a much better understanding of economics than I did.

But I'm not sure that anybody really appreciated just how the long-lasting impact it would have.

But talking, since I have mentioned Ed, he was a special advisor to the Treasury, and he came in with a completely different set of experience and and education and knowledge than what I did.

So they were two examples of very, very different roles.

So I don't know that anybody, I mean, people were worried.

I mean, they knew when Mervyn King was asked to pour this money into the banks that somebody along the line was going to have to pay for it.

But I don't know if they thought that 20 years on it would still be painful.

And could you take us inside some of the conversations? How did you go about talking to Alistair about communicating to the public and trying to work out how the government should position themselves during a crisis?

Alistair had probably always erred in the side of caution.

And that was one of the, when he'd been in different departments in government, he was a very experienced politician.

He'd often been put into departments to get them out of the headlines.

There'd been problems in DWP or DSSS was then and transport.

And then when he went into the Treasury, he had to you know, put his head above the parapet.

When during the financial crisis, I mean, there were times that, you know, weeks that he was in the Commons two or three times a week.

He was speaking to journalists all the time.

Alistair didn't have to be persuaded to speak.

He understood, apparently because of his wife, but he understood the importance of the media.