This August, Lord Blunkett was just a day into his Tuscan summer holiday when he found himself at the edge of the hotel bed, clutching his chest. “I’d felt very tired during the evening, and when I went to bed it was clear that something was drastically wrong,” says the former home secretary at his office in the House of Lords.
The 77 year-old says the quick thinking of his wife Margaret, a retired GP who spotted the early signs of a heart attack, saved his life. “My wife said, ‘Hospital?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ One of my sons ran us to the nearest one which, thank God, had a cardiac unit. And they did what they had to do, which was to put a stent in one of my arteries.”
Blunkett was lucky enough to be discharged a few days later, but in his case bad luck really did come in threes.
Six weeks ago, the septuagenarian slipped into a gap between the train and platform at Westminster Tube station, badly bruising his legs, and has called for an urgent review into what he describes as “death trap” Tube platforms. He has also been recovering from a chest infection, and had another two stents inserted into his chest while he waits for an MRI scan.
Despite the health setbacks, and his advancing years, Blunkett still tries to come to his office every day during the week apart from Friday, when he returns to his family home in the Sheffield constituency he served for almost three decades.
When we meet, he announces himself at the Peer’s Entrance of the House of Lords with a loud hello, right arm outstretched, accompanied by his guide dog Barley. The black retriever-German Shepherd-cross has been by Blunkett’s side for the past seven years, and is his seventh dog since 1969.
The blind Labour peer leads us through the Prince’s Chamber, home to gilded portraits of Henry VIII and his wives, walking slowly but with purpose, speaking in breathless sentences that betray his recent health issues. Barley is eight-and-a-half years-old now – roughly 60 in human years. It’s been a long morning, and as soon as we enter Blunkett’s tiny office, Barley heads straight for his bowl of water, where he takes a series of loud gulps before settling down in the corner.
“I want him to work for another three years, because there’s a massive guide-dog shortage,” he says before addressing Barley directly: “I want you to work till you’re 11, good boy.”
The man who also served as education and work and pensions secretary in the Blair government, and was once tipped to be prime minister, is still seen as a real authority on learning and employment issues. In 2021, Sir Keir Starmer commissioned him to write a report on Britain’s skills shortage, and he is impressively on top of the latest statistics, emailing me the moment official data on home schooling are published to make sure the figures he quoted in our conversation are accurate.
If Barley does work until he’s 11, it would take him well into retirement. How does Barley feel about that? “He says he’s alright at the moment – he’s got the work ethic.”
Blunkett observes that not everyone in Britain shares this attitude. He says education remains the area of policy he cares most about, which is why he laments the impact of lockdown on so many British children. “We probably allowed furlough to go on for too long,” he says, referring to Rishi Sunak’s decision to subsidise everyone’s wages for more than a year. People got used to being at home, he adds. “And the consequence of that is that we are now a nation endeavouring to recover our mojo, our energy and drive.”
This, he says, applies to children as well as their parents. One in five of all children now misses 10 per cent or more of their classes, a rate that has doubled since the pandemic, and more than 1.4 million pupils are now classed as “persistently absent”. Ofsted’s annual report, published earlier this month, also revealed that 158,000 children are missing 50 per cent or more of all lessons.
“We have 20 per cent of school children who are substantially out of the classroom,” Blunkett laments. “It’s a staggering figure. And once young people don’t feel that they have to leave home or even get up in the morning, then you’ve got a challenge.”
I ask Blunkett if a working-from-home culture has fed into this malaise. “If parents are working from home or not working, they have an obligation to get their children to school and to ensure that they understand that interaction and socialisation are critical parts of us growing up.
“There’s a role for flexible working. But I think it has to be based on what I describe as the rhythm of life and the structures that we need. You’re not doing your child any favour whatsoever by not getting them up and getting them to school.”
Blunkett also raises an eyebrow at a surge in the number of pupils being home-schooled, which climbed 21 per cent last year to 153,300, according to the Department for Education. Just over 1 per cent of all children now learn at home. “There are around 150,000 children allegedly – allegedly – being educated at home. I don’t believe for a minute that 150,000 families are equipped to educate their children throughout the curriculum and throughout their schooling life.”
He is also alarmed at a staggering post-lockdown rise in the number of young people who, in employment minister Alison McGovern’s words, are “doing nothing”. Blunkett says: “We have 900,000 16 to 25-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training. I think it’s a national disaster.”
Today, Blunkett is also not afraid to speak out on issues he feels that Labour is failing on, describing himself as an “awkward customer” and even “pig-headed”. Just days before Rachel Reeves’s maiden Budget in October, he wrote a letter to a national newspaper, warning the Chancellor that introducing national insurance on employer pension contributions would damage living standards in retirement.
In the end, she backed away from making that change. While it was a very public intervention, he insists he wants Labour to succeed, even though it hasn’t exactly been the best start. “It’s been a rocky ride in terms of things that have irritated and sometimes bewildered the public,” he says. “We’ve got four years in which not only to explain what we’re about and where we’re going, but also to deliver.”
Some popular frustration has stemmed from what he describes as a “lack of narrative” surrounding Labour’s vision for the economy. The result? What he calls a “miserableness” that went too far. While Blunkett says Reeves’s “emergency” proclamation of a £22 billion black hole in the public finances was right, he adds that it was poorly executed, including her decision to remove the winter fuel payment of up to £300 from roughly 10 million pensioners from this year.
“I put it down to Treasury orthodoxy,” he says. “They always see the short term in the Treasury. It’s in their DNA, and we’ve seen, over the last 100 years, politicians pressured into making short term decisions that often had quite long term consequences.”
The winter fuel allowance is a classic example of this, he adds. Treasury mandarins have repeatedly recommended means-testing the payment in recent years. Some politicians have been tempted, but none has followed the advice – until now.
“Rationality tells you that a cash transfer to very large numbers of people who don’t need it doesn’t make sense. But taking it away in one big hit leads to great unpopularity, and that then sets the scene by which people then start to judge other actions. It was almost as though, by accident, [Labour] were going out to be unpopular, and that is not a good start.”
Blunkett warns that Labour must now deliver on the promises it has made. Going forward, he says it is vital that the Government meets its target to build 1.5 million homes to restore hope and aspiration for young people hoping to get on the housing ladder. If Labour fails to keep its promises, he adds, voters will look for someone who can.
“There’s no doubt, from every example internationally, the mood of the moment across the globe is that people want really big, seminal change. And if they don’t get it, they’ll turn to those who offer simple solutions. That’s true in the US. It’s true in terms of the turmoil in France, and we’ll see what happens in the German election.”
Blunkett also describes Reform as a threat to Labour, with Nigel Farage’s party continuing to nip away at its heels in the polls. “Seats were won with very small majorities. Reform came second in 98 constituencies, 89 of them Labour. So there’s a really volatile situation, and we’ve got four years to calm that down, because otherwise we’ll see exactly the same kind of reaction that you’ve seen in the US.”
That reaction has seen Donald Trump elected for a second term, bringing hope for faster growth and more deregulation. Farage clearly sees himself as a future prime minister. But does Blunkett believe that could happen?
“Not at the moment,” he says. “But nothing is impossible.”
The son of Arthur and Doris Blunkett, David was born blind and sent to a boarding school for the visually impaired in Sheffield from the age of four, and later attended night school over several years so he could get the right qualifications to get into Sheffield University, where he studied political theory. It’s a path he’s continued on ever since, becoming an MP in 1987 for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough. He quickly rose to become education and employment secretary in Tony Blair’s first Cabinet following Labour’s victory in the 1997 general election.
His three sons from his first marriage to Ruth Mitchell (they divorced in 1990) are all now in their forties. He also has another son, William, with the former Spectator publisher Kimberly Quinn. His affair with Quinn led to Blunkett’s resignation as home secretary in 2004, over allegations that he had helped fast-track a visa application for her nanny.
He returned to the Cabinet less than five months later, becoming secretary of state for work and pensions after Labour’s 2005 election victory. But a few months later was forced to resign again after breaking the ministerial code of conduct over paid work he took while out of the Cabinet.
Rising youth worklessness is one of the reasons that, earlier this year, he co-founded UK Year of Service, an organisation that works with young adults to give them a route into paid work, further education or training.
He supports Labour’s back-to-work drive but warns that it will have to be more radical and adopt “tough love” measures if it wants to achieve anything like an 80 per cent employment rate. He believes there needs to be a “something for something” attitude when it comes to paying benefits, too, in a system that he says should be more like the New Deal Labour rolled out in 1997 to help the long-term unemployed. After all, that programme helped his own son to find work.
“It was a lifeline,” says Blunkett. “And from there he went on, not only to get a job, but to get a postgraduate qualification. So it was the start of an understanding of what he felt would suit him in terms of future earning and learning.”
The Government is yet to set out its strategy on welfare though McGovern recently acknowledged that ministers had “further choices to make” as they aim to set out plans next year. The cost of paying sickness benefits is on course to rise to £65 billion this year and hit £100 billion a year by the end of the decade.
Blunkett warns that part of the problem is that some young people are facing pressure from their own families to stay out of work. “The really difficult part of this is housing benefit,” he says. “Because if you lose your housing benefit – or, in the private sector, housing allowance – when you take a relatively low paid job, then, of course, your family lose out too, and they start to say to you: ‘Why would you take that job if you’re going to lose all your housing benefits?’”
Housing benefit is currently tapered once claimants start a job, at a rate of 65p for every extra £1 earned. For those living in supported housing, working just 11 hours a week means young people see a substantial chunk of their welfare taken away.
“We’ve got to try once again to balance those imperatives of making it absolutely clear that getting up in the morning and going to work and having a work ethic pays,” says Blunkett. That means ensuring people who want to work keep more of the money they earn.
But he also has a stark message for people who refuse to engage – and their families. “If you can’t be bothered, then I’m afraid we don’t owe you.” Does that mean whole households should face having their benefits docked if they don’t look for work? Oh yes, he replies. “We have an obligation to help people. We don’t have an obligation to help people if they’re not prepared to help themselves.”
He says getting more people back to the office will help. “I think something’s happened post-Covid where people genuinely feel that they’ve got a problem that prevents them working when actually even being in a part-time job might actually be part of the solution to overcoming their problems.”
The conversation turns to what Blunkett has described as his biggest regret: the creation of indeterminate prison sentences that has left more than 1,000 people languishing in prison.
“It was completely misinterpreted and that we didn’t spot what was going to happen down the line. And I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 12 to 14 years trying to make sure that we get this right, but there are still just over 1,000 people who have never been released, and that is a major challenge. It’s heartbreaking for me that I was the secretary of state at the time that oversaw a policy that, with all the best intentions, went very badly wrong.”
So what would he do to tackle today’s prison overcrowding crisis? “There has to be drastic action. Instead of ploughing on with the programme [to build big prisons], I would build small remand centres which have the advantage of being able to get planning consent much more quickly than very large units. You can recruit locally more easily. And you’d immediately reduce the large-scale prison population by nearly 20 per cent.”
The phone rings – he’s got to go. I ask him how he’s spending Christmas. Blunkett, a father of four who also has three stepdaughters and several grandchildren after marrying Margaret in 2009, says he will be spending it with his wife’s eldest daughter.
“It will be the first time since I’ve been on the scene that we haven’t had Christmas at home. And I’m sure it will be a great relief.” Everybody will chip in to cook, he adds. And his job? “My job is to choose and open the wine,” he adds with a wry smile. “I love Burgundy, and so everybody has to put up with my choice.”
Blunkett has no intention of slowing down. Days off are spent with his wife. “We like football. We go to football games,” says the Sheffield Wednesday fan.
“Margaret wasn’t interested in football until we met, but when I’m down here for midweek games, she will go.” She’s always been interested in current affairs, though he quickly says he’s “never pushed family or friends into politics”. It never ends well. “I had friends when I first joined Parliament who were enjoined into having to deliver leaflets, and it turned them off for life.
“People say, ‘What are you doing at your age? Why don’t you just retire? Why don’t you just stop?’ But I know that if I stop, I will die. If I cease to have a structure and a rhythm to my life, then everything will fall apart and I will simply deteriorate.”
After all his health scares this year, Blunkett is bringing new meaning to the phrase “work to live”.
