Katy Balls Katy Balls

Nadine Dorries: My vision for the BBC

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When Nadine Dorries was named Culture Secretary last year, it proved to be the most controversial appointment of Boris Johnson’s reshuffle. Her critics weren’t afraid to point to what they saw as her flaws. She was a Scouser and former nurse put in charge of the cultural crown jewels. The only explanation they could come up with: she was intended to embody a two-finger flick, on behalf of the PM, to the BBC, Channel 4 and the arts world in general.

The furore, she says, didn’t come as a surprise. ‘There are some men who do have a problem with a woman from my background achieving,’ she says. It also pointed to something else: a fear that she might do what her predecessors had not done. ‘I think they obviously knew that I was going to deliver. The notion of Channel 4 being sold, the licence fee, the BBC, all of those things that have been in the ether for years, I think there was a sudden realisation that something might happen now. I think that was part of the attack,’ she tells me when we meet in The Spectator’s offices for a recording of my Women with Balls podcast. ‘Over a long period of time, not a huge amount had been delivered from my department. I am now in a position where I have got five bills to deliver. This department hasn’t had five bills in 20 years.’

‘Some men have a problem with a woman from my background achieving’

Top of that list is the Online Safety Bill aimed at regulating the internet. Dorries proudly points out it passed the Commons on second reading ‘without even a vote’. But what of the criticisms? I mention Steve Baker, a serial rebel, who is concerned about implications for freedom of speech. ‘We’ve got 359 MPs, you’ve talked about one; it is actually two that have got concerns, so out of 359, I don’t know what percentage that is but it’s pretty low,’ she replies briskly.

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