Nicola Richards - Politics Series | Hope in the Deep End Podcast

Welcome to our podcast 'Hope in the Deep End', brought to you by the Shared Health Foundation.

In this podcast series we are exploring all the different complexities of working in areas of deprivation, poverty and entrenched health inequalities. From clinicians to youth workers, we want to inspire, challenge and give inspiration to all those that work in the deep end.

This episode was recorded as part of our Politics Series, where we speak to colleagues from all sides of the House, campaigners and activists about what keeps them hopeful in their work. 

Nicola Richards is a Director at Cratus, a public affairs agency. She is the former Conservative MP for West Bromwich East, elected in December 2019. Nicola’s public affairs background earlier in her career focused on Jewish community relations, Holocaust education and fighting antisemitism, a theme she continued in Parliament.

As a Member of Parliament Nicola also campaigned on public health matters in the areas of HIV and Breast Cancer. Nicola has served as co-chair of an APPG and has experience serving on multiple committees.

The 165,000 Reasons Campaign: https://165000reasons.co.uk/

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Transcript

Every way you look at this, these families are losing out and as a country we lose out. The government who also are keen to address this, they talk about it unprompted all the time but without solutions. Hi, I'm Laura Nielson and welcome to Hope in the Deep End. We put together this podcast to inspire us all to keep working in areas of deprivation and poverty. We're sharing best practice stories, outcomes, and some interesting thoughts and ideas. So whether you're working in primary care, secondary care, the charity sector, or any of the other myriad of roles, please listen and help us to keep each other's inspired. Hello and welcome to Hope in the Deep End podcast. My name is Sam and today I'm joined by Nicola Richards, a former MP in the previous government and now a Director at Cratus, a public affairs agency. Thanks for joining us, Nicola. Thanks for having me. So you've been an MP, you're now a director in the private sector. Can you give us a bit of like history to your career? Why did you get into politics? What what made you want to stand to be an MP? Um give us a bit of insight. So I was a bit strange and when I was 16, I got involved in the Conservative Party. Um and just loved it. I um worked for my MP part-time while I was at university. I was asked to be a paper candidate in 2014 for the local elections,  which everyone knows is the first trick to getting someone hooked. You're told you're not going to win. I didn't win. Um but then I caught the bug for it and uh wanted to do it properly and wanted to find a council seat I could win. So I became a councillor. Which area? In Dudley. Dudley. Yeah. Yeah. In my second year of of university. Um and my life's just been politics ever since. But I love the variety that comes with working for an MP or being an MP. The freedom to work on any topic you're interested in, to have the power to do something about the things you care about. Um and so I never really wanted to do anything else, but I never expected that I'd get elected when I was 24, which is what happened. Um and probably one of the youngest MPs at the time. I was the third youngest. Yeah. So not quite baby of the house, which I was thrilled about because that's not a great title, is it? Really? It's not helpful. When you're trying to, you've got a proper grown-up job. You've entered politics. You've been elected. Yeah. Um but yeah it was amazing amazing experience. Um loved every second of it even though it was pretty chaotic most of the time. Yeah. Um I think that is politics in general. Um what drew you to standing for the Conservative Party? What values like really were instilled in you that kind of really aligned yourself with them? So it was 2010 the general election that I decided that that's who I supported. That's what I believed in. I think David Cameron did a really good job when he was leader at attracting different people to support the party and younger people and it was very much the messaging around aspiration and hope and working hard. It's that's what sort of drew me and you know my family weren't political um at all um but actually those values matched what I had been brought up believing. Yeah. Um, and it was a really exciting time to join the party and and become a member and get in get stuck in because well, we were on the up, you know, I had the best bit. And how long were you an MP for? For nearly five years. Five years. So, you saw a lot going through in in that time. Um, what what was like the highs and lows of that time? It's like five years is a long time to work in any kind of job these days, but obviously a long time in politics because a week is a long time in politics realistically. What what was it like? Well, we had three prime ministers. I never expected that, you know, first of all, like I said, to be elected when I was 24. To then have the ability to tell a prime minister that he should resign is wild. Um, but I felt very strongly that that's what needed to happen. Um, obviously made me very sad. It's not a pleasant situation to be in, but it was I still think the right call. Um but it was you know a couple of months into the into the term we had Covid, there was Ukraine um you know the the war in the Middle East a lot happened in those five years and and the three prime ministers. Yeah. Um you have to do quite a lot of swatting up quite quickly like if you don't know your foreign affairs very well or particularly areas of the world, do you have to do a lot of researching quite quickly? Yeah. Your constituents will email you won't they about issues. Yeah. And you can't be an expert in everything. You end up picking up lots of information on lots of different things. So you end up knowing all sorts of random things like you do as a councillor. Um but you can't possibly and and you also I mean it's a trick that I learned too late really. I think most MPs sort of really settle in in their second or third term because you have to learn to manage your time well, to pick your battles, to pick what the campaigns are you want to get stuck into because you can't, you know, if you're in politics for the right reasons, and I believe that I was, you want to do something about everything and you can't. And you won't do a good job if you do that, you have to really pick a lane basically, and it took me a couple of years to really nail down what it was that I was interested in and and would help my constituents, but I also really cared about. Um, and in an area like West Bromwich, which is where I represented, there was endless things that I could have campaigned on. You know, there were so many social challenges and opportunities in the area that it was really tricky to pick, you know, what it is that I could do and what was going to make the best impact in that time as well. Yeah. So, what was the best day of being an MP? Did you have like a real success story or really campaign that you worked on? What was the best bit? There were a couple of really good moments. One of them was when the government rolled out the opt-out HIV testing to the West Midlands. So I've been campaigning for that with lots of other colleagues and the Terrence Higgins Trust to call for more testing basically. So it was going to pick up more people that were undetected with HIV when they went to A&E for any reason. They'd have a blood test and unless they opted out, they'd have that test. And it was picking up loads of people around the country. So I felt very strongly about that. There were lots of areas within the West Midlands that were high prevalence. Um which just seems crazy. You know, it's not an issue that our generation really think about, but it's still there. And we've got really um really good targets to eliminate new transmissions by 2030, but it needed this roll-out to help achieve that. Um so we campaigned for it. Then we kept having reshuffles and ministers would change and you think you're getting somewhere and then you have to sort of you know you know the drill. Um, and finally the government announced they were going to do it. Um, and it was really nice. The Secretary of State, it was Victoria Atkins at the time, invited me to a hostel in Birmingham to have a meeting with the community about it there. So, it was nice to be included in the announcement for it. And um, and then to top it off, Elton John was in speaker's house with a reception where he was talking about it. So that was pretty good because that will save people's lives and to have a, you know, to be part of lobbying for something that does something so transformative, you know, is and being a part of the campaign from the start to the end of it and actually seeing the success of it as well must be like really um um, you know, it's great to feel that to be part of a movement like that. Yeah it's yeah and to have Elton John here I mean that was a major highlight. Um so now you work for Cratus, a public affairs agency. Um what do you do there? And um you're starting a new campaign around temporary accommodation, a topic that's really dear to Shared Health's heart. So um what is Cratus and why are you bothered about temporary accommodation? Why have you picked this as your campaign? So at Cratus, I work in public affairs and that means that I help our clients understand how to engage with government, national government mainly, but also we work a lot in local government and we mainly work in the built environment sector. So house builders are our clients. We work with them every day. We work with councils. Um we work um on plan applications. you know we have a we have a lot, as an organisation, we have a lot of involvement in the in the sector at different points and a lot of work, we do a lot of work with the community as well. So our chairman Nick Kilby and founder of Cratus um last year at UKREiiF was asked what he was going to do about the number of children living in temporary accommodation. And Nick has lots of great ideas all of the time and he came back and he said right we're going to we're going to do something about this as an organisation. Um and at first we're like what what are you talking about now? Um but he was completely right and every person that we've spoken to since, if they knew about it already, they thought it was terrible and want to help get involved to do something um about it, and those that didn't know also agree we need to do something about it. Universally, people agree that it is shocking. Um so when Nick brought this to us there were 165,000 children living in temporary accommodation across the country. Even since that conversation it's gone up by over 10,000. So, we've called the campaign 165,000 Reasons. It's already out of date, but we're sticking with it. Um, because we want it to, we want it to fall. Um, and it's a story in itself that even since we started talking about this, it's continued to skyrocket. Um, and that's why we join forces with you guys because you're the experts on this and you see the reality of it day-to-day. Um and and we want to do everything we can to to find a solution and get all the right people on board and in the right room to to do that. And it is fixable and it doesn't matter what party is in charge of the government at at the time. Um it affects everyone. Um you know, no matter the council, no matter the area, even rural areas have really high numbers of children in temporary accommodation. And I think over time there might have been different politicians or governments that are thinking it's too difficult to to challenge, or they're just going to let the numbers skyrocket and just see what happens, or it's been quite a hidden topic for ages but actually it's financially draining. It affects children's health and education. We know many many children die because of their temporary accommodation. So, um, I'm surprised that it doesn't hit the front page news every single day, but it's great that organisations like yourselves and others are really kind of getting behind it as well and the private sector is really kind of being the stronghold against this and kind of like really going for it. So, yeah, no, thanks for taking it as part of your kind of like campaign. Um, so the next year is going to be really interesting for you then with the um political conferences and Local Government Association and UKREiiF, going back to there again. Um, so what what's your hope for like in a year's time or maybe even two years time once the campaign's up and running, you've got more people under the belt? What what are you hopeful for? So, we're launching this at UKREiiF. Um, and everyone at UKREiiF will be encouraged to attend our events and the rally and and other events that will be happening by other people put on to talk about the same issue. Um, and that will really be the the start um of the campaign. Um what will follow is lots of contact with the councils to talk to them to get them to sign up to do everything they can to address the issue. Um a campaign with MPs to get them um on board as well and make sure they're aware of what's happening in their area because I think you're right, it is a hidden issue. They're not homeless children in the way that people think about homelessness, right? Um it doesn't, it doesn't hit the headlines in the same way, like you said. Um but it is such a a drain on local authorities' finance. It is um, we're not investing in our future because there are lots of young people who are going to really struggle later in life as a consequence. So in every every way you look at this, these families are losing out and as a country we lose out. And it's actually cheaper to do something about it than carry on as we are now. So you're right that, I mean, the argument works with whoever you're talking to. Um and we'll be making that argument at each party conference, um at the LGA. Um and and I'm hoping that by the time we get to the um budget later this year that the government who also are keen to address this, they talk about it unprompted all the time but without solutions. We're hoping to have brought the people together who can give them some solutions. Um and so we'll be making very clear asks the government in the run-up to the budget to do that, with the help of you guys. Um so that, you know, within the next couple of years we start to see the numbers fall. Yeah. And definitely not increase anymore. You know that's the first aim I think. And there's so many different things that we are hopeful for over the next couple of years because it's not just more money for more houses to build them. Yes. Absolutely. We definitely need more so truly affordable houses to be to be built for families and individuals to be, to live in. But there's loads of things that we can do now. Like there's there's so many children that are dying as a result of their temporary accommodation. Um councils aren't at times giving cots and Moses baskets for young babies and they're a life-saving equipment. That's stuff that you can do now. You know, you can save children's lives now. Um there's loads of stuff you can do around health and education about tracking data. Um, and there's loads of great work you can do around maternity services as well. So, there's a whole myriad of different things because it hits every department. Yeah. Um, in government, local government and national government and every aspects of a of a child's life. So, so I'm hopeful that um this is on every minister's desk every single day and tracking what are we going to do, you know, what is the DWP going to do about it? What is MHCLG and the Department for Health and and etc and other ones like that. Um, so yeah, no, thank you for for kind of galvanising the team together and and being the driving force for it. It's all right. It's um it's one of the best bits of the job. Um, and one of the things that I miss about Parliament is being able to get stuck into something that really will make a difference to people's lives. Brilliant. Thanks so much for joining us, um, Nicola. Hope you have a the great rest of your week and we'll keep in touch and keep an eye on the 165,000 reasons campaign um, launched by Cratus later this year.