Smith lacked experience before becoming home secretary
By politics.co.uk staff
Jacqui Smith had “never run a major organisation” before accepting the job of home secretary in 2007.
Speaking in an interview with Total Politics magazine, Ms Smith said she wished she had been better trained for the role.
“I hope I did a good job but if I did it was more by luck than by any kind of development of those skills,” she added.
She called the cabinet reshuffles that result in ministers being moved from one government job to another “pretty dysfunctional”.
Her first challenge as home secretary was to respond to the failed terror attacks in central London and Glasgow airport. She received praise at the time for being measured and firm.
But she revealed: “I’m not sure I understood, I’m ashamed to say, when I first heard it, quite how serious it was.”
Ms Smith resigned from the cabinet last month after a “horrible” media storm surrounding her expenses.
She was criticised for nominating her sister’s London home as her main home for expenses purposes.
“I thought it was strange that you could have a main home that wasn’t where your family lived,” she said.
She stressed that she was confident she would be cleared by the parliamentary standards commissioner.
There has been criticism previously of the way in which new ministers are expected to ‘hit the ground running’, often without any prior experience of the policy area, and expected to manage multi-billion pound budgets.
