The culture secretary was once regarded as dull, yet efficient. But with questions being asked about expenses, her role in Leveson and her stance on gay marriage, is she now a liability?
Maria Miller is a modern Tory woman who in the past six days has attracted more media coverage than she received during the previous 48 years. She rose to cabinet level by being efficient, pragmatic and unreportably dull, and has now become interesting for reasons which must be causing her considerable personal distress.
Miller – the secretary of state for culture, media and sport – has long believed that in the world of work, women should have the same opportunities as men. Her ambition was to become a Tory MP, so she accepted her parents' offer that they should move into the family home in south London and look after her three children. But on Monday it emerged that she had claimed more than £90,000 of taxpayers' money![ext]()
to help pay for this house, which she described to the parliamentary authorities as her second home.
As if that were not a sufficiently awkward problem, on Tuesday she found herself delivering a Commons statement![ext]()
about gay marriage in which she announced that the Church of England would be excluded from conducting such marriages. The church complained that it had not been warned about this measure. Miller seems to have shown a certain literal-mindedness in her approach to the church's concerns: a slightly tactless inability to grasp the subtleties of its position.
To add to her troubles, Miller is also the minister responsible for ensuring a satisfactory response to the Leveson report on the press. Special adviser Jo Hindley was unwise enough to tell a reporter from the Daily Telegraph, shortly before it broke the expenses story: "Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors' meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about." Hindley also suggested the reporter discuss the story with "people a little higher up your organisation".
This looked to some like a clumsy attempt to bully the Telegraph, especially as it was accompanied by an approach at a higher level from Craig Oliver, director of communications at No 10. However, Miller elicits support from those Tory MPs who feel they have suffered badly from the Telegraph's coverage of their expenses, and their instinct is to rally behind Miller.
As one senior Tory backbencher said of the culture secretary: "No one's out to get her in Parliament. She hasn't antagonised anyone. She's a dull, ^over-promoted housewife who really isn't cabinet material, but who you know is pretty inoffensive. This absence of enemies will save her. Plus, she's a woman."
To describe Miller as a housewife is rather insulting, if not to say wrong. She is a careful, competent businesswoman who has enjoyed a successful career in advertising and marketing. Her Toryism is a matter of instinct: she does not try to justify it in terms of history or philosophy. She wants women like herself, from modest backgrounds, to be able to make their way in the world.
Miller was born in Wolverhampton, but grew up at Bridgend, in South Wales, where she attended Brynteg comprehensive school, after which she read economics at the London School of Economics. She is not some glamorous creature who got parachuted in to a safe seat without first working her passage. She has belonged to the Tory party since 1983 and in the 2001 general election fought and lost Wolverhampton North East. Since 1990, she has been married to Iain Miller and together they have three children. He is a successful London solicitor who specialises in regulatory law and is described as "steady rather than flash".
The same might be said of Miller herself. She betrays no desire to make witty remarks. People who have worked with her say she is "very kind and warm-hearted", and also "very professional and managerial". One former colleague said: "She was very pleasant to work with. She was rational. You could have a proper civil debate with her. But unless she has a spurt of political growth, which does sometimes happen, she's at the edge of her ability."
Miller's cautious pragmatism is seen in the way she agreed that her parents, John and June Lewis, should look after her children. John Lewis explained to the Telegraph reporter who turned up at the Miller family home in Wimbledon what had happened: "We moved in to help her ... with everything. You can't become an MP and fight an unwinnable seat in Wolverhampton with two or three kids back here. We were sitting out in South Wales, twiddling our thumbs, and it was a very good idea."
Many working women depend on their parents for help with childcare. But in Miller's case, the taxpayer made a substantial contribution too. In 2005 she was elected to Parliament as MP for Basingstoke, and between 2005 and 2009 she claimed a total of £90,718 from public funds towards the cost of the family house in Wimbledon.
On Thursday, Joe Murphy, of the Evening Standard, asked why she stopped claiming just as the MPs' expenses scandal broke. Miller replied: "Because I think there was a lot of concern about the rules and, er, a lot of concern about, you know, the whole issue, and it's something I felt that I didn't want to be, sort of, mixed up in, the fact that I…" At this point Miller stopped trying to explain and said: "I just made that decision."
Miller usually takes great trouble to prepare herself for interviews. On this occasion, it seems she did not have time to do so, and had no adviser who could point out to her the need for a convincing answer to Murphy's question. Her two special advisers appear to have been selected for her by the Conservative party; they were not of her own choosing. Nor does she herself have much experience of dealing with hostile questioning. As one observer says: "She was wary of the media. She hasn't sought a big media profile. She thought that keeping out of the press was better than being in it."
Her low profile did not stop Miller from receiving rapid promotion. As one backbencher put it: "Being non-threatening goes a long way in Cameron's Tory party."
In 2007, Miller was made shadow minister for the family, where she flung herself into the cause of helping working women and working mothers. Her consensual approach gained the respect of many of the left-liberal types who work in the family sector, and she prevailed on the shadow cabinet to support the Sure Start programme.
After the 2010 general election, Miller was made minister for disabled people. In July this year, she managed to announce the closure of 27 of Remploy's 54 factories![ext]()
, which employ disabled workers, without attracting as much adverse publicity as might have been expected.
In September, when she replaced Jeremy Hunt as culture secretary, and at the same time became minister for women and equalities, no protests could be heard. For although Miller had shown no great interest in culture, her unshowy manner made her a welcome change from Hunt. She communicated an honesty of intention, which is one reason why MPs are disinclined to believe she intended to do anything wrong with her expenses.
Before the Telegraph's story about her appeared, Miller addressed an anguished protest to the paper: "For obvious reasons I do not wish to provide my father's personal details but suffice to say my father is ill-equipped to deal with media enquiries and your [investigations] editor's visit caused enormous and continuing distress to my father and my mother, who was also at home at the time."
Politics, as Alan Watkins used to observe, is a rough old trade, but that is not how Miller likes to see it. As she says in an address to her constituents on her website: "Negative campaigning can be a real turn-off – it is what people hate most about politics."
Since becoming women's minister, Miller has called for a reduction in the abortion time limit from 24 to 20 weeks. She has also said that men will have to take a more equal role in childcare, and has cast doubt on the value of transferable tax allowances for married couples, as promoted in the 2010 Tory manifesto.
But when David Cameron was accused of leading an "Old Etonian" government in which women "struggle to get on", Miller leapt to the prime minister's defence.
"I went to a state school. I am not an Oxbridge, private-school-educated individual. And he doesn't seem to have a problem with me in the cabinet."
Cameron has a slight problem with her now. But he is not so rich in women that he will wish to lose her. Reported by guardian.co.uk 21 hours ago.
Maria Miller is a modern Tory woman who in the past six days has attracted more media coverage than she received during the previous 48 years. She rose to cabinet level by being efficient, pragmatic and unreportably dull, and has now become interesting for reasons which must be causing her considerable personal distress.
Miller – the secretary of state for culture, media and sport – has long believed that in the world of work, women should have the same opportunities as men. Her ambition was to become a Tory MP, so she accepted her parents' offer that they should move into the family home in south London and look after her three children. But on Monday it emerged that she had claimed more than £90,000 of taxpayers' money
to help pay for this house, which she described to the parliamentary authorities as her second home.As if that were not a sufficiently awkward problem, on Tuesday she found herself delivering a Commons statement
about gay marriage in which she announced that the Church of England would be excluded from conducting such marriages. The church complained that it had not been warned about this measure. Miller seems to have shown a certain literal-mindedness in her approach to the church's concerns: a slightly tactless inability to grasp the subtleties of its position.To add to her troubles, Miller is also the minister responsible for ensuring a satisfactory response to the Leveson report on the press. Special adviser Jo Hindley was unwise enough to tell a reporter from the Daily Telegraph, shortly before it broke the expenses story: "Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors' meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about." Hindley also suggested the reporter discuss the story with "people a little higher up your organisation".
This looked to some like a clumsy attempt to bully the Telegraph, especially as it was accompanied by an approach at a higher level from Craig Oliver, director of communications at No 10. However, Miller elicits support from those Tory MPs who feel they have suffered badly from the Telegraph's coverage of their expenses, and their instinct is to rally behind Miller.
As one senior Tory backbencher said of the culture secretary: "No one's out to get her in Parliament. She hasn't antagonised anyone. She's a dull, ^over-promoted housewife who really isn't cabinet material, but who you know is pretty inoffensive. This absence of enemies will save her. Plus, she's a woman."
To describe Miller as a housewife is rather insulting, if not to say wrong. She is a careful, competent businesswoman who has enjoyed a successful career in advertising and marketing. Her Toryism is a matter of instinct: she does not try to justify it in terms of history or philosophy. She wants women like herself, from modest backgrounds, to be able to make their way in the world.
Miller was born in Wolverhampton, but grew up at Bridgend, in South Wales, where she attended Brynteg comprehensive school, after which she read economics at the London School of Economics. She is not some glamorous creature who got parachuted in to a safe seat without first working her passage. She has belonged to the Tory party since 1983 and in the 2001 general election fought and lost Wolverhampton North East. Since 1990, she has been married to Iain Miller and together they have three children. He is a successful London solicitor who specialises in regulatory law and is described as "steady rather than flash".
The same might be said of Miller herself. She betrays no desire to make witty remarks. People who have worked with her say she is "very kind and warm-hearted", and also "very professional and managerial". One former colleague said: "She was very pleasant to work with. She was rational. You could have a proper civil debate with her. But unless she has a spurt of political growth, which does sometimes happen, she's at the edge of her ability."
Miller's cautious pragmatism is seen in the way she agreed that her parents, John and June Lewis, should look after her children. John Lewis explained to the Telegraph reporter who turned up at the Miller family home in Wimbledon what had happened: "We moved in to help her ... with everything. You can't become an MP and fight an unwinnable seat in Wolverhampton with two or three kids back here. We were sitting out in South Wales, twiddling our thumbs, and it was a very good idea."
Many working women depend on their parents for help with childcare. But in Miller's case, the taxpayer made a substantial contribution too. In 2005 she was elected to Parliament as MP for Basingstoke, and between 2005 and 2009 she claimed a total of £90,718 from public funds towards the cost of the family house in Wimbledon.
On Thursday, Joe Murphy, of the Evening Standard, asked why she stopped claiming just as the MPs' expenses scandal broke. Miller replied: "Because I think there was a lot of concern about the rules and, er, a lot of concern about, you know, the whole issue, and it's something I felt that I didn't want to be, sort of, mixed up in, the fact that I…" At this point Miller stopped trying to explain and said: "I just made that decision."
Miller usually takes great trouble to prepare herself for interviews. On this occasion, it seems she did not have time to do so, and had no adviser who could point out to her the need for a convincing answer to Murphy's question. Her two special advisers appear to have been selected for her by the Conservative party; they were not of her own choosing. Nor does she herself have much experience of dealing with hostile questioning. As one observer says: "She was wary of the media. She hasn't sought a big media profile. She thought that keeping out of the press was better than being in it."
Her low profile did not stop Miller from receiving rapid promotion. As one backbencher put it: "Being non-threatening goes a long way in Cameron's Tory party."
In 2007, Miller was made shadow minister for the family, where she flung herself into the cause of helping working women and working mothers. Her consensual approach gained the respect of many of the left-liberal types who work in the family sector, and she prevailed on the shadow cabinet to support the Sure Start programme.
After the 2010 general election, Miller was made minister for disabled people. In July this year, she managed to announce the closure of 27 of Remploy's 54 factories
, which employ disabled workers, without attracting as much adverse publicity as might have been expected.In September, when she replaced Jeremy Hunt as culture secretary, and at the same time became minister for women and equalities, no protests could be heard. For although Miller had shown no great interest in culture, her unshowy manner made her a welcome change from Hunt. She communicated an honesty of intention, which is one reason why MPs are disinclined to believe she intended to do anything wrong with her expenses.
Before the Telegraph's story about her appeared, Miller addressed an anguished protest to the paper: "For obvious reasons I do not wish to provide my father's personal details but suffice to say my father is ill-equipped to deal with media enquiries and your [investigations] editor's visit caused enormous and continuing distress to my father and my mother, who was also at home at the time."
Politics, as Alan Watkins used to observe, is a rough old trade, but that is not how Miller likes to see it. As she says in an address to her constituents on her website: "Negative campaigning can be a real turn-off – it is what people hate most about politics."
Since becoming women's minister, Miller has called for a reduction in the abortion time limit from 24 to 20 weeks. She has also said that men will have to take a more equal role in childcare, and has cast doubt on the value of transferable tax allowances for married couples, as promoted in the 2010 Tory manifesto.
But when David Cameron was accused of leading an "Old Etonian" government in which women "struggle to get on", Miller leapt to the prime minister's defence.
"I went to a state school. I am not an Oxbridge, private-school-educated individual. And he doesn't seem to have a problem with me in the cabinet."
Cameron has a slight problem with her now. But he is not so rich in women that he will wish to lose her. Reported by guardian.co.uk 21 hours ago.