Tracey Crouch MP talks to the Speaker of the House of Commons about politics,
her passion for sport and surviving breast cancer
What is behind Tracey Crouch? We all see this happy, fun-loving person, genuine good politician
and a very popular politician. What made you decide to become an MP?
I did some work experience with my then MP Michael Howard. So, I grew up in Folkestone and Hythe.
I was at school. Michael came to my school and did a speech about what it’s like to be an MP. I wrote
to him afterwards. He said: ‘Come and do some work experience with me.’ He was Home Secretary at the
time, so I came up here and spent a week in an office – actually just behind the Chamber – the
Home Secretary’s office. I really loved how engaged he was with constituency issues and it
was that that kind of inspired me into politics. Yes, this was an exciting place. As a 17-year-old,
it was strange and thrilling all at the same time, but what really started to get my interest
was what he was doing back at home and how he was helping people and how he was supporting people.
That was the first footing – you got a real taste for politics and then university - you
went to Hull. Most of your peers were actually out knocking on doors to get Tony Blair elected in
1997. Except one person: Tracey Crouch no less. Actually no, I was here, so I started working
here in 1996. I had already graduated. I’m a little bit older than you think I
am. A lot older than I thought you were.
I became interested in the Conservative Party under John Major and I was actually quite taken
by what John Major stood for, where he had come from. His background felt very
similar to my background. He was from a single parent family. He had a relatively low income
family. He had gone to grammar school and grammar school had helped him in terms of wanting to
achieve, rise up and achieve things. I’m sat in grammar school doing my A-level politics, learning
about John Major as he became prime minister and everything else and it really sang to me. And
I’m very much what I think of as a one-nation Conservative and he was, and he believed in
meritocracy and actually with the combination of John Major being so different from what Margaret
Thatcher had stood for and then you’ve got a good local MP as Michael Howard, going into university,
I kind of thrived on it really. I know you did.
I read law at university and quite often being in a law lecture, one of the law lecturers would
stand up and say: Miss Crouch, what does the Home Secretary think of this? And I would be the only
Conservative in a room of 200 people – certainly out Conservatives anyway - and I remember being
chased across the campus of Hull because some socialist worker party were burning an effigy of
John Major and I told them they were ridiculously childish and I ran so fast ended up hiding
in the lecture room of one of our Bolshevik lecturers who hated the Socialist Worker party as
much as everybody else. It was a good time and if anything, being at a left-wing university cemented
my own Conservative principles. What about the other part of Tracey
Crouch? The sport? The person behind the sport? You have some strange choices of football
teams – even worst choices of rugby league – but do introduce us. Why did you get into sport?
It’s really interesting because my family have no interest in either politics or sport,
so how I ended up having an interest in both – I have no idea. I grew up on an estate that was full
of boys. There was only myself and my sister who were the girls. Basically, if you wanted
to go out and play, you played sport. You could play sport on the street. A car would come by.
You would shout ‘car’. Ball stops and then the car goes by and you carry on playing. A bit like David
Beckham though without the talent. Bend it like Crouch?
I basically grew up playing football on the streets and I can play every single sport
because we played every single sport. How important is exercise to you?
I genuinely think that sport and exercise is the answer to everything. Show me a
problem that cannot be solved by sport and exercise. And actually, you see it through
policy, but it doesn’t quite get the same level of attention as some things. You have got schemes
in the Home Office, the Ministry for Justice, in the Department for Education, in Health,
that are trying to tackle issues using sport and exercise. I often think we don’t appreciate and
value as much as we could or we should the importance of sport and exercise as part of
the nation’s wellbeing. Whether it’s teenage girls through to older adults to engage in exercise – it
doesn't need to be in that team competitiveness. It’s one of the wonderful things about Park Run.
It’s not about competition – it's about movement. I tried to bring some of that into the role of
Sports Minister and published the Sports Strategy which couses a lot on physical health and exercise
– which wasn’t just about competitive team sports. But when David Cameron rang me up to offer me the
job, it was the only job in the government that would have taken – and it’s still the only job
in government I would take – on the basis that I don’t want to be a minister for the sake of it.
I want to do something in a role.... Does that mean you’re coming back?
No, it does not mean I’m coming back. I’m doing the Football Review at the moment. For me,
that is a primary focus and it has reminded me that it is really quite challenging to balance
having a ministerial role with the role of being an MP. This isn’t a ministerial role,
but actually the amount of work and time and everything else, it is balancing all that.
Suddenly you then became ill 12 months ago I think, just over. The bad news came out
that you got breast cancer. That was a shock, obviously for you and your family, but all your
friends as well. How did you deal with that? In my mind, wrongly – in my mind – I just always
had this vision that sort of kind of breast cancer was something that happened in older age. For me
it was like, I’m actually too young for this. And then actually you start drilling down a bit and
realising that because there are actually quite a few people now being diagnosed under 50 or under
45. People are getting diagnosed much younger and we have this misconception in our minds that if
we’re healthy and we're fit, it can’t possibly happen to us and therefore you don’t check.
What was it you said? Check your bits and bobbins. You know make sure you check yourself and it was a
reminder to people out there, saying the secret is you have got to check early, get diagnosed,
get the support and you can get through it. What I wanted to do is come out and say:
You must check because if somebody like me can be diagnosed with breast cancer, then so can you.
How do you deal with the chemo? The real effects of that must have been bad?
I was actually really lucky in terms of the side effects of chemo. I’m not going to lie. There were
days where I was not feeling great, but I wasn’t particularly poorly. My oncologist is a huge
believer in exercise and he had read some research somewhere or other which said that if you exercise
directly before chemo, it reduces your side effects. So, I used to walk to my chemo. It was a
45-50 minute walk and so every chemo I would walk and I’d have to – because we were in Covid times –
wait 15 minutes for my body temperature to reduce before I could go in and actually be scanned into
the hospital. But as a consequence of that I do think I fared well from the side effects.
Well your sister decided to shave her head as well. I thought this is solidarity of the Crouch
family. This is sisters sticking together. I mean I love my sister so much. We have been
thick as thieves since we were kids. She’s three years younger than me
and I often think it’s harder for your loved ones in a diagnosis than it is for yourself. For me,
I’m getting all the attention, if you like, from the medical profession. I’m
being supported by the nurses. I can pick up the phone and ask anybody. Actually your family and
your friends are often quite worried about it all. I wasn’t particularly worried about
anything – I was doing as I was told, which was a slightly bizarre non Crouchy thing to be doing.
She was great. She grew her hair long and then shaved it off and donated her hair to
the Little Princess Trust who makes wigs for children who go through chemotherapy.
We found it both a really, sort of eye-opening experience. She’s a teacher and so a lot of
children were pointing and staring at her and she said, imagine if you were an eight-year-old girl
and you are going through that at the same time. I found losing my hair quite liberating.
I have had the same hair style since I was a teenager, and I would probably have never had
the guts to change it and all of a sudden I had no choice. It was quite an empowering moment.
Tracey, can I say thanks for sharing that experience. It’s fantastic to
see you looking so well. You really are an inspiration to all. Thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me. Anytime.