When Natasha Devon was appointed as the government’s mental health champion, she was told that her independence was a valued part of the role.
Now, however, internal Department for Education (DfE) emails released to Ms Devon reveal that the government repeatedly tried to stop her from speaking her mind.
They show how DfE advisers and officials monitored her Twitter account, criticised her public comments as unsuitable for a government mental health champion, and talked of the “need to take ND down a peg or two”.
They eventually resolved to remove her from the role - while attempting to make sure that it did not look as though they were doing so because she had criticised them.
Ms Devon was appointed the government’s mental health champion - or “tsar” - in July last year. She says that, during a phone call with a DfE civil servant, she was told the role would be unpaid, “because it’s important that you remain impartial”.
However, an internal DfE email sent shortly afterwards said that her role “isn’t tsar-like at all. She will merely be used to generate broader coverage, beyond specialist press, to push DfE priorities and activity.”
‘Surprisingly unapologetic’
The first indication that Ms Devon - also a consistently outspoken TES columnist - might not fit neatly into her new role came in November 2015, when she tweeted a response to a story about a young woman being bullied for speaking out against sexism. She wrote: “Don’t let some dickwad make you feel like it’s not OK to be feminist.”
In response, an adviser to Nicky Morgan, then education secretary, emailed the DfE communications department: “It is obviously totally unacceptable for a government-endorsed champion to swear and use offensive terms as she does. I have just called Natasha, and she was surprisingly unapologetic.”
A few days later, another internal email said: “Can we please start thinking about options for if we wanted to close ties” with Ms Devon.
Ms Devon told TES this week that she was surprised by the reaction. “The government wanted the following I’ve got of teachers and young people,” she said. “But if you try to polish me and shut me up and make me read from a government press release, that following will fall away. I’m flawed. I swear. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
In February, Ms Devon asked a Department of Health (DoH) civil servant whether she would be able to meet Alastair Burt, then health minister, to discuss mental health issues. She said that the official was positive.
But, the next day, an email from the DoH to the DfE said: “Bumped into Natasha Devon…and she asked about these pilots - and suggested there that she could join this meeting?! …She won’t just appear! I don’t think this is appropriate, to be honest.”
Initially, this was about swearing, but increasingly she has made comments that were either indirectly or directly critical of government policy
At a conference in mid-March, Ms Devon publicly challenged Mr Burt as to why her requests for a meeting had gone unanswered.
Later that month, she wrote a TES column accusing the government of engineering “a social climate where it’s really difficult for any young person to enjoy optimal mental health”, because of testing and student debt.
The same column criticised “politicians spewing out meaningless platitudes” and “the government’s seemingly insatiable thirst for shitting on the little guy”.
In response to the column, a DfE interdepartmental email went out: “This is pretty much deliberate bridge-burning.”
A second email followed: “Appreciate that we don’t want to get rid of her when it looked like we were doing it because she criticised [us] - but it cannot be feasible that she continues.”
And then a third email, sent the same day: “I have made it clear that these are not the sorts of comments we would want from a champion, albeit an independent one.”
Following this, the ministerial adviser repeatedly requested of the DfE communications team: “Please can everyone monitor her on Twitter,” adding: “I fully appreciate that, by definition, the problem is that she…cannot be managed or fully monitored.”
Critical analysis
Ms Devon said that she suspected such a process was in place. “I was genuinely scared,” she said.
In late April, the ministerial adviser expressed further concern about Ms Devon’s behaviour on Twitter: “I fear that her clarifying her comments will only draw her into a wider discussion about pressure, exams, etc, which is what we want to avoid her doing.”
And, on 2 May, this adviser reiterated concerns about Ms Devon’s Twitter feed: “Initially, this was about swearing, but increasingly she has made comments that were either indirectly or directly critical of government policy.”
Two days later, the story broke that Ms Devon had been sacked as mental health champion, suggesting that it was because she was critical of government policy. While Ms Devon received a text message from a DfE adviser saying, “We want to work with you more, not less,” that same adviser emailed DfE colleagues to say: “I think we now need to take ND down a peg or two.”
A DfE email acknowledged that Ms Devon “is maintaining the position that she had a good relationship with the minister, and it would be helpful to maintain this.”
In response, the ministerial adviser wrote: “You’re right… She’s having her 15 minutes [of fame], and hopefully she is nearly at the end.”
A DfE spokesperson pointed out that the emails were sent by advisers working for the previous education secretary.
They said: “Natasha did a great job of helping us to raise the profile of young people’s mental health. Since that time, the independent NHS Taskforce report has been published, which recommended that a cross-government mental-health champion be created. For this reason, we had to reconsider the Department’s own role.”
