More than the final number of years, Andrew McDonald has grown used to getting conversations about MPs’ costs in the most uncommon spots. As chief executive of the Independent Parliamentary Requirements Authority (Ipsa), the physique charged with overhauling politicians’ shell out and pensions in the wake of the 2009 expenditures scandal, McDonald has grow to be practised at batting away awkward inquiries.
But perhaps the strangest exchange came as he was being wheeled into theatre for a second operation for prostate cancer in 2011. “The anaesthetist’s last query just before I went underneath was, ‘Come on, Andrew, who are the two most difficult MPs to deal with?’” McDonald recalls when we meet in his offices in London’s Victoria. “I will never know what I’d have mentioned.”
His great humour masks a more significant truth. That operation was not profitable. Nor was a subsequent course of radiotherapy. Three months ago, 51-12 months-old McDonald, who was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s illness in 2007, was told by his oncologist that the prostate cancer was incurable. As a result, he announced his decision to step down from Ipsa final week and will leave at the end of March.
It is, he says, the fatigue that has been the most debilitating element of his mixed illnesses. The Parkinson’s has left him with “extreme insomnia” and that, combined with the hormonal therapy he is nonetheless getting for his terminal cancer, has been “a true situation”. McDonald has observed Ipsa by means of some tricky times – most lately when it launched a report calling for an 11% pay rise for MPs, which was criticised by the leaders of all three principal events.
“I feel we knew that … the pay component was not going to get a terribly warm welcome from the public and that it was going to be challenging to get an endorsement from MPs,” he concedes.
Nevertheless McDonald stays bullish about Ipsa’s recommendations and feels “a genuine sense of loss” that he cannot see the reforms by way of. A ultimate choice about MPs’ shell out and their pensions bundle is due right after the 2015 standard election.
“But the board has explained extremely clearly that we have completed a really comprehensive piece of operate here, lasting 18 months, and for all the noise that ‘the time isn’t right’, I do not think anyone has truly been able to get problem with our underlying examination.”
McDonald’s four years at Ipsa have undoubtedly been demanding and nerve-racking. Right up until now he has been determined not to let his illnesses get in the way, using innovations this kind of as voice recognition computer software to help him type. “But if I’ve had 3 negative nights in a row, with a couple of hours’ sleep, by the fourth day I’m discovering it truly difficult to concentrate.”
Other than this, he has handful of bodily symptoms. The Parkinson’s is only noticeable to an outsider’s eye in the form of a slight tremor in his left hand – it has been a gradual deterioration given that McDonald initial became aware of it as he was studying the New York Occasions seven years in the past. When he reached to turn the web page, he couldn’t really feel the edge of the paper between his fingers. His fast concern when his GP referred him to a neurologist was that “I would not live to see my daughter expand up”. His daughter, whom he does not want to identify, is now 17.
“Getting to clarify the two Parkinson’s and prostate cancer to a teenager is difficult,” McDonald says, his voice tightening. “It truly is been extremely tough for her.” His wife, also, has found it “unquestionably” hard.
There is no certainty about McDonald’s prognosis, only that the prostate cancer is terminal. Probably the strangest portion of it all is that he feels very well.
“It truly is as although you happen to be taking part in some bizarre video game,” McDonald explains. “The medical doctor seems with this printout of blood check final results going back to 2010 and that is the only manifestation of the cancer. There is no bodily discomfort. That disjunction amongst what I know and what I come to feel is odd and it’s not at all easy.”
Lately, he was walking in the countryside in lovely sunshine “and I was asking myself: how can there be such a mismatch between the glory of the moment and the knowledge that it really is coming to an finish?”
McDonald has attempted to carry on as standard. He has turn into a passionate advocate for talking openly about illness and disability in the workplace. When he was very first diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he was chief executive of Government Expertise, the capabilities council for central government. He desired to be open with his crew, but two of his colleagues suggested him not to – “since you will be labelled as a disabled civil servant and it will restrict your occupation possibilities thereafter”.
McDonald was “genuinely shocked and I – maybe in a bloody-minded way – made a decision I needed to go ahead simply because if I did not, I felt I was generating it much more difficult for the subsequent man or woman”.
He went on to chair numerous taskforces on disability in the civil services. At Ipsa, he instigated a series of lunchtime talks in which personnel – himself included – could talk openly about disability or illness.
“It has aided me to recognize intuitively that a diverse workforce is more most likely to be an successful workforce,” he says. “I understood that intellectually prior to, but now I recognise considerably far more quickly that if men and women come to the table with a diversity of knowledge, they are a lot more very likely to make much better decisions.”
The broader want is that this will lead to a far more informed dialogue in society as a total. We will not like to speak about cancer, he says, due to the fact it is still noticed as “a battle. People have ‘brave victories’ over it or ‘plucky defeats’ … so [the vocabulary] is all about combat,” he says. “Lying behind that is the prevailing notion that, if you get cancer, you happen to be doomed.”
Parkinson’s, by contrast, is viewed considerably more passively, as an sickness men and women “suffer from” before “retreating from daily life”. McDonald recalls reading a latest guide review of a thriller written by Martin Cruz Smith which stated that the writer had just “admitted” to obtaining Parkinson’s. “The use of that verb stares out at you as getting extraordinary,” he says.
It is hard, when listening to McDonald communicate with this kind of clarity and eloquence, to keep in mind how unwell he genuinely is. All through our hour-extended conversation, his voice in no way falters. The only signal of emotion comes when he breaks eye speak to briefly and looks out of the window.
Does not it ever strike him as monstrously unfair to be diagnosed with not one but two such critical illnesses in the last 6 many years? “I never see it in those terms, oddly enough. The full extent of my profound insight on this is ‘stuff happens’. I do not really feel angry about it. I’m a Catholic and men and women have asked: has this made me question my faith? And it hasn’t. My notion of God has never been one in which God is intervening, arranging items in our daily lives like some puppeteer. You have to deal with the cards you’ve been dealt.”
Has he cried? “Oh, I have cried loads of occasions. I …” He pauses. “The prospect of not becoming ready to do issues that I want to do. I discover that quite hard.”
When he leaves Ipsa, McDonald wants to compose a book about his experiences and will give a public lecture entitled Let’s Speak About Cancer for Marie Curie Cancer Care in June. “Enticing title,” he says drily.
But he also needs to indulge in the issues he most loves performing – such as freshwater swimming. Three occasions a year, he aims to consider a distinct buddy to investigate a particular lake or river. The only stipulation is that the location must have some private resonance for either get together. So far, McDonald’s trips have taken him from the Pirin mountains in Bulgaria (he wore a wetsuit) to the River Stour in Dorset.
“I want to do a lot more of that,” he says, as we stroll out of the offices into the chilly January breeze. “I want to see more of loved ones and friends for as lengthy as my well being makes it possible for.”
It is a easy want, all the far more poignant for its modest ambition.
Family Married, 1 daughter.
Lives Muswell Hill, north London.
Schooling Emerson Park college, Essex St John’s School, Oxford, MA, modern background Bristol University, PhD on control of public expenditure.
Career 2009-current: chief executive, Ipsa 2006-09: chief executive, Government Capabilities 2006-07: senior adviser, Phillips assessment of get together funding 2001-05: constitution director and other roles, Department for Constitutional Affairs 2000-01: acting chief executive, Workplace of the Public Guardian 1986-2000: head of information management, board member and other roles, National Archives.
Interests Background, walking, swimming in freshwater lakes, travel, sport.
Andrew McDonald: From dealing with MPs costs to coming to terms with terminal cancer
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