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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week we pick a few of our writers who reads out their pieces in the magazine.

This week will be joined by our deputy political editor Katie Balls, who reads her interview with Therese Coffey, the work and pension secretary on her plan to get millions back into work.

We also hear from Rachel Johnson on the

secret cost of lockdown puppies. And at the very end, Jeremy Clark heads off to the races.

First, Katie Balls. If you haven't heard of Tere's coffee, then this will be, to her, a sign that

she has been doing something right. As work and pension secretary, she has had to sign

people onto benefits faster than anyone who has held the position before. If this had gone

wrong during lockdown, she would be as infamous as Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary.

But the system, universal credit, managed 1.5 million claims in four weeks.

Many things have gone wrong for the government over the past few months, but the welfare system has so far held up.

Coffee has kept her anonymity.

My main task has been making sure that DWP runs effectively.

Being in the news would probably be a sign that it wasn't, she says over lunch in the spectator's boardroom. I'm a great believer in the DWP being boringly brilliant or brilliantly boring. After just 13 months in the job, she has already lasted longer than her last five predecessors. Some 5.6 million people now claim the benefits,

and her next job is to help them back to work. Coffee believes retraining the workforce could be the

solution. She thinks that the aviation industry, from cabin crew and pilots to engineers, is

rightfulness given in her words the fact that the industry themselves

think they are going to struggle for a few years and won't be back until full normal elements

until 2324 the earliest. She adds, I want to encourage them to perhaps go into teaching or go to

college and to be the people who train the next lot of people who are going to do those jobs.

...