The meetings were “literally me around that table, just fighting”, which “was incredibly uncomfortable every single time”.

At one meeting he raised the impact on children’s education: “I was very emotional about it. I was like, ‘Forget about the economy. Surely we can all agree that kids not being in school is a major nightmare’, or something like that.

“There was a big silence afterwards. It was the first time someone had said it. I was so furious.”

Setting out the problems he found with Government policy being influenced by outside academics, he said: “If you empower all these independent people, you’re screwed.”