Ministers misjudged forest sale, says Cameron aide

The civil servant who works most closely with the prime minister has said the government probably misjudged the public mood over selling off forests.

But the permanent secretary at Number 10, Jeremy Heywood, praised Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in what was billed as his first-ever interview.

Speaking to Civil Service World magazine, Mr Heywood said: "Insofar as we've had to row back on some of the decisions on forestry, that's not a failure of process."

He added: "It's just that the government probably misjudged the public mood in some respects."

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman abandoned the sale of English forests in February, saying the government had "got this one wrong".

In his interview, Mr Heywood backed Mr Brown's handling of the 2009 G20 summit in London at which the international banking crisis was discussed, saying Mr Brown deserved a "lot of credit for his leadership role in that moment" and showed "unusual drive and tenacity and ambition".

The summit led to a "route map out of the crisis", he said, which "was due in no small part to Gordon Brown".

He also had praise for the impact of public service targets on Mr Blair's government - which the current administration has been keen to scrap.

Mr Heywood said Mr Blair's government had "held itself accountable for ensuring its targets were met, cared passionately about what was happening on the ground, because it thought it would be blamed if those targets weren't achieved."

Tipped by some to replace the Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell when he steps down, Mr Heywood describes his role at Number 10 as "making sure the PM is happy hour by hour, day by day, week by week".

He said the coalition wanted to give local communities more power, but central government was tightening control over "certain elements of spending" to improve value for money.

"So we have, on the one hand a loosening, but a tightening somewhere else," he said.