The government is guilty of producing too much meaningless jargon that "real people" do not understand, Tessa Jowell claims.

Interviewed in today's FT, the culture secretary reveals she keeps a "little book of bollocks" listing each incident and calls on the government to "cut the crap" and reconnect with the public in the forthcoming general election campaign.

"I have what I call a bollocks list where I just sit in meetings and I write down some of the absurd language we use - and we are all guilty of this, myself included.

"The risk is when you have been in government for eight years you begin to talk the language which is not the language of the real world," she says.

"It's cutting the crap, talking directly to people and facing their anger, their optimism, their frustration, their enthusiasm," she adds.