During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a consequence of the government's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools, while administering public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but agreed to provide younger children with ⅓ pint daily for nutritional purposes. She also argued that she was simply carrying on with what the Labour government had started since they had stopped giving free milk to secondary schools. Milk would still be provided to those children that required it on medical grounds and schools could still sell milk. The aftermath of the milk row hardened her determination, she told the editor-proprietor Harold Creighton of "The Spectator": "Don't underestimate me, I saw how they broke Keith , but they won't break me."