Blogs and Briefings
When one becomes three
Connect’s Andrew Smith looks at the reshuffle taking place behind the scenes in Government.
November 2011 - Connect Intelligence Briefing
The retirement of the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, at the end of the year will lead to significant changes to the upper echelons of the Civil Service. Perhaps appropriate for someone who likes to initial documents GOD, his current job combines three roles: Cabinet Secretary, Head of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office. On his retirement this ‘Trinitarian’ structure will come to an end and each of the three parts of the role will be taken by a different person.
But what do these changes in job role mean for the structure of the Whitehall machinery and the relationship between the Prime Minister’s office and the wider Civil Service?
Sir Gus’s successor in the role as Cabinet Secretary will be Jeremy Heywood, current Permanent Secretary at Number 10. Under Blair and Brown, as well as David Cameron, he established a reputation as someone who is willing to challenge the Civil Service status quo to deliver reforms. Whereas senior figures in Number 10 have been frustrated at Whitehall’s resistance to change, they have been pleasantly surprised by Heywood’s enthusiasm and his willingness to push departments to go further in areas such as the decentralisation of power.
Heywood has previously expressed a reluctance to step into Sir Gus’s shoes, as oversight of the whole Civil Service would need him to curb his radical instincts and act as an arbiter between the service’s different vested interests.
The decision, therefore, to split the three responsibilities that currently make up the Cabinet Secretary’s role seems designed to fit around Heywood’s personality. It will free him to focus on the core role of the Cabinet Secretary, which is to be the Prime Minister’s key adviser on policy issues, and to drive forward the Government’s reform agenda without the burden of being the consolatory head of the whole of the domestic Civil Service.
The appointment of Ian Watmore as the new Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office means that it will gain a new status as a proper Department of State a - recognition that, under the Coalition, the Cabinet Office has increased its influence.
