Silly season for cabinet secretary... or not?

Simon Case is expected to leave government at the end of the year, and some of the rumoured candidates to replace him come from beyond the normal talent pool

Although there has been no official statement, it is widely expected that the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, will step down at the end of this year or early in 2025. He is only 45 but is suffering from a neurological condition which affects his mobility, and he took medical leave of absence from October 2023 to January 2024, but his tenure as head of the Home Civil Service since September 2020 has been mired in controversy and rancour. His role during the Covid-19 pandemic has been under intense scrutiny, as was his involvement in the “Partygate” scandal which contributed to the fall of Boris Johnson.

I don’t intend to review Case’s career in detail here. But it is worth noting that he was a very unusual (and unexpected) appointment. As Boris Johnson’s relationship with his first cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, deteriorated and the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, became increasingly frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the machinery of government, Case was appointed Downing Street permanent secretary in May 2020. He had been on secondment for almost two years to the Royal Household as private secretary to the Duke of Cambridge, and his return to a permanent secretary role surprised many civil service colleagues, some of whom had been searching for director general-level posts he might occupy when his secondment ended.

In the end, he served in that role for only three months. At the beginning of September 2020, Sedwill left the civil service and Case succeeded him as the 13th cabinet secretary. At 41, he was the youngest person to hold the office, but he was also notable in never having run a Whitehall department: although he had worked in the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Northern Ireland Office, Number 10 Downing Street, GCHQ and the Department for Exiting the European Union, his most senior role had been as director general Northern Ireland and Ireland in DExEU for seven months at the beginning of 2018.

(Although he was the fourth Cambridge graduate to be cabinet secretary, he was the first to have held a doctoral degree, in political history from Queen Mary, University of London. His thesis was entitled “The Joint Intelligence Committee and the German Question, 1947-61”, and his supervisor was Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield.)

It has been expected for some time now that Case would not stay as cabinet secretary for long, but his health may have been the determining factor. While no official announcement has been made, there is already considerable speculation about his likely successor. More than at any time in the past, there is felt to be a strong possibility that the prime minister will look beyond the traditional confines of Whitehall permanent secretaries for a candidate: until now, every holder of the office has come from within government, with the most unusual pedigree being that of the first cabinet secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey, who was secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence when appointed in December 1916.

I have touched on possible replacements for Case before, when I considered how Sir Keir Starmer might manage Whitehall here and here, but I will pull together all the names so far suggested (to my knowledge) and briefly assess them.

The main candidates

The current favourite seems to be Sir Oliver Robbins. A former civil service high-flyer, he was principal private secretary to the prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and deputy national security adviser (with responsibility for intelligence, security and resilience) in the Cabinet Office from 2010 to 2014. In 2016, Theresa May chose him to head the Cabinet Office’s European and Global Issues Secretariat and act as her principal adviser on the European Union and Brexit, becoming permanent secretary when that secretariat was transformed into the Department for Exiting the European Union. From 2017 to 2019, he was May’s EU adviser and chief Brexit negotiator, developing a very close relationship with the prime minister which attracted some (largely unfair) criticism, and as a result he left the civil service when May stepped down as prime minister in July 2019. Robbins then moved to the private sector and was a managing director at Goldman Sachs (2019-23) before becoming director then partner at global consultancy Hakluyt and Co.

Olly Robbins is only 49, and many believe he regards Whitehall as “unfinished business”. His departure in 2019 was a reaction to immediate circumstances, and, while he will not have been financially disadvantaged by his time at Goldman Sachs and Hakluyt, a man who was nicknamed “Sir Humphrey” at Oxford will have expected a longer civil service career than he has (so far) had. Although he would technically be an outside appointment, he is amply qualified for the role of cabinet secretary by traditional measures: experience in HM Treasury, principal private secretary to the prime minister, senior Cabinet Office post, departmental permanent secretary. Robbins is without question extremely able, and has proved he can forge a close working relationship with a prime minister. The only question which may lurk in Sir Keir Starmer’s mind is whether Robbins remains a divisive figure, five years after his abrupt departure. However, one “source” told The Sunday Times:

The major challenge Labour face is turning around public services with no money. His skillset is crisis, policy fixes and negotiation, not tough, grinding reform. If he wants to work very differently and trust and empower others and really lead he could be good. But he’d have to work against his pre-existing reputation in Whitehall. And be very different from how he was on Brexit. He can’t solve everything by writing a beautiful four-page memo and not copying it to anyone.

This has a whiff of antagonism about it, but reputation is important in Whitehall. Robbins has supposedly talked to Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, about the role of cabinet secretary and would be interested if he felt the prime minister was keen to have him. From an administrative and experiential point of view, he is one of the stronger candidates.

The most likely “internal” candidate is Dame Antonia Romeo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice and clerk of the Crown in Chancery. She joined the civil service in 2000 having worked in consultancy, on a one-year temporary contract as an economist in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, later admitting that at the time “I didn’t know what the department did—and I barely knew what the civil service did”. From 2006 to 2008, she was principal private secretary to the Lord Chancellor, then moved to the Foreign Office as director of the Whitehall Liaison Department. After a year as director of the Efficiency and Reform Group in the Cabinet Office, she returned to the Ministry of Justice as a director general, then switched back to the Cabinet Office for her “dream job”, running the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat. In 2016 she became HM Consul General in New York before being appointed permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade in March 2017. Romeo took up her present role in January 2021.

Romeo undoubtedly has the breadth of experience to be cabinet secretary, and is regarded as extremely able. She would also be the first woman to hold the post after 108 years, which may hold some attraction for Sir Keir Starmer. She is not yet 50 but has served in Whitehall, at an overseas posting and in the Cabinet Office, and has some experience of the private sector (albeit 25 years ago). In 2015-16 she acted as the government’s envoy to the US-based technology community, and is the civil service’s gender champion, so she covers a lot of fashionable areas. However, as The Daily Telegraph archly phrased it, “not everyone approves of what has been described as a notably high media profile”. It is a snide criticism but it exists: her hosting of high-profile, star-studded events as trade envoy in New York and the fact she has been profiled in Tatler are held against her by some colleagues. She was considered for the role of cabinet secretary in 2020, and tipped as a possible permanent secretary at HM Treasury when Sir Tom Scholar was ousted in 2022. Romeo would be an eye-catching choice: does Starmer want that?

A more low-key internal candidate would be 50-year-old Jeremy Pocklington, currently permanent secretary at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. He is a true civil service lifer, joining HM Treasury in 1997 after completing a postgraduate degree in economics and social history at Exeter College, Oxford. After a number of posts in policy and private office, he moved to the Cabinet Office in 2009 as director of the National Economic Council, a Gordon Brown-era innovation to co-ordinate the government’s response to the recession, then took over the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat. In 2012 he returned to the Treasury as director of the Enterprise and Growth Unit, then held a series of director general posts at the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. He was promoted to permanent secretary in the department in 2020.

Pocklington has covered several important bases: economic policy, the Cabinet Office, private office, energy security and growth and infrastructure. He also has a good relationship with the Downing Street chief of staff, Sue Gray. His three years at MHCLG (in 2021 rebranded the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) has given him experience of working with local authorities and politicians outside Whitehall, although the department was criticised in 2022 for the lack of transparency and accusations of bias in the operation of the £3.6 billion Towns Fund. If the prime minister wants a low-maintenance, minimum fuss appointment, Pocklington, described as “the mandarin’s mandarin”, is the obvious choice and would handle the role with aplomb. But an Oxford-educated Treasury civil servant is hardly a huge departure from tradition.

Another potential pick from within government is Sarah Healey, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (as it has been rebranded). Another Oxford/LSE graduate, she began her civil service career in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, part of the Cabinet Office, going on to be director of strategy and performance then director of education funding at the Department for Education. She spent just under a year as director of private pensions at the Department for Work and Pensions before becoming director general responsible for digital integration at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, then in 2016 transferred to the newly established Department for Exiting the European Union. Healey then headed the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat in the Cabinet Office before returning to DCMS as permanent secretary in 2019. Last year she succeeded Jeremy Pocklington as permanent secretary at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

Like many of the other runners and riders, she had solid experience running a Whitehall department as well as working at the centre of government, both in the Cabinet Office and in Downing Street. Notwithstanding her conventional pedigree, she is regarded as down to earth and approachable, with strong presentational skills, all of which might recommend her candidacy to Sir Keir Starmer. It is rumoured that her relationship with Sue Gray, who was briefly her deputy as DLUHC, was not especially good, though it is hard to say how heavily such a factor will weigh. Healey would represent something of a compromise choice, as a long-serving Whitehall insider but a more modern and personable face of the civil service than some of the previous incumbents.

A more unusual choice being discussed is Dame Sharon White, who steps down in September as chair of the John Lewis Partnership after four and a half years. She is not a complete outsider, by any means. She joined HM Treasury in 1989 after reading economics at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and studying for a postgraduate degree at University College London, and has worked across Whitehall: the Number 10 Policy Unit, the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions. She also served at the British Embassy in Washington and at the World Bank, and from 2013 to 2015 was second permanent secretary at the Treasury. She was then appointed chief executive of the media regulator Ofcom, where she spent four years before joining the private sector as chair of John Lewis. At 57, she could easily take on the top job in the civil service.

White has an extensive pedigree, across Whitehall, in international institutions, as a regulator and now in the private sector. She would be the first woman and the first black person to be cabinet secretary, for those who keep track of these firsts, and could plausibly be portrayed as bringing a fresh perspective. However, her tenure at John Lewis is not universally regarded as a success: the group posted substantial losses, 16 department stores were closed and 4,000 staff made redundant, she narrowly survived a vote of no confidence by the company’s council and there was a general feeling that John Lewis had been slow and unresponsive, struggling to keep up with its competitors during the pandemic. Her tenure as chair will be the shortest in the partnership’s history. John Lewis has returned to profitability and White claims it is “back on track”, but questions must remain over her stewardship. Her performance at Ofcom was respectable but not outstanding. She might bring a fresh perspective, but would it help the civil service or the prime minister?

White’s successor as chief executive of Ofcom, Dame Melanie Dawes, is also rumoured to be in contention. She joined the civil service the same year as White, initially at the Department of Transport before switching to HM Treasury, eventually becoming Europe director. In 2006, she moved to HM Revenue and Customs, with responsibility for business tax, before becoming head of the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat at the Cabinet Office in 2011. At the beginning fo 2015, she was appointed permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government and spent five years in that post, being replaced after a brief hiatus by Jeremy Pocklington. She then became chief executive of Ofcom, where she currently serves. She was also first the civil service’s gender champion then its overall diversity and inclusion champion.

Like the other candidates, Dawes has seen many parts of Whitehall and worked on some important policy areas like taxation, economics and local government, and her time as a regulator has given her some distance from the machinery of government. She is also regarded as a capable and fluent media performer, and, again, would be the first female cabinet secretary if appointed. Whether she would be willing to forgo her current salary of £324,000 for the £205,000-£209,999 which being cabinet secretary attracts is an open question. Ofcom has been criticised for its inconsistent approach to regulating GB News which has caused some to question Dawes’s firmness and direction. There is an argument that her time at Ofcom means she is neither an insider nor an outsider, but the main factor would surely be if she wants to return to Whitehall.

An extraordinary possibility recently floated is that Baroness Shafik, who has just resigned as president of Columbia University in New York after a mere 13 months, might be in consideration. An Egyptian-born economist, she worked for the World Bank, becoming its youngest ever vice-president at the age of 36, before being seconded to the Department for International Development as director general of country programmes. In 2008, she was promoted to permanent secretary, running DfID for three years before becoming deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, overseeing its work in Europe and the Middle East. From 2014 to 2017 she returned to London as deputy governor of the Bank of England for markets and banking, then moved to academia as president and vice-chancellor of the London School of Economics. Shafik took over as head of Ivy League giant Columbia in July 2023.

Shafik clearly has a relatively slender Whitehall background, having worked in the civil service for only seven years, albeit as a permanent secretary for the last three, and served in only one department. Her background in international finance and economics could be presented as an advantage, but her leadership of Columbia has been catastrophic: she mishandled campus protests over the war in Gaza by swinging from timidity to heavy-handedness, and looked hesitant and vacillating when questioned by the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Columbia passed a resolution of no confidence in her in May. I cannot see what would possibly make her an attractive candidate for Starmer—it is axiomatic that you’re only as good as your last job—but Robert Peston reported the notion on social media and it clearly has some traction. Shafik would be a terrible choice.

Also in the running

Simon Case’s departure has been so long expected that speculation about his replacement has been going on for months, since before the general election. Other names which have been mentioned include Sir Peter Schofield, permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions for the past six years, Tamara Finkelstein, permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs since 2019, and Tom Riordan, who will step down after 14 years as chief executive of Leeds City Council at the end of 2024.

Now what?

With Simon Case expected to leave at the end of this year or the beginning of 2025, Whitehall has several months to select a new cabinet secretary. It has been reported that there will be an open competition, and that the prime minister has not committed himself to the idea of an insider or an outsider. In his speech this week preparing for the government’s autumn programme, he was challenged about his decision to cancel the appointment of General Gwyn Jenkins as national security adviser, and Starmer emphasised “I’m determined to have the right people in the right places to allow us to get on with that job”. That could be taken to imply either an innovative appointment or a conventional choice, but it will hopefully at least mean that the process is not rushed.

One issue which the prime minister will undoubtedly consider is whether to keep the roles of cabinet secretary and head of the Home Civil Service united. They have been combined since 1981 with the exception of the period 2012-14, when Sir Bob Kerslake, permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government, was also head of the civil service; but before that point, the function had rested with the Treasury permanent secretary, with the head of the Civil Service Department and had been held jointly. Both cabinet secretary and head of the civil service are dauntingly substantial jobs, and there is a case for disaggregating them, but most prime ministers in recent history have found it convenient that their chief official adviser should also have formal control over the administrative apparatus.

Conclusion

It is hard to guess what qualities Sir Keir Starmer will value most highly in choosing his new cabinet secretary. His repeated assertions that his government will be different from its predecessor may tempt him to make an appointment which underlines this, which would suggest the successful candidate could come from outwith the current ranks of permanent secretaries. Insofar as we can read the runes, it seems that Sir Olly Robbins is the favourite for the post, as he has wide experience of government, has reportedly discussed the role with Sue Gray and can argue that his five years in the private sector have given him useful new perspectives on how Whitehall can and should work. He would be a very sound choice, but at this stage it is little more than guesswork. Watch this space.