Chris Wormald appointed UK’s top civil servant

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Sir Chris Wormald, the long-standing permanent secretary of the Department of Health and Social Care, has been appointed as the UK’s top civil servant.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has chosen Wormald as cabinet secretary as he seeks to get a grip on his Labour administration after a tumultuous first five months, starting with a relaunch on Thursday.

“He brings a wealth of experience to this role at a critical moment in the work of change this new government has begun,” Starmer said on Monday.

The £200,000-a-year cabinet secretary role involves advising the prime minister and the cabinet as well as overseeing the civil service.

Wormald beat three other contenders on the shortlist: Sir Olly Robbins, the only external candidate, and serving permanent secretaries Dame Antonia Romeo and Tamara Finkelstein.

He paid tribute to Starmer’s “ambitious” programme for government that he said would require the civil service to “embrace the change agenda in how the British state operates”.

The veteran official has been at the helm of the health department since 2016, a period that includes the run-up to the outbreak of Covid-19 and during the pandemic.

The independent public inquiry into the UK’s handling of Covid said in July that the government had “planned for the wrong pandemic” and was “ill-prepared”.

Among the revelations from the inquiry was an exchange of messages in which Wormald and Britain’s then top civil servant Lord Mark Sedwill compared Covid to chickenpox, with Sedwill saying it would be preferable for people to get the disease to build up immunity in the population.

“Exactly right. We make the point every meeting, they don’t quite get it,” Wormald told Sedwill in the exchange on March 12 2020.

Wormald told the inquiry he had been “very, very loose in my reply” and that encouraging herd immunity had been reflective of “the state of the scientific advice at that point”.

The NHS, which the health department oversees, has also faced criticism during Wormald’s time as permanent secretary, including over long waiting lists for care.

But one health department official praised Wormald, saying: “He’s a fixer and an administrator. I never saw him flustered during the pandemic. When he saw a problem he would get stuck in.”

Wormald will succeed outgoing cabinet secretary Simon Case on December 16. Case in September announced his intention to step down as he received treatment for an undisclosed neurological condition.

As the longest-serving permanent secretary in Whitehall, Wormald was drafted in to cover parts of the cabinet secretary role in the past year while Case was on medical leave.

Wormald was passed over for the job in favour of Case the last time it was up for grabs in 2020, when Boris Johnson was prime minister, despite entering the race as the frontrunner.

Hannah White, director of the Institute for Government think-tank, said Wormald was “in many ways a conventional choice” given his experience and long record of working on public service reform.

Previously Wormald was permanent secretary at the Department for Education, headed the economic and domestic secretariat at the Cabinet Office, and led a unit overseeing public service reforms.

“His challenge will be to lead and inspire the civil service to deliver what Sir Keir Starmer has described as a ‘complete rewiring of the British state’,” White said.

Matt Hancock, UK health secretary from 2018 to 2021, told the Financial Times: “Chris is one of the finest public servants of his generation and a superb choice as cabinet secretary.

“He is a natural reformer, but has seen enough of every aspect of life in government to know where the bear traps are.”

The appointment was made by Starmer following an open competition process, in which the field was whittled down by Baroness Gisela Stuart, the First Civil Service Commissioner, and an independent panel. The prime minister interviewed the final four candidates last week.

Sir Chris Whitty will oversee the management of the health department until a new permanent secretary is appointed.