Sir Chris Wormald has been appointed Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service. He is currently Permanent Secretary of the Department for Health and Social Care and will take up his new post on 16 December 2024.
This Insight looks at the role of Cabinet Secretary and how they are appointed.
Who is the Cabinet Secretary?
The Cabinet Secretary (or Secretary to the Cabinet) is the Prime Minister’s most senior policy adviser, but they also support all ministers in the running of the UK Government.
They are also Head of the Home Civil Service. This covers Great Britain (including the devolved Scottish and Welsh governments) but not the Northern Ireland Civil Service or the Diplomatic Service, which are separate. Permanent secretaries of UK government departments and the Scottish and Welsh governments are responsible to the Cabinet Secretary for the effective day-to-day management of their organisations.
The position of Cabinet Secretary was created in 1916 when the modern Cabinet system was introduced by the Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George. This included the Cabinet Office, a government department which today supports the Prime Minister and ensures the “effective running of government”.
How is a Cabinet Secretary appointed?
A Cabinet Secretary is appointed by the Prime Minister on the advice of the retiring Cabinet Secretary (currently Simon Case) and the First Civil Service Commissioner (currently Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston, a former Labour MP and now a crossbench member of the House of Lords).
Simon Case was appointed Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service in September 2020. In September 2024 he announced he would leave the post by the end of this year on health grounds. An advert for his successor was placed on the Civil Service Jobs website. The advert emphasised that the next Cabinet Secretary needed “the ability to secure the confidence of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet”.
The First Civil Service Commissioner heads the Civil Service Commission, a statutory body which ensures that appointments to the Home Civil Service are made openly and on merit. Baroness Stuart chaired “a full fair and open external competition” for the post of Cabinet Secretary. Other panel members included Lord Gus O’Donnell (a former Cabinet Secretary), Dame Sharon White (a former Chair of John Lewis and former Second Permanent Secretary of HM Treasury) and Brian McBride (Lead Non-Executive Director on the Board of the Ministry of Defence).
What does the Cabinet Secretary do?
The Cabinet Secretary attends all meetings of the UK Cabinet (unless “unavoidably absent”) and is responsible for the “smooth running” of Cabinet meetings and for preparing records of its discussions and decisions.
According to the Cabinet Manual (PDF), the Cabinet Secretary is also responsible for advising the Prime Minister on:
- the agenda for Cabinet meetings
- the overall structure of the Cabinet committee system, including the chair, deputy chair (if any), membership and the terms of reference
- machinery of government issues (transfers of responsibility from one department to another)
If there is a change of government at a general election, the Cabinet Secretary may:
- co-ordinate pre-election contacts between opposition parties and the Civil Service, once authorised by the Prime Minister
- organise negotiations between leaders of political parties where a range of different coalition governments could potentially be formed following a general election, again with the authorisation of the Prime Minister
- keep the King informed of any such negotiations
- issue special instructions about the disposal of Cabinet papers of the outgoing administration, and approve the sharing of that material with incoming ministers (if necessary)
- examine the manuscripts of memoirs written by former ministers in respect of “national security and the preservation of international relations” and “transmit any objections” to the former minister
Other responsibilities not listed in the Cabinet Manual include:
- resolving (with the Prime Minister) “concerns” about the relationship between ministers and their permanent secretaries (Ministerial Code, para 1.12)
- writing to ministers stating the terms for a situation in which the Prime Minister has “set aside” collective Cabinet responsibility for issues of conscience or on major constitutional issues (as happened regarding the free vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill)
- acting as the “appointing authority” for all independent honours committee appointments
More broadly, Lord Young of Old Windsor (a former Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II) has described the Cabinet Secretary as part of the “so-called ‘Golden Triangle’” which navigates potentially difficult constitutional scenarios. The other two parts are the Monarch’s Private Secretary and the Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister. Lord Young observed that:
Each of these figures understands the constitutional imperative of building and maintaining the highest level of trust, integrity and mutual understanding in their communications with each other.
About the author: Dr David Torrance is a researcher at the House of Commons Library, specialising in the constitution.
Image credit: Smuconlaw on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
