With the cabinet secretary retiring, his job will be split three ways. The move is presented as a pragmatic response to changes in the role – but Richard Hall discovers it could have a major impact on the operation of government.

Last week’s confirmation that Sir Gus O’Donnell is to step down as cabinet secretary at the end of the year came as a surprise to few in Whitehall. However, the accompanying announcement that the role’s responsibilities are to be split up has caught many unawares. After all, less than a year ago Gus warned peers against dividing the role; and the last time the job was split, ministers and officials alike eventually concluded that they should be combined again.

In fact, this time the split is even more ambitious, breaking the job into not two but three parts. Jeremy Heywood, Number 10 permanent secretary, will become cabinet secretary, fulfilling the role of chief adviser to the prime minister and the cabinet. A new head of the home civil service (HHCS) will be appointed from the current cohort of permanent secretaries. And the job of permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office will be taken by Ian Watmore, currently chief operating officer of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG).

What’s the rationale behind the move? The Cabinet Office says that, since May 2010, all three elements of the role have expanded. With coalition government, the cabinet secretary’s role is more complex and involves more coordinating work; the scale of the civil service reform package has increased the leadership demands on the head; and the Cabinet Office’s expansion – primarily via the ERG – gives its head a bigger job.

According to Peter Riddell, senior fellow at the Institute for Government, the change fits the personalities of those involved: “The logic of splitting is partly recognition of the current reality,” he says. “Jeremy Heywood is the supreme fixer and adviser on policy, and will carry on that role as cabinet secretary. Ian Watmore has been driving through the reform agenda as head of the ERG, and will carry on doing that with an enhanced title. In that respect his power – and that of Francis Maude, as the minister behind the ERG – will be strengthened.”

How the third role fits in is less clear, however. The cabinet secretary and the HHCS will both report to the prime minister. The new Cabinet Office permanent secretary will report to the minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, and support the HHCS on civil service management. So the new HHCS – who supposedly leads on civil service management – will not have direct control of the Cabinet Office, which has been driving reforms through its ERG. Is there a risk that the new head’s work on the strategic development of the civil service will be poorly aligned with Ian Watmore’s efficiency improvements? “They are distinct roles but clearly there are areas where they will cross and the two will work hand in hand on the big issues,” says a Cabinet Office spokesman.

Labour’s new shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett sees problems ahead: “It does seem odd that the head of the civil service will not be in charge of the Cabinet Office, which is reforming and co-ordinating the whole of the civil service,” he says. “It looks as though it’s dysfunctional.”

There are concerns on Whitehall that the role of HHCS – who will combine the post with a busy job as a departmental permanent secretary – will have little substance. One of the tasks of the HHCS is to help persuade departments to swallow their medicine: to be the conduit that helps to sell civil service reforms and wider policies that originate from the centre, and to drive delivery across Whitehall. But if the HHCS is based away from Number 10 and the Cabinet Office, with the cabinet secretary taking the lead on coordinating departmental policies, the role looks weak. “If the head of the civil service role is purely managerial and not policy, he or she will have very little influence over departments,” says Professor Martin Smith of the politics department at the University of Sheffield.

Also, when the head of the civil service speaks, who will they be speaking on behalf of? Insiders fear that they could be seen as a ‘doyen of the mandarinate’, and portrayed by impatient ministers as a spokesman for the vested interests of departments who must be overcome in the name of reform.

Marooned in their department doing their day job as a permanent secretary, the head may be seen as irrelevant, while an empowered Watmore – answering to Maude rather than the new head – pushes on with reform. Riddell fears there will be “no clear strategic lead but rather a division of effort and responsibilities”.

Then there’s the claim that Number 10 is acting to shore up the prime minister’s own power: certainly, that’s the likely effect of promoting Heywood and sidelining the head of the civil service. “This partly looks like Cameron reinforcing his centre again,” says Martin Smith. 

As permanent secretary to Number 10, Heywood is already seen as close to the prime minister. In a job shorn of responsibility for staff out in the departments, there’s a risk that he could concentrate too much on the needs of Downing Street at the expense of the rest of Whitehall. Former cabinet secretary Lord Armstrong offers some sage advice: “I hope that the new incumbent will not lose sight of the important fact that he is secretary of the cabinet, not just to the prime minister, and he has a duty to all cabinet ministers.”

In explaining the rationale for the changes, the Cabinet Office pointed to the increased workload. It did not deploy strategic arguments that the roles of cabinet secretary and head of the home civil service are different, require distinct skills sets, and when fused together can lead to conflicts of interest. The changes appear very much to have been made in response to the functional demands of the coalition government, in which the cabinet secretary must tend to a PM and DPM as well as the cabinet, and ambitious programmes of policy delivery and civil service reform. Rather than a plan designed to best equip the civil service for the challenges facing it, the move simply appears to be a reaction to Gus’s spiralling workload.
Certainly, before the election, Sir Gus voiced concerns over splitting the role. In 2009 he told a House of Lords constitution committee inquiry that the functions of the post fit together well and that previous attempts to separate them had not worked.

From 1968 to 1981, the permanent secretary of the Civil Service Department acted as head of the civil service – a role separate from that of cabinet secretary. When that department was wound up, Sir Douglas Wass, then permanent secretary to the Treasury, and cabinet secretary Robert Armstrong were installed as joint heads. “When Sir Douglas retired in 1983,” recalls Armstrong, “the prime minister decided that his successor should not be appointed joint head of the civil service, and I was left on my own [doing both jobs]. That arrangement survived until now. Both my predecessors – Sir Burke Trend and Sir John Hunt – wholeheartedly welcomed the arrangement, were sure that it was right, and wished they could have achieved it.”

The government has decided that the rigours of coalition government override recent political history, and the role is to be split again. There is a danger of centralisation, a weak HHCS, and confusion over the leadership of the reform agenda. Should these misgivings over the new arrangements prove to be justified, it will fall to a future prime minister to put the role back together once more.

Richard Hall is former managing editor of The House Magazine.

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Written by Richard Hall, CSW