According to the Number 10 website,
Downing Street today announced the appointment of Jeremy Heywood as Permanent Secretary, No.10 Downing Street. This is the most senior civil service post in No.10 Downing Street, reporting directly to the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary. This move follows the appointment by HM Treasury of Tom Scholar as Managing Director, International and Finance, with particular responsibility for domestic and global financial markets and institutions.
As Permanent Secretary in No.10, Mr Heywood will assume the responsibilities of Principal Private Secretary and overall head of 10 Downing Street, reporting to the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, Sir Gus O’Donnell. He will work closely with Stephen Carter, appointed earlier this month as Chief of Strategy and Principal Adviser and the chief special adviser at 10 Downing Street. He will remain a member of the Cabinet Office’s board.
Benedict Brogan comments:
Mr Heywood has been impressing ministers since he worked for Ken Clarke. He recently returned to public service after a lucrative spell with Morgan Stanley. Some of you may remember him better as Tony Blair’s PPS, who ran the former Prime Minister’s private office with great panache between 1999 and 2003. Among his achievements was keeping channels open with the Brown Treasury despite the war between the two. It is an indication of the organisational challenge faced by Mr Brown that he has agreed to call in Mr Heywood. He will run the Civil Service bit of the machine, alongside Stephen Carter, who runs the political side. Seven months in, Mr Brown is starting all over.
Old lags from the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit still reminisce fondly about the days when Heywood was Blair’s PPS and Geoff Mulgan was in charge of policy at Number 10; it was, one used to note, “the last time Number 10 actually worked”. Staff at the Observer must be feeling pretty prescient, meanwhile: back in 2004 they tipped Heywood as one of 80 “prodigiously talented young people” destined for stardom, observing that
Few people know how government works as well as Jeremy Heywood. First, he was Principal Private Secretary to the then Chancellor, Norman Lamont, who called him one of the most intelligent people he had ever met. Then he did the same job for Tony Blair, and was described as ‘indispensable’. He’s now getting a taste of the private sector as a managing director at Morgan Stanley, but a triumphant return to the civil service as Cabinet Secretary is distinctly possible.
He may not be there quite yet – but certainly getting closer. Meanwhile Tom Scholar departs as No 10 Chief of Staff (as he always said he would in under a year) to become the Treasury’s managing director for international issues and finance. Tom was Britain’s Executive Director at the IMF, so he’ll be able to hit the ground running there with no problems (other than the meltdown of the global financial system).
