Prime minister Keir Starmer's appointment of Sir Chris Wormald as the next cabinet secretary has garnered largely positive reaction in the 24 hours since the decision was made public.
Multiple commentators have observed that the PM's decision to pick a Whitehall veteran whose experience is massively tilted towards public-facing services rather than being rooted in HM Treasury can be viewed as a mould-breaking move that bodes well for reform. Others have taken a different tack.
With eight years under his belt as permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, and before that four years as perm sec at the Department for Education, 56-year-old Wormald was the most-experienced candidate on the shortlist presented to Starmer.
He was also something of a "sleeper" candidate to become the nation's top civil servant. Most runners-and-riders reports on the candidates vying to succeed Simon Case did not mention him after the current cab sec announced his intention to stand down. Only in recent days did Wormald's strength in the fray begin to emerge.
Revealing Wormald's elevation to cabinet secretary, which will be effective from 16 December, Starmer said there was "no-one better placed" to drive forward the government's plans.
"I look forward to working with him as we fulfil the mandate of this new government, improving the lives of working people and strengthening our country with a decade of national renewal," he said.
Starmer stated that the government's vision for establishing "mission-led" government would "require nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform".
Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government – and former principal private secretary to late cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood – said Wormald would bring a "different kind of experience to the role" than most of his predecessors.
Thomas said choosing Wormald suggested the PM really did want to take public service reform seriously.
"Wormald is not from the traditional Treasury or (more recently) securocrat mould of cabinet secretaries," he said in a blog. "Instead, his career has been grounded in social policy, with a CV that suggests public service reform will be Starmer’s top priority."
Thomas said that such reform would start with the machinery at the centre of government. "Labour’s missions have not yet been properly gripped and Wormald needs to improve how No.10 and the Cabinet Office are organised to make the government’s soon-to-be-announced ‘priorities for change’ happen – and how they work with the Treasury, a department which fills the vacuum when the centre does not set a strong direction," he said.
"Wormald needs to jump into the preparations for the spending review straight away and make his presence felt in the Treasury. He needs to show that not having been a Treasury official is a strength, not a weakness. The system must feel the jolt of clarity and strategic direction that can come from a new leader, and one who has been set the task – presumably – of driving improvements in performance across public services, especially in health and education."
Speaking at an IfG event yesterday afternoon, civil service chief operating officer and Cabinet Office perm sec Cat Little said Wormald would be "pivotal" for taking forward the government's mission-delivery "Plan for Change", which is due to be set out later this week.
"I’ve been very fortunate to work very closely with Chris in all of my roles in government and very much look forward to working with him in the coming years," she said. "As the head of civil service, he will set the strategy and the direction for reform of both civil service and the centre of government, and he will be pivotal in taking forward mission delivery and the Plan for Change. My job, as I see it, is to deliver and to implement the civil service reform plan day to day."
'Invaluable' experience
Dave Penman, general secretary of civil service leaders' union the FDA – which counts permanent secretaries among its members – said Wormald had "invaluable" experience to offer a prime minister keen to deliver radical change.
"Chris was probably the obvious pick, yet it says much about him and the last decade of politics that he didn’t feature in much of the speculation," Penman said. "He doesn’t court publicity and is very much in the traditional behind the scenes civil servant mould, but if you want to rewire the state, as Starmer says he wants to, then you need someone who understands how the machine works."
Penman said Wormald's experience at the helm of departments at "the forefront of the interface between the civil service and wider public sector" would strengthen the government's ability to deliver tangible change that could be demonstrated through real-time measurable outcomes.
"There are massive challenges, but also huge opportunities," Penman said. "This government seems keen on resets, even if they are a little earlier than one would normally expect. Nevertheless, Chris’s appointment is an opportunity for a reset in the civil service."
He added that a clear long-term vision for the civil service "dealing with the skills, resources and reward required for the next decade" would give Wormald the opportunity to start his tenure as cabinet secretary "with a clear plan that civil servants can get behind".
Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect union, said Wormald's new role would see him "judged on his ability to facilitate change while standing up for those who work for him and protecting the independence of the civil service". He said pay reform should also be a priority.
"We would like to see a commitment to evidence-based policymaking and where reform is necessary, full engagement with the civil service trade unions whose members will have to deliver any change," Clancy said. "One of the key issues for the civil service is a growing recruitment and retention crisis in specialist roles, particularly where there are direct private sector comparators. Recent pay rounds have temporarily stopped things from getting worse but more fundamental change is necessary and soon."
Former ministers who had Wormald as their permanent secretary at DHSC were quick to salute his abilities when news of his promotion to cabinet secretary emerged.
Past health secretaries Matt Hancock and Sajid Javid praised Wormald, as did former health minister Lord Jim Bethell.
Bethell wrote on X: "When the killer zombies invade, I'd like Chris Wormald at my back. A great civil servant and total mensch. Shrewd choice by Starmer."
Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to Boris Johnson, has previously given vitriolic assessments of DHSC's capabilities in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic. He returned to some of those themes in a post on X reacting to Wormald's appointment as cab sec.
He concluded: "Today should be a wake up call to all investors in UK and young talent – the Westminster system is totally determined to resist any change and will continue all the things of the past 20 years that have driven us into crisis, the war of Whitehall on the productive and civilised forces in this country will continue to the knife."
The IfG's Thomas noted in his blog that Wormald's record during the pandemic would now "come under particular scrutiny".
At one Covid Inquiry session last year inquiry chair Dame Heather Hallett said evidence from Wormald suggesting the nation had never run out of personal protective equipment during the pandemic would come as a surprise to medical professionals.
"I chose my words very carefully,” Wormald said. “There were huge pressures on PPE and we had significant challenges getting PPE to the right place."
Wormald said there were places that had suffered shortages of PPE, and situations in which professionals had to use PPE that was not correct. But he insisted the situation was "different from it having run out nationally".
While the inquiry rolls on and may yet present difficult questions for Wormald, his key task now will be to demonstrate that his deep knowledge of how government works, combined with his public service-facing perspective, can help to deliver the rewiring of the state which the prime minister demands.