Sir Jeremy Heywood
Cabinet Secretary
What were your biggest policy and delivery challenges in 2013, and how did you handle them?
2013 has been another challenging year for all of us. One real positive is that the country is slowly returning to steady growth – for the first time in quite a while, all sectors of the economy are on the up and unemployment is falling. But there is still a long way to go to get the fiscal deficit down and ensure that the recovery is sustained. That remains the big challenge in the year ahead.
The onus is on all departments to play their part. All permanent secretaries have an explicit growth objective and all departments have been asked to develop their own strategies for supporting the recovery. This issue remains the key priority of government as we approach the fifth year of coalition, and as cabinet secretary it is my job to help ensure that all departments are pushing forward with this and that we don’t lose momentum.
Where have you made the most progress in implementing the Civil Service Reform Plan, and what are your reform priorities for 2014?
In the past few years the civil service has come a long way as an organisation. We are smaller and more efficient; we are making good progress on digital transformation; cross-departmental collaboration is at an all-time high; and we have made more data available to the public than ever before. Another area where we’ve made particular progress, which doesn’t always get the attention it should, is the quality of our policy-making, both in terms of innovation and deliverability.
Over the year ahead, I am personally keen to see us go even further in strengthening the effectiveness of Whitehall policy-making. This year saw the launch of the Contestable Policy Fund, whilst a couple of months ago we launched the ‘Twelve Actions to Professionalise Policy-Making’ report, through which senior leaders have committed to ensuring that policy-making is world-class in every part of Whitehall. Chris Wormald, Head of the Policy Profession, is leading this work – but it should be a top priority for all of us working on policy.
What are your key challenges in the last full year of the Parliament, and how will you tackle them?
As cabinet secretary I deal with a huge range of policy areas. From internal issues such as the Scottish referendum next year or rising energy prices to external problems such as the need to improve the effectiveness of the European economy and to make progress in enabling the UK to export to emerging markets.
As well as continuing to implement the government’s policies with pace and rigour, we as a civil service also need to make sure that we are fully prepared for the 2015 election. A certain amount of planning and preparation needs to be done and that will obviously become more of a priority as we get towards the end of the parliament.
What would you most like Santa to bring you this year? And what would you like him to take away?
I’d appreciate if Santa could arrange for Manchester United to win all of their Christmas fixtures, and to perhaps take a few points away from their title rivals.