Lesley Strathie, who has died at the tragically young age of 56, was an exceptional civil servant, both in terms of her own career – rising from clerical assistant to permanent secretary – and in the legacy she leaves of improved public services.
Lesley started her working life in 1972 in the then Department of Health and Social Security. After a career spanning 40 years, she stood down as head of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) last November – both to reduce the uncertainty for HMRC, and to focus on fighting the cancer diagnosed in July. This was the hardest decision Lesley had ever had to make; she was devastated that, for the first time in her career, she wasn’t able to finish the job she had started. She passed away on 14 January.
Lesley was born in Stranraer in 1955. She left Stranraer Academy at 16, the academy’s top-performing student in her final year. After working in local benefit offices, she moved to Dagenham in 1984 for a job as a benefit supervisor. She was an exceptional leader, and by 1994 was a district manager in the newly-created Employment Service. She inspired huge affection in her colleagues – a fact reflected by the letters of support she received when she stood down, including many from people who’d worked with her over 20 years before.
Lesley was appointed director for London of the new Jobcentre Plus (JCP) in 2001. By 2005, she was its chief executive and the second permanent secretary in the DWP – an extraordinary achievement, given that she had only entered the senior civil service five years earlier.
In 2008, cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell asked Lesley to apply for the role of chief executive of HMRC, and she went on to lead HMRC through many major challenges, negotiating a spending review settlement which reinvested £900m into tackling avoidance, evasion and criminal activity. In the face of intense – and at times grossly unfair – media criticism of HMRC, she always stood up for her staff.
Meanwhile, Lesley also made a major contribution to the wider civil service, particularly as head of profession for Operational Delivery.
When Lesley stood down from HMRC, she told friends and close colleagues to live by the philosophy that had got her through many tough patches: “Be glad for what you have, not sad for what you have not”.
Lesley is survived by her mother, brothers, sister and daughter Kirsten (her son tragically died in 2010), and by her partner Kevin White, a senior civil servant in the Home Office, whom she was due to marry this spring.
I will miss her hugely. In over 20 years of working together Lesley came, for me, to embody everything that made me most proud of the civil service: utter integrity, total commitment and, above all, enormous compassion. A light has gone out which we will not quickly see lit again.
Sir Leigh Lewis is a former work and pensions permanent secretary.