The cabinet secretary has appointed a new second permanent secretary who will head the Mission Delivery Unit in the Cabinet Office.
Clara Swinson, a director general in the Department of Health and Social Care, has been chosen by Simon Case for the new role, with Keir Starmer also approving the hire.
Swinson will lead the unit in implementing a mission-led government approach across the civil service and advise the prime minister and the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on delivery of Labour’s five missions and six “First Steps”.
Swinson, who will take up the post this month, joined the civil service in 1997 as a fast streamer and has been a senior civil servant since 2006, holding several roles in the Department of Health.
She has been DG for global and public health in DHSC, a role in which she works closely with the chief medical officer, since November 2016.
In this role, she was responsible for international policy, bilateral relationships with other nations, and health work undertaken on a multilateral basis. During the pandemic, she led the DHSC’s Covid-19 response, working across government.
DHSC was criticised during the Covid Inquiry as being “chaotic”, “dysfunctional” and “ungovernable”, by figures such as former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, ex-deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara and Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to Boris Johnson. This was rejected by Chris Wormald, the perm sec, as something he didn’t “recognise”. However, Wormald agreed with former Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, that DHSC was neither structured nor resourced for a challenge on the scale of Covid-19.
Congratulating Swinson on her appointment, Case said she “brings a wealth of experience from her previous roles”. including in her DG post. "I’d like to wish Clara every success in her new role,” he added.
Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “I am delighted to see Clara Swinson bring her extensive experience to this role. I look forward to working with her to deliver our plan for mission-driven government.”
The Cabinet Office said the appointment followed a civil service-wide recruitment competition overseen by the Civil Service Commission.