Issue 6, January 2003 (Back to Contents)

Sir Richard Wilson (1956 - now Lord Wilson) retired as Cabinet Secretary in the Summer of 2002.

Lord Wilson (Click to enlarge)

I had already headed two government departments - the Department of the Environment and the Home Office - as well as having had two spells working in the Cabinet Office under three Cabinet Secretaries. So I had some idea of what the job entailed. But it is one thing to observe great men occupying such a position, another to do it yourself.

I was only the eighth Cabinet Secretary, the post having been introduced during the First World War. Before then Prime Ministers were meant to write their own accounts for the Sovereign of what had happened in Cabinet. The world was more leisurely then and they presumably had the time to do it; or it just did not get done. In any event, the Civil Service was brought in to run Cabinet business in an orderly fashion and I was in that short line of descent.

I was also the first Old Radleian to hold the post. The school motto 'Sicut Serpentes, Sicut Columbae' came to my mind on a number of occasions. I found that it was a good rule of thumb for a Secretary of the Cabinet when in doubt.

The post has become more onerous in the last 20 years, not only because of the pressure of business but because it has been combined with that of Head of the Home Civil Service. This involves the leadership and strategic management of a workforce approaching some half a million people.

So what does the Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service actually do with his time?

The answer depends partly on the personality of the person doing the job and partly on events because the job itself can change daily depending on the immediate needs of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the day.

Indeed one of the excitements - and challenges - of the job is never knowing for sure what you may be asked to do next. The morning of 11 September 2001, for instance, was fairly straightforward. I never dreamed that I would be working urgently through that terrible afternoon and evening to mobilise the government machine to defend the UK against what felt like an immediate terrorist threat and to support the Prime Minister and his team in their response to it. There were many other occasions, fortunately less dramatic, when the day turned out very differently from the one I expected.

The Cabinet Secretary sits on the right of the Prime Minister in Cabinet Meetings (Click to enlarge)

There are however some fixed points. One obvious one is the need to attend Cabinet meetings, usually held on a Thursday. The Cabinet Secretary sits on the right of the Prime Minister at every meeting and is responsible for recording what is said and issuing formal minutes before the end of the day.

Mercifully there are two people at the end of the table to help with the note-taking, but it nonetheless feels an exposed position as well as a privileged one. The first time I sat next to Mrs Thatcher in a Cabinet Committee meeting I was unable to take in a single thing that anyone said and wrote down complete gibberish for the first twenty minutes.

But minute-taking is only a small part of the job. The Cabinet Secretary has to have a good feel for all the main issues being handled across government and be ready to advise on virtually any aspect, whether it be defusing a dispute, advising on propriety or the constitution or managing the machinery of government. He is helped in this by seeing all correspondence passing between Cabinet Ministers as well as having regular reports from his staff on current developments. This means reading a box of papers every night in all weathers.

It was my habit to provide the Prime Minister with a short note on Friday evenings, no more than two or three pages at most, summarising tersely the top 20 or so issues across government, particularly those which might require his attention in the next couple of weeks. This provided a good basis for my weekly meeting with him on Monday mornings. These meetings were crucial to my ability to do my job. There is nothing like the prospect of a 10am meeting with the Prime Minister to dispel those Monday morning blues.

The Cabinet Secretary also has a key role as head of the permanent secretaries who run government departments. These jobs nowadays are very onerous too. There is a constant flow of issues, for instance to do with policy or appointments, in which the Cabinet Secretary becomes involved, as a source of guidance or as the proper channel to Number 10 or as the person with whom responsibility ultimately lies, depending on the nature of the issue.

The Secretary of the Cabinet also has an important role as the public face of the Civil Service. Twenty years ago when 'Yes Minister' was filmed the role was shadowy and invisible. Nowadays the occupant has to be prepared for a degree of public comment - fair or unfair, usually the latter - which would have been unthinkable.

Appearing before Select Committees of Parliament has become a routine part of the job and can be demanding, particularly if the appearance is televised (as it usually is) and if the Select Committee want to ask about some recent incident which attracted publicity (as for some reason they often do). And of course the media - and the opposition parties in Parliament - are always on the lookout for the slip which they can exploit.

Finally leadership of the Civil Service and the task of management reform requires a great amount of energy and effort. I used regularly to make a hundred speeches or so a year to Civil Service audiences as I visited establishments to explain our plans for change. The range and variety of work carried out by civil servants is little understood and the best parts can compete with the best in any sector.

I believe the country is well served by having a permanent Civil Service which has integrity and is non-political, recruited on the basis of merit and committed to providing the best support it can to the government of the day; and which retains a sense of humour.

Mr Blair claims that on his entry into Number 10 in May 1997, meeting his civil servants for the first time, he found a woman in tears. 'I liked that John Major' she said 'and I don't want to see him go'. 'Oh, I am sorry' said the new Prime Minister, startled. 'No you're not', she said 'You meant to do it'.

Overall there is no danger of the Secretary of the Cabinet finding time hanging heavy on his hands. When I took up the job one of my predecessors wrote to me and said: 'You will go home in the evenings sometimes elated, sometimes angry, sometimes exhausted, but never bored'. He was right.