Who is the new Chief Civil Servant Chris Wormeld?

Sir Keir Starmer has appointed Sir Chris Wormald as his Cabinet Secretary – the head of the civil service and one of the most powerful jobs in government.

Announcing the appointment, the Prime Minister said he wanted a “total rewiring of the British state” and that there was no one better to do it than Sir Chris.

As someone who has worked for the civil service since the early 1990s, Sir Chris has a wealth of civil service experience.

Depending on your perspective that either makes him an ideal candidate who understands how to solve system problems or an establishment figure, who is attached to the status quo.

His appointment was welcomed by Lord Jim Bethel, a former health minister who worked with Sir Chris during the Covid pandemic.

“When killer zombies attack, I’d rather have Chris Wormald on my back,” he posted on social media.

Former health secretary Sajid Javid described Sir Chris as “brilliant and dedicated”, while another former health secretary, Matt Hancock, said he was a “natural reformer” who knew “where the bear traps were”.

Another former colleague, however, has been less complimentary.

Dominic Cummings, a senior adviser at No 10 during the pandemic, said: “Today should be a wake-up call to all investors and young talent in the UK.

“The Westminster system is absolutely determined to resist any change and continue to do all the things of the last 20 years that have put us in crisis.”

In May 2016, Sir Chris became the most senior civil servant at the Department of Health and over the next eight years worked with seven different Secretaries of State, from Conservative Jeremy Hunt to Labour’s Wes Streeting.

In this role, he oversaw key policies and decisions made in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak. And also – crucially – in the years before the virus broke out, when pandemic planning was meant to be done.

He has already given evidence on three separate occasions to a public inquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis.

After one of his evidence sessions, a lawyer from the Covid-Bereaved Families for Justice group accused him of being “a lesson in vagueness, a word salad, lots and lots of words, very little substance”.

In November 2023, the Covid Inquiry published text messages he had with his then boss, Cabinet Secretary Mark Seidol.

These were sent on March 12, 2020, less than two weeks before the country entered its first national lockdown.

In the messages, Lord Seidol wrote: “Probably like chicken pox we want people to get it and develop herd immunity before the next wave. We just want them not to get it all at once and priority Especially when it’s hot and dry.

Sir Chris replied: “Exactly. We make the point at every meeting, they just don’t get it.

Around that time, the government was forced to deny that it had a plan to create so-called herd immunity by accepting that younger, fitter people would catch the virus.

Asked about it at the time, Sir Chris accepted he was “very, very loose” in his language but was actually following scientific advice.

Writing on X after Sir Chris’ appointment on Monday, Cummings was highly critical of his role at the time.

“Many officials came to me in panic when they realized that the Cabinet Secretary and the Permanent Secretary for Health, who is in charge of pandemic planning, genuinely believed that the faster everyone could “Covid will happen, so much the better.”

“He’s in charge of the whole system now. Plan accordingly!”

Cummings also accused Sir Chris of being “deeply embedded” in the contaminated blood scandal and repeatedly “lying about documents” to ministers.

Sir Chris in 2018 Write letters of apology. It emerged two former health ministers were falsely told that all documents relating to infected blood had been placed in the National Archives, when campaigners later proved this was not the case.

Three years later, in 2021, Sir Chris again recused himself from any decision related to the scandal.

It later emerged that his father Peter, himself a health official from 1978 to 1981, Involved in meetings and decisions. The UK Blood Products Laboratory provided written evidence to the Infected Blood Inquiry.

Sir Chris was born in London in 1968 and went to Rutlish School in Merton, the same school former Prime Minister Sir John Major attended 20 years earlier.

He studied at St John’s College, Oxford and joined the civil service almost immediately after graduating, starting as an accelerated trainee in the Department of Education.

Over the next 20 years he rose through the ranks throughout Whitehall, serving in the Department for Communities and Local Government and in the office of then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Now at the height of his career, it was widely known that Sir Chris was on the final shortlist to become the Prime Minister’s new Cabinet Secretary, along with Antonia Romeo, who leads the Ministry of Justice, and Tamara Finkelstein. , who are senior civil servants. In the Department of Environment

Yet his appointment came as little surprise at Westminster, where there was a sense that Sir Chris’s time had passed.

While some civil servants privately share Cummings’ assessment of their new boss, those in the Department of Health may welcome the fact that the top job has been given to someone who understands the NHS.

Bringing down NHS waiting lists is one of the Prime Minister’s priorities and he may have had this in mind when choosing Sir Chris.

Another factor in the selection may have been Sir Chris’ relatively low media profile.

Wounded by The short tenure of his famous Chief of Staff So Grey, the Prime Minister will hope that Sir Chris continues to slip under the radar of the public consciousness at large.