(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Keir Starmer named Chris Wormald as the country’s top civil servant, promoting the veteran official in a move designed to bring stability to the top of government after a rocky first five months in office.
Wormald, 56, will take up his new post as cabinet secretary on Dec. 16, the government said Monday. The incumbent, Simon Case, said in September he planned to step down at the end of the year on health grounds.
The appointment comes as the premier seeks to steady the ship after a shaky first five months in office marked by a scandal over ministers accepting freebies while in opposition, a budget that alienated businesses and farmers, and plummeting poll ratings.
Wormald — who joined the civil service in 1991 — will be tasked with bringing stable leadership to the UK’s army of officials and helping Starmer deliver on his Labour government’s priorities, including boosting economic growth, cutting National Health Service waiting times and cracking down on cross-channel immigration.
“The government has set a clear mandate – an ambitious agenda with working people at its heart,” Wormald said in a statement. “That will require each and every one of us to embrace the change agenda in how the British state operates.”
As cabinet secretary, Wormald’s role will involve advising the prime minister and overseeing the day-to-day running of the civil service. He moves from the Department of Health, where he’s served as the top civil servant since May 2016, a period that included the coronavirus pandemic.
That experience means he brings a wealth of knowledge to the top of government in pursuing one of Starmer’s defining missions — to cut the number of people on NHS waiting lists. But he was also in charge of the department when — under successive Tory administrations — that level rose to a record.
Before moving to the health department, Wormald headed up the Department for Education for four years, after holding a series of roles in the Cabinet Office and also serving as principal private secretary to Estelle Morris and then Charles Clarke — two education secretaries from Tony Blair’s Labour government in the early 2000s. A career civil servant, he is little-known by the public. After significant media attention surrounding Case and former civil servant Sue Gray, who served as Starmer’s chief of staff until early October, the prime minister might believe that is no bad thing.
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