Cabinet secretary contenders: who could be next top UK civil servant?

Simon Case has resigned as cabinet secretary and is due to leave at the end of the year. His departure kicks off a race to be his successor, with a job advert already circulated to attract a wide pool of applicants. To date the job of cabinet secretary has only ever been held by white men.

Melanie Dawes

Ofcom’s chief executive has worked in a variety of government departments, from HMRC to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury, and was the permanent secretary of the then Department for Communities and Local Government at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Dawes gave an interview to Civil Service World last year that touched on the difficulties of juggling parenthood with a big job, and how Grenfell had helped to give her a “very deep belief in the importance of good, effective, proportionate regulation”.

Oliver Robbins

Oliver “Olly” Robbins, who was recently made a partner at Hakluyt, a consultancy founded by ex-MI6 intelligence officers, has repeatedly been linked with the job. He oversaw Brexit negotiations under Theresa May before leaving the civil service in December 2019.

He has been spotted going to meet Keir Starmer and his team, and is known to have got on well with the prime minister’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, but he has not confirmed that he would be interested in making a return to government.

However, some within No 10 are keen for someone with less Brexit-related baggage and would prefer a less obvious candidate – especially given the long history of white male cabinet secretaries. Government insiders believe he is being lined up for a security role instead.

Antonia Romeo

The permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice is a rare high-profile senior civil servant and is very well connected. She may have irritated colleagues by being more prominent than many permanent secretaries, but Romeo’s reputation was burnished when it emerged she had spoken out on behalf of more junior colleagues during the row over Dominic Raab’s bullying of private office staff.

Jeremy Pocklington

A career civil servant, Pocklington has been the permanent secretary at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero since its creation, after doing the top job at the Ministry of Housing. He is known to have got on with Gray, who will be working closely with whoever gets the role of cabinet secretary, and recently spoke to the Global Governance Forum on how the “AI and digital revolution is going to transform the civil service”.

Tamara Finkelstein

As permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Finkelstein has worked across Whitehall and would be a hugely experienced candidate, after five years in the job.

Minouche Shafik

A former deputy governor of the Bank of England, Shafik is conducting a government review of UK development aid. She has also served as permanent secretary in the former Department for International Development, and recently stepped down as principal of New York’s Columbia University over its handling of protests about Gaza.