“But what I can tell you is that everyone involved, ministers and officials, was seeking to take the right decisions. Drive the Had they done so, we would have tackled it, and they didn't, and I'm really sorry that they didn't.” “We couldn’t rely upon even the most elaborate checks and balances to bring those problems to our attention. Photo: Cabinet OfficeThe outgoing head of the civil service has slammed anonymous “sniping” against officials, as he defended his own £250,000 exit payment.Sir Mark Sedwill, who will step down as Cabinet Secretary in September, And Sir Mark said a compensation payment of £248,189 authorised by Boris Johnson for his early departure had been “standard” for someone leaving Whitehall from his position of seniority.It was announced in June that Sir Mark, who was appointed by Theresa May following the death of Sir Jeremy Heywood, would be relinquishing his three roles as Cabinet Secretary, head of the civil service and National Security Adviser.The move followed months of briefings in the media against Sir Mark and other senior officials.And it came after Dominic Cummings, the PM’s most senior adviser and a longstanding critic of the way the civil service is run, promised that a "hard rain” will fall on Whitehall in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.Sir Mark told Civil Service World: “I think we should challenge the legitimacy of people who can't answer back being briefed against.”And he added: “It is unreasonable that people who, by convention, don't answer back and don't respond to every criticism, are subject to this kind of – usually anonymous – attack and snipe.”The outgoing Cabinet Secretary said he would continue to defend civil servants in his remaining weeks as their boss.And he reminded politicians that such behaviour is “counterproductive”.Asked whether ministers stick up for officials enough, Sir Mark said some had gone on the record and been “very supportive of the civil service”.“The prime minister himself has paid very warm tribute to individuals, including to me... [and] he's spoken of his appreciation for the amazing job the civil and the wider public service has done on Covid, and so on.”Sir Mark also defended his own exit payment, revealed in an exchange of letters between Boris Johnson and Cabinet Office permanent secretary Alex Chisholm last month.A letter from the PM said the six-figure sum was “likely to be in the form of a pension contribution”, with the PM authorising the top-up “in consideration of his employment position” and “Sir Mark stepping down early”.Sir Mark told CSW: “That is a calculation made by the experts for someone in my position for voluntary early retirement by agreement – that's essentially what I took. In the end, she was the arbiter of the ministerial code,” he says. This eye-catching decision prompted much ink to be spilt by Whitehall watchers at the time – although, as Sedwill himself pointed out to “I think I am a different kind of cab sec not because I was national security adviser, but because my entire career had prepared me to be national security adviser,” Sedwill says. When Heywood suddenly stood down, two weeks before his death in November 2018, Sedwill officially became his successor. Could we have had more preparations in place? The long-term securocrat and former ambassador had been the UK’s national security adviser for just over a year when Theresa May asked him to step into Heywood’s shoes. “I'm not going to get too far into that. "You have done it all in Whitehall: from Afghanistan to the modernisation of the civil service; from immigration policy to Brexit and defeating coronavirus," he said. "Obviously, I think I'm the perfect fit for the job, because I'd always wanted to give it a shot"But it is difficult to believe Sedwill’s CV did not make him a better national security adviser. Not a single person in this country failed to have the medical treatment they needed.

Sir Mark had symptoms from around 2 or 3 April, the government revealed on Thursday. Sir Mark Sedwill's exit follows reports of tensions between him and senior members of the PM's team. And I'm proud of it not just as the head of the service, but as a citizen.“Just look at what we did. “I’ve had a gun in my face; a bomb under my seat; I’ve been hosted by a man plotting to have me assassinated; I’ve been shot at, mortared and had someone come after me with a suicide vest"“So when people ask me how I handle the political sniping which is a regrettable feature of modern governance, I simply remind myself that it really isn’t as bad as the real thing.” Sedwill’s departure follows some high-profile exits by other perm secs – with  leadership changes at the Cabinet Office, BEIS, the Home Office and the Foreign Office.
“Take a step back and although I express things in less vivid language than a politician or a special adviser, for the vast majority of civil servants, these shifts to different ways of working would have a profound effect on their jobs and the nature of their work and the nature of the interaction with the citizen.“So I think people shouldn't get too consumed with language, they should actually look at the substance and ask themselves: what are the real changes that are going to change their jobs, their relationship with the citizen, and the way that public service supports the agenda of the government and, and provide services to the citizens of this country.”It is difficult, though, to not get consumed by the language. The return of millions of pupils begins as teachers make final changes to meet latest guidelines. May herself demanded to know why Sedwill was being replaced by a “political appointee with no proven expertise”.



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