Jeremy Heywood

Early life and education

Jeremy Heywood was born in Glossop, Derbyshire to Peter Heywood, an English teacher at independent Quaker school Bootham and Brenda Heywood, an archaeologist whose work in York led her to be made a director at The Yorkshire Architectural & York Archaeological Society in 1992.

He was educated at Bootham, York, with a Quaker background and ethos, before taking a BA in History and Economics at Hertford College, Oxford and an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics. He also studied for a semester at Harvard Business School.

Career

Heywood joined HM Treasury in 1992 and became the Principal Private Secretary to Chancellor Norman Lamont at the age of 30, having to help mitigate the fallout from Black Wednesday after less than a month in the job. He remained in this role throughout the 1990s under Chancellors Kenneth Clarke and Gordon Brown before being promoted to be the Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999. He stayed in this position until 2003, when he left the civil service in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry where it emerged that he claimed to have never minuted meetings in the Prime Ministerial offices about David Kelly, a job he was required to do. He emerged to become a managing director of the UK Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley where he became embroiled in the Southern Cross Healthcare scandal that almost saw 30,000 elderly people being made homeless. Upon Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister in 2007, Heywood returned to government as Head of Domestic Policy and Strategy at the Cabinet Office. Political commentator Peter Oborne, in the wake of this appointment described Heywood as "a perfect manifestation of everything that has gone so very wrong with the British civil service over the past 15 years."

He would later go on to resume his old job of Principal Private Secretary, as well as being appointed the Downing Street Chief of Staff after the resignation of Stephen Carter. In 2010, after David Cameron became Prime Minister, Heywood was replaced as Chief of Staff by Edward Llewellyn and as Principal Private Secretary by James Bowler. He returned to the civil service and was subsequently appointed the first Downing Street Permanent Secretary, a role created with the purpose of liaising between the Cabinet Secretary and the Chief of Staff within the Cabinet Office.

Cabinet Secretary

On 11 October 2011 it was announced that he would replace Sir Gus O'Donnell as the Cabinet Secretary, the highest-ranked official in Her Majesty's Civil Service, upon the latter's retirement in January 2012. It was also announced that Heywood would not concurrently hold the roles of Head of the Home Civil Service and Permanent Secretary for the Cabinet Office, as would usually be the case. These positions instead went to Sir Bob Kerslake and Ian Watmore respectively. On 1 January 2012, Heywood was knighted and officially made Cabinet Secretary. In July 2014 it was announced that Kerslake would step down and Heywood would take the title of Head of the HCS. As of September 2015, Heywood was paid a salary of between £195,000 and £199,999, making him one of the 328 most highly paid people in the British public sector at that time.

Heywood said in a blog that the "civil service did its job" and was "scrupulous" during the referendum, producing work "as we should, at pace and with accuracy". It comes after officials were accused by Eurosceptics of promoting "Project Fear" during the EU referendum in a bid to keep Britain in the European Union. Iain Duncan Smith said: "There was huge pressure from Government and lines got blurred and broken. "But after purdah [which restricted civil servants] there was no question that the civil service was more comfortable being able to say no." Sir Jeremy also admitted that the civil service will have to "go up a gear or two" as it seeks to unwind decades worth of EU laws and regulations.

Honours

Heywood was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 2008, before being made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2012 New Year Honours. The Parliamentary Public Administration Committee cited the example of Heywood's knighthood as an automatic honour granted due to his position and not for exceptional service.

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