Cabinet Secretary Salaries
After I recently summarised trends in civil service salaries, I thought it might be interesting to see what had happened to the earnings of Cabinet Secretaries. This chart summarises the result of my researches so far:
In short, there seems to have been a discontinuity when Jeremy Heywood succeeded Gus O’Donnell in 2011, with gentle downward pressure on salaries both before and afterwards.
One reason for the salary reduction might have been that it was decided that Sir Jeremy would not concurrently hold the roles of Head of the Home Civil Service and Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office as was previously the case. These positions instead went to Sir Bob Kerslake and Ian Watmore respectively. This certainly suited Sir Jeremy who had very little management experience (and little interest in ‘operations’) but was a brilliant fixer. But three salaries replaced one, with consequences for the Cabinet Secretary.
Sir Jeremy (as he then was) succeeded Bob Kerslake (so those two roles were re-combined) when the latter retired a couple of years later.
Ian Watmore was quickly succeeded by John Manzoni who also became Chief Executive of the Civil Service, reporting to the Cabinet Secretary. Mr Manzoni was in turn succeeded by Alex Chisholm and the post renamed Chief Operating Officer .
Detail
Wikipedia’s list of Cabinet Secretaries is here.
The salary data from 2010-2022 in the above charts come from the annual Cabinet Office reports of senior officials 'high earners' salaries. (I sampled every second year and used the maximum figure in the reported pay ranges. The ranges never exceeded £5k.) Before that …
I have not been able to identify any salary data for Richard Wilson or his predecessors. Such information would be very welcome - by email, please.
Ricard Wilson’s successor, Andrew Turnbull was appointed within very wide salary band (£145-245k). I have assumed that he was paid £210k (£332k in 2022 prices).
Gus O’Donnell was then appointed within a salary band of up to £264k, and was actually paid £235-240k in 2010.
Jeremy Heywood’s starting salary was much lower (£190-195k) and the equivalent figure for Simon Case was £200-205k.
Note
I am uncomfortably aware that I may have misunderstood or misinterpreted the above data. This is a new research field for me. So please do let me have any corrections or additional data asap. I will then update this Substack so, if you have found this Substack to be particularly interesting, or if you want to quote it, you might like to revisit it in a few days time so as to access any revised material.