Her Majesty's Home Civil Service, also known as Her Majesty's Civil Service or the Home Civil Service, is the permanent bureaucracy or secretariat of Crown employees that supports Her Majesty's Government, which is led by a cabinet of ministers chosen by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as two of the three devolved administrations: the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government, but not the Northern Ireland Executive.
The Scottish Government is the devolved government of Scotland. It was formed in 1999 as the Scottish Executive following the 1997 referendum on Scottish devolution.
The Welsh Government is the devolved government of Wales. The government consists of ministers, who attend cabinet meetings, and deputy ministers who do not, and also of a counsel general. It is led by the first minister, usually the leader of the largest party in the Senedd, who selects ministers and deputy ministers with the approval of the Senedd. The government is responsible for tabling policy in devolved areas for consideration by the Senedd and implementing policy that has been approved by it.
A cabinet secretary is usually a senior official who provides services and advice to a cabinet of ministers as part of the Cabinet Office. In many countries, the position can have considerably wider functions and powers, including general responsibility for the entire civil service.
A private secretary (PS) is a civil servant in a governmental department or ministry, responsible to a secretary of state or minister; or a public servant in a royal household, responsible to a member of the royal family.
Sir Sumantra "Suma" Chakrabarti is a former British civil servant who served as president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) from July 2012 to July 2020. He was previously the highest ranking Indian in Britain's civil service, serving as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery from late 2007 until 2012.
The Northern Ireland Civil Service is the permanent bureaucracy of employees that supports the Northern Ireland Executive, the devolved government of Northern Ireland.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is a ministerial department of the United Kingdom Government headed by the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. Its stated priorities are to reduce re-offending and protect the public, to provide access to justice, to increase confidence in the justice system, and uphold people's civil liberties. The Secretary of State is the minister responsible to Parliament for the judiciary, the court system and prisons and probation in England and Wales, with some additional UK-wide responsibilities e.g. the UK Supreme Court and judicial appointments by the Crown. The department is also responsible for areas of constitutional policy not transferred in 2010 to the Deputy Prime Minister, human rights law and information rights law across the UK.
The Ministerial Code is a document setting out "rules" and standards for government ministers in the United Kingdom. Separate codes exist for ministers of the Scottish Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Government.
Mark Philip Sedwill, Baron Sedwill, is a British diplomat and senior civil servant who served as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service to Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson from 2018 to 2020. He also served as the United Kingdom National Security Adviser from 2017 to 2020. He was previously the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010 and the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan in 2010. He was the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office from February 2013 to April 2017.
Dame Ursula Brennan is a retired British civil servant and a former Permanent Secretary at the United Kingdom's Ministry of Justice where she was also the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery.
James Edward Bowler CB is a senior British civil servant currently serving as the permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade since 2021. Before assuming this role, Bowler was the second permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office from 2020 to 2021 where he led the COVID Taskforce for the British Government. He was the Director General for Policy, Communication and Analysis at the Ministry of Justice from March to October 2020. Bowler is currently Trustee of the charity Police Now.
Sir Richard Nicholas Heaton, KCB is a barrister and former senior British civil servant who was the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery from September 2015 until resigning in August 2020. He had previously served as Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, and First Parliamentary Counsel. He currently serves as Warden of Robinson College, Cambridge.
Leslie Evans was the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government. In this role, Evans was the principal policy adviser to the First Minister and Secretary to the Scottish Cabinet. Evans was the senior civil servant in Scotland and led more than 5,000 civil servants working for the Scottish Government, supporting development, implementation and communication of government policies, in accordance with the Civil Service Code. At a UK level, she was a member of the Civil Service Board. She was succeeded as Permanent Secretary by John-Paul Marks CB on 5 January 2022.
Simon Case is a British civil servant who is the current Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service since 9 September 2020, succeeding Sir Mark Sedwill.
Jonathan Slater has been a high ranking British civil servant. From May 2016, he was Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education until his abrupt dismissal on 26 August 2020 following a controversy over national school examination grades.
Antonia Rebecca Caroline Romeo is a British civil servant. She is currently serving as the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. She was the permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade and before that, the British consul-general in New York for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and concurrently director-general for economic and commercial affairs in the USA.
Susan Gray is a British civil servant who in May 2021 became Second Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office, reporting to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Helen Towers is a former senior British civil servant who served as the Deputy Cabinet Secretary in the Cabinet Office from 2020 to 2021. She had previously worked as Director General for Propriety and Ethics in the Cabinet Office between 2018 and 2020. Before then she was the Director General for Housing and Planning in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. As a Director in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport she worked on the London 2012 Olympic bid and staging of the 2012 Summer Olympics. Earlier in her career she worked as Principal Private Secretary to Tessa Jowell and was responsible for setting up the Leveson Inquiry into British media ethics and the subsequent cross-party response.
A permanent under-secretary of state, known informally as a permanent secretary, is the most senior civil servant of a ministry in the United Kingdom, charged with running the department on a day-to-day basis. Similar offices, often employing different terms, exist in many other Westminster-style systems and in some other governments. In the United States, the equivalent position is a Deputy Secretary of an executive department, though British permanent secretaries are career civil servants.
