01 February 2002
Impatient with the pace of Whitehall reform under the existing hierarchy, some of Tony Blair's most senior aides want to split Wilson's job by appointing a business figure to head the civil service. The role of Cabinet secretary would remain with a civil service insider.
Although Blair has yet to decide, officials say the idea has lost ground because of fears that a chief mandarin who was cut off from the prime minister would lack clout in Whitehall.
'It would be needlessly antagonistic. There is no shortage of outsiders in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office,' said a senior insider.
The First Division Association, the mandarins' trade union, has warned ministers that officials are 'very sceptical' about outsiders with no experience of the way the civil service works. 'It would be seen as a vote of no confidence in the existing senior management of the service,' said FDA general secretary Jonathan Baume.
Among senior civil servants, the race for the top job remains wide open. Wilson is said to favour Sir David Omand, 54, the former Home Office and GCHQ spy chief. Omand stepped down last year with cancer but is now recovering. Modernisers say he is too conservative, however.
Also being tipped is Richard Broadbent, 48, the Customs and Excise chairman, whose management shake-up of his department has impressed Blairites. As a former corporate finance chief at Schroders, the investment bank, Broadbent is an insider who might be acceptable to modernisers.
'He would be the perfect compromise, but doesn't have the policy grounding of a traditional Cabinet secretary,' said one senior official.
Holyrood civil service chief Sir Muir Russell, 53, whose handling of devolution has impressed ministers, is another possibility.
Treasury chief Sir Andrew Turnbull is highly rated but, at 57, is just three years from retirement, while transport's Sir Richard Mottram has seen his chances dented by his department's handling of the Railtrack collapse and the Jo Moore controversy.
The only woman in the race, work and pensions permanent secretary Rachel Lomax, 56, is said to be 'unenthusiastic' about the job.
PFfeb2002
