Permanent Under Secretary

The Permanent Secretary, in most departments officially titled the Permanent Under-secretary of State or PUS (although the full title is rarely used), is the most senior civil servant of a British Government ministry, charged with running the department on a day-to-day basis.

Permanent Secretaries (known by other names in some departments; see below) are the non-political civil service heads (and "accounting officers") or chief executives of government departments, who generally hold their position for a number of years (thus "permanent") at a ministry as distinct from the changing political Secretaries of State to whom they report and provide advice.

When Lord Grey took office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1830, Sir John Barrow was especially requested to continue serving as Secretary in his department (the Admiralty), starting the principle that senior civil servants stay in office on change of government and serve in a non-partisan manner. It was during Barrow's occupancy of the post that it was renamed “Permanent Secretary”.

Permanent secretaries are the accounting officers for departments, meaning that they are answerable to Parliament for ensuring that the department spends money granted by Parliament appropriately. Permanent secretaries are thus frequently called for questioning by the Public Accounts Committee and Select Committees of the House of Commons. The permanent secretary usually chairs a department's management board which consists of executive members (other civil servants in the department) and non-executive directors. In the 1960s the permanent secretary to Tony Benn when he was Secretary of State for Industry was Peter Carey. After Benn spent government money on worker co-operatives, notably a motorbike company (Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative), Carey went before the Public Accounts Committee and expressed the opinion that his minister's expenditure had been ultra vires. Benn was soon moved to the Department of Energy, while Peter Carey received a knighthood in the following Honours List.

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