Ministers have defended the sacking of Sir Chris Wormald, the nation’s most senior civil servant, even though it meant taxpayers providing a huge payout
Keir Starmer during a visit to a community centre in Hertfordshire (Image: Getty)
A Labour minister has defended Keir Starmer’s decision to give £260,000 to a sacked civil servant – after Conservatives branded the handout “hush money”. The Prime Minister ordered the payment of taxpayers’ money to Sir Chris Wormald, the former Cabinet Secretary, as part of a plan to install a new team in Downing Street following a series of scandals.
Civil servants initially refused to make the payment, on the grounds that there was no reason for Sir Chris to be sacked, forcing Sir Keir to issue a formal “direction” overriding their concerns. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch have called the payment “hush money”, and says Sir Chris is being made a “scapegoat” for the Government’s failings. But Labour Environment Minister Emma Hardy insisted: “Of course, Kemi’s going to say things like that. That’s the usual political knockabout.”
Ms Hardy paid tribute to Sir Chris’s “35 years as a civil servant, so that’s his entire career dedicated to public service, and I’ve got a huge amount of respect for anybody who puts that much into public service.”
Sir Chris is the third bid departure from the Downing Street team, after Sir Keir’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney and former head of communications, Tim Allan.
But Ms Hardy said: “Well, I think he (Sir Keir) is keen to look at his team and make sure that we have the team we need to deliver on the priorities this year.”
Tories claimed that Sir Chris was being sacked because Sir Keir was refusing to take responsibility for scandals including the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US despite his links with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the decision to give spin doctor Matthew Doyle a seat in the House of Lords, despite his past support for a man charged with offences involving indecent images of children.
Conservatives slammed the ongoing chaos in Number 10. Leader Kemi Badenoch said: “This is a preposterous way to handle the removal of a Cabinet Secretary, extraordinary and highly inappropriate in equal measure. Chris Wormald was the Prime Minister’s own choice for Cabinet Secretary less than 14 months ago. Yet Keir Starmer is unable to explain why the man whom he told Parliament just last week would oversee the release of sensitive documents on Lord Mandelson to ensure there could be no suggestion of a ‘cover up’ has now been forced out.
“If another country was paying off a senior official in the middle of a scandal involving the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer would be calling it corruption. In this case, that senior official was literally running the investigation into the Mandelson scandal.
“Once again, the Prime Minister’s judgment is found wanting. For a man who has played holier than thou all his life, the latest series of blunders shows someone who is at best unsuited to the role or at worst morally bankrupt.”
Alex Burghart MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “There’s no way this was an amicable agreement. The Prime Minister is blaming others to save his own skin.
“Britain isn’t being governed. There’s no Cabinet Secretary, no Chief of Staff, and no Director of Communications – all because Starmer won’t take responsibility.”
Sir Chris is widely expected to be replaced by Home Office permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo, viewed by Downing Street as a “disrupter”, despite warnings from her former boss at the Foreign Office.
Lord Simon McDonald said the Prime Minister should start the recruitment process “from scratch” to ensure there was proper “due diligence”.
Dame Antonia previously faced allegations of bullying related to her time as consul-general in New York, but she was later cleared by the Cabinet Office.
Government sources have dismissed Lord McDonald’s claims, saying there was “absolutely no basis for this criticism” and calling him “a senior male official whose time has passed”.
In the meantime, Dame Antonia is one of the three civil servants filling in as Cabinet Secretary, alongside Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little and Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler.
