Here is the result in plain text:
Sir Keir Starmer has appointed Sir Chris Wormald as his Cabinet Secretary – the head of the civil service and one of the most powerful jobs in government.
Announcing the appointment, the prime minister said he wanted a “complete re-wiring of the British state” and that there was “no-one better placed” to do that than Sir Chris.
As someone who has worked for the civil service since the early 1990s, Sir Chris has plenty of civil service experience.
Depending on your perspective, that either makes him an ideal candidate who understands how to fix the system’s problems or an establishment figure, wedded to the status quo.
His appointment was greeted with delight by Lord Jim Bethell, a former health minister who worked with Sir Chris during the Covid pandemic.
Sir Chris has already given evidence on three separate occasions to the public inquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis.
In November 2023, the Covid inquiry published text messages he exchanged with his then-boss, Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill.
These were sent on 12 March 2020, less than two weeks before the country entered its first national lockdown.
In the messages, Lord Sedwill wrote: “Presumably like chickenpox we want people to get it and develop herd immunity before the next wave. We just want them not to get it all at once and preferably when it’s warm and dry.”
Sir Chris replied: “Exactly right. We make the point every meeting, they don’t quite get it.”
Around that time, the government was forced to deny it had a plan to develop so-called herd immunity by accepting that younger, fitter people would catch the virus.
Asked about this at the time, Sir Chris accepted he had been “very, very loose” in his language but was, in reality, following scientific advice.
Sir Chris has also been accused of being “deeply embedded” in the infected blood scandal and repeatedly telling ministers “untruths about the documents”.
In 2018, he wrote letters of apology after it emerged two former health ministers were incorrectly told all documents linked to infected blood had been placed in the National Archives, when campaigners later established that was not the case.
Three years later, in 2021, Sir Chris recused himself from any decisions related to the scandal.
It later emerged that his father, Peter, who was also a Department of Health official from 1978 to 1981, was involved in meetings and decisions related to Britain’s Blood Products Laboratory and had provided written evidence to the infected blood inquiry.
Overall, Sir Chris’s appointment is seen as a major step towards re-wiring the British state, but some officials are concerned about his past track record and his role in the infected blood scandal.
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