Robert Devereux Permanent Secretary Plans to Retire January 15th from The DWP

Robert joined the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as Permanent Secretary in January 2011 having been Permanent Secretary at the Department of Transport from May 2007.

Amazingly during his tenure, The department’s headcount has reduced by some 50,000 since the 2010 to 2011 financial year, and operating costs are now £2.9 billion a year lower than 2010 to 2011.

Permanent Secretary, Robert Devereux, said:

I am very proud of all that my 84,000 colleagues in DWP have achieved. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to lead them. While reforming nearly every part of the welfare state, they have radically improved our customer service and worked relentlessly to improve the lives of the millions of people we serve.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, David Gauke, said:

On behalf of all the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions whom he has served as Permanent Secretary, I want to thank Robert for his leadership of and commitment to the department over the last 7 years.

He has been instrumental in steering DWP through a period of great change – including the roll-out and expansion of Universal Credit throughout the country – and he leaves the department in good shape for the future.

Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, Sir Jeremy Heywood, said:

Robert has led DWP through some of the biggest reforms in recent years and can be truly proud of what he and the department have achieved.

Thanks to his hard work and dedication, DWP has become significantly more effective over the last 7 years.

I am grateful to Robert for the role he has played across government and I have valued his wise counsel and support over the years. I wish him the very best for his retirement.

The Cabinet Office will announce arrangements for a successor in due course. Robert Devereux will be retiring from the Civil Service on his 61st birthday on 15 January 2018.

ABC Note: At the DWP Robert Devereux has led the organisation as it introduced the biggest reforms to welfare and pensions for a generation, including:

• Universal Credit
• the new State Pension
• automatic enrolment into a workplace pension
• the new Child Maintenance Service
• the Personal Independence Payment
• Together with the day to day operation of a system supporting 20 million customers, these reforms coincide with:
• a record employment rate of 75.3%, and a record 32.14 million people in work
• unemployment at its lowest rate since 1975
• a record low number of workless households
• 608,000 fewer children living in workless households since 2010
• a rise in the proportion of people saving for retirement

Critics will point to the failed Work Programme and its exploitation of the unemployed. The lying and false claims by the DWP to customers - the scrapping of an expensive computer programme - chronic Universal Credit problems and rollout delays and a large number of unnecessary deaths from suicides and carelessness due to benefits sanctions and the ATOS, PIP assessments. Huge numbers of DWP decisions getting overturned at tribunal; 40,000 mobility scooters being taken away, and a willingness to ignore criticism from church leaders, NGO’s, psychologists and medical people, even at times the DWP's own consultants. A rise in child poverty and a massive rise in homelessness, the poor lying in doorways as numerous as the dead on a battlefield.  The willingness to preside over a culture of cruelty and dishonesty by an organisation that is meant to be helping people. History may not look on Robert Devereux, Lord Freud and Iain Duncan Smith in the same rosy terms as they would like to be remembered. Time will tell.

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