“What dreadful timing ! They've b*ggered a perfectly good article!”

There you are. I had just written a terribly witty piece based on the rumour I had heard that the new chief executive of HMRC would be a woman and just before it could hit the site they went and made the announcement and it wasn’t Moira Stuart at all.

Mike Clasper (remember him ? he’s the non-executive chair) had this to say

“Lesley Strathie is currently chief executive of Jobcentre Plus and will take up her new post with HMRC in early November. Lesley has an excellent track record for good management and effective delivery and I am looking forward to working with her in the future.”

Since October 2005 Ms Strathie has been the chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, having arrived at that post by working her way up through the Department – or more precisely departments, since what she had originally joined as a Clerical Officer in 1974 (after 3 years as a temp with DHSS from when she was 16) was then the Department of Employment and she worked in Unemployment Benefit offices in the west of Scotland. So she will have seen the sharp end of civil service work dealing with Thatcher’s dismantling of the coal mining industry.

She is also head of profession for operational delivery (sorry, I don’t know what that means either) and second permanent secretary of DWP, and since April has joined the Government Skills Strategy Board.

In an interview for Civil Service Network she said that early on she had, “discovered that people need someone to listen to them, help them fill in forms and I felt I could make that difference.”

To which one of her more junior colleagues has commented, “Those were the days ..... when there was time to help our customers in that way. Real life' on the front line does not reflect this rather charming sentiment any longer.”
While searching for information I also found that she was the last Dux at Stranraer Academy before the school became a comprehensive and told the Free Press in 2003:

"I had one job application and apart from applying for promotion, that has been me since 10th December 1971. I have lived all around the country including the Home Counties and London, all from that six-week contract."

Frankly, most of this looks like good news. A career civil servant who remembers life on the front line is what HMRC needs. It does look as though reviving the way in which HMRC delivers (or doesn’t) will be at the top of the agenda.