Sir Richard Clive Mottram (born 23 April 1946) is a former British civil servant, who retired in 2007 from his most recent senior post as

Permanent Secretary A permanent secretary is the most senior Civil Service (United Kingdom), civil servant of a department or Ministry (government department), ministry charged with running the department or ministry's day-to-day activities. Permanent secretaries are ...

, Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the

Cabinet Office The Cabinet Office is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister and Cabinet ...

. He has served on the boards of a number of private and public sector organisations, including chairing the boards of Amey PLC from 2008-17 and of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) from 2008-2014. He was a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation from 1996-2019 and served on its Council of Management. He was a visiting professor in the department of government at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from 2008-21. He is chair of the advisory board of the LSE's foreign policy think tank (LSE IDEAS) and lectures on its Executive Masters course and other LSE courses. He is a trustee of the Royal Anniversary Trust, which oversees The Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education.

Education and early career

Mottram was educated at King Edward VI Camp Hill School in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

. He entered the central government civil service in 1968 aged 22 with a first class degree in

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from Keele University. From 1975 until 1977, he served in the Defence and Overseas Secretariat of the

. He was then the secretary of two study groups on the rationale for and system options for a successor to the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent which led subsequently to the decision to adopt Trident. He was then appointed private secretary to the permanent under secretary, MOD: Sir Frank Cooper. From 1982 to 1986, he was private secretary to a succession of Secretaries of State for Defence - John Nott,

Michael Heseltine Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, (; born 21 March 1933) is a British politician. Having begun his career as a property developer, he became one of the founders of the publishing house Haymarket Media Group in 1957. Heseltine se ...

and the late George Younger. He was Heseltine's Private Secretary at the time of his resignation in 1986 over the Westland affair. In 1985, as private secretary to

, the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, he was a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Clive Ponting, who was later acquitted of an offence under section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 for passing information to Labour MP Tam Dalyell about the sinking of the Belgrano during the

Falklands War The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...

. When asked whether answers to parliamentary questions should be truthful and not deliberately ambiguous or misleading, there was a long silence before he replied: "In highly charged political matters, one person's ambiguity may be another person's truth". From 1986 to 1989, he was the Under-secretary responsible for the defence programme, and from 1989 to 1992, the Deputy Secretary with responsibilities for UK defence policy and strategy, and defence relations with other countries at the time of the end of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. He was the architect of the "Options for Change' Defence Review.

Multi-purpose Permanent Secretary

After this, in 1992, he was appointed as a

, first at the Office of Public Service and Science in the

. His responsibilities there included public service change, Civil Service management questions, and science and technology policy and the science budget. In 1995, he became Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, where he worked on, among other things, the Labour Government's Strategic Defence Review. In 1998, he became permanent secretary at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. Mottram's tenure at DETR saw important developments in environmental policy and the publication of White papers on Urban and rural policy. A 10-year transport plan was developed building on the 1998 White paper on Integrated transport. One aspect of transport — railways — tended to dominate in the media. New institutional arrangements were introduced with a Strategic Rail Authority alongside the Rail Regulator but the appointments by John Prescott of Sir Alastair Morton as chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority and Tom Winsor as Rail Regulator proved an unhappy partnership, which ended in 2001 when Morton resigned and was replaced by Richard Bowker. Mottram's term also saw the rail crashes at

Ladbroke Grove Ladbroke Grove ( ) is a road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, which passes through Kensal Green and Notting Hill, running north–south between Harrow Road and Holland Park Avenue. It is also the name of the sur ...

, Hatfield and

Potters Bar Potters Bar is a town in Hertfordshire, England,in the historic County of Middlesex Hertsmere Borough Council – Community Strategy First Review (PDF) north of central London. In 2011, it had a population of 21,882.Railtrack got into serious financial difficulties after the Hatfield rail crash in October 2000, and on 7 October 2001 was put into administration on the petition of the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions Stephen Byers MP in very controversial circumstances. Mottram was closely involved in the preparations for the administration of Railtrack and in July 2005 was called as a witness in the largest class legal action ever brought in the English courts, when 49,500 shareholders of Railtrack sued the Secretary of State for Transport for damages for misfeasance in public office. The case was lost because the shareholders could not prove targeted malice on the part of Stephen Byers, that is an intention maliciously to injure the shareholders. Mottram's evidence was not contested by the claimants. In his summing up the judge referred to him as a "direct, accurate and truthful" witness. On 11 September 2001, after both World Trade Center towers and

the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...

were hit in the day's terrorist attacks, a special advisor in Mottram's department, Jo Moore, sent an email to the press office of her department which read: "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?" The suggestion caused severe criticism for its insensitivity, callousness and political ineptitude. As the administrative head of the department in which Moore worked, Mottram was asked by Stephen Byers to consider whether disciplinary action should be taken against Moore. Mottram was still at the DETR in 2002 when, after further controversy over alleged "burying of bad news" involving Moore and Martin Sixsmith, the department's Director of Communications, Stephen Byers announced that both Moore and Sixsmith had decided to resign. Mottram was in the middle of negotiations with Sixsmith at the time of the Byers announcement. According to Sixsmith he said to a colleague as Byers headed to the interview studios: After Sixmith included this quote in an interview with the ''Sunday Times'' about his "resignation" it was picked up extensively in the media and tended to be reported in bowdlerised form as "f***ed", leading Tony Wright, the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee at the time, to comment to Mottram that "Our note-takers have trouble with asterisks." Sir Richard was embarrassed by the report of his remarks, and was asked about them by the House of Commons Public Administration Committee on 7 March 2002. In response, he said: "I find the subject of the remarks I am alleged to have made with the asterisks one of the most tedious subjects I have ever had to deal with ... What is actually the case is that much to my regret, actually, these remarks appeared in the newspapers, they were uttered in private to one person, with one other person in the room and they were quite clearly over the top in a number of respects, not least in describing the nature of the crisis we were engulfed in. In previous incarnations I have dealt with life and death matters where lots of people lives were at risk. I have been responsible for things to do with nuclear warfare and whatever one thinks about the events of that Friday they are not in that category. I much regret the thing was so over-hyped." Sir Richard has worked closely with a large number of Ministers and took the impartiality and professionalism of the civil service very seriously. His efforts to communicate the nature of this relationship were not, however, always successful. In his oral evidence to the House of Commons Public Administration Committee on 7 March 2002, he said He later said that he realised that this analogy was a "tremendous mistake". In May 2002, as Stephen Byers resigned as secretary of state, Mottram was moved to the

Department for Work and Pensions The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for welfare spending, welfare, pensions and child maintenance ...

(DWP) as permanent secretary. In his time at DWP, a number of innovative policies were introduced on welfare to work and pensions and the department agreed to achieve staff reductions of 40,000 posts against a starting point of 130,000 staff (full-time equivalents), much the largest efficiency-related staff saving within central government. By the time Mottram left DWP, implementation of this saving was well underway. Sir Richard moved to a strategic position at the

on 11 November 2005 as Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator (still as a permanent secretary and also as a safe pair of hands with wide experience across government). He succeeded Bill Jeffrey. He also took on the role of chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. His post was subsequently retitled as Permanent Secretary Intelligence, Security, and Resilience, Cabinet Office. In this role he acted as the accounting officer for the Single

Intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

Account, from which the three Security and Intelligence Agencies are funded. He also acted as deputy chair of the Civil Contingencies Committee, supporting the

prime minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

home secretary The secretary of state for the Home Department, more commonly known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom and the head of the Home Office. The position is a Great Office of State, maki ...

and other ministers in their role as chair and, in the event of any serious incident requiring central government coordination, acting as the Government's senior crisis manager. He was also responsible for co-ordination of the Government's counter-terrorism policy and programmes. He was made chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee at time when the credibility of the organisation needed to be re-established after intelligence reports were apparently "sexed-up" for PR purposes during the chairmanship of John Scarlett. The JIC's role had come under scrutiny in the review of the information about

weapons of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a Biological agent, biological, chemical weapon, chemical, Radiological weapon, radiological, nuclear weapon, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great dam ...

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

and the Hutton Inquiry into the suicide of MoD weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly. Sir Richard retired from the Civil Service in November 2007 when the responsibilities he held were reorganised into two posts, with the Cabinet Secretary taking on the Accounting Officer role for the Intelligence Agencies.

Other roles

Sir Richard served as a Board Member and then from 2002 to 2004 President of the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management. He was a Board Member of Ashridge Business School from 1998- 2015.

Styles and honours

Mottram was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 1998 New Year Honours and promoted to a Knight Grand Cross of the same Order in the 2006 New Year Honours.Garda Announces Creation of International Advisory Board
/ref> * Mr Richard Mottram (1946–1998) * Sir Richard Mottram, KCB (1998–2006) * Sir Richard Mottram, GCB (2006–present)

Offices held

References

'Profile: Sir Richard Mottram', ''BBC.co.uk'' (25 February 2002)
Retrieved 22 August 2005. *Norton-Taylor, Richard. 'Sir Richard Mottram, ''The Guardian'', 25 February 2002.

External links

''Debrett's People of Today''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mottram, Richard Alumni of Keele University Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Civil servants in the Cabinet Office Chairs of the Joint Intelligence Committee (United Kingdom) Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for Defence Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions Permanent Secretaries of the Cabinet Office Private secretaries in the British Civil Service Civil servants in the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) 1946 births Living people People educated at King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys