Is David Williams the MoD's fall guy?

Spectator

13 hours ago

Yesterday the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed that its permanent secretary, David Williams, will be stepping down in a matter of weeks. He has served for just over four years, almost exactly the average tenure of his predecessors since the department was created in 1964, but it is difficult to regard the timing as a coincidence. It is still not yet three weeks since the catastrophic loss of data on Afghan nationals and others, and the MoD's use of a super-injunction, were disclosed to parliament by defence secretary John Healey.
Williams is not explicitly being sacked: permanent secretaries very rarely are. The Ministry of Defence is being very careful and measured in its language to refer to his impending departure: according to the BBC, Healey had a 'conversation' with Williams before the Afghan data loss story became public knowledge, and 'made clear that this was the right time to make a change'.
There is a plausible argument that we should not draw a line directly from the data loss to Williams's departure. The MoD has also briefed that this is 'an appropriate time for a transition' of leadership; under Healey's Defence Reform programme, the senior levels of the Ministry of Defence have been rearranged and streamlined into a 'leadership quad' which will supervise all aspects of defence policy and the armed forces.
This is the biggest reorganisation of the MoD for half a century, and it need not be any reflection on Williams that he chooses to step down before implementing the reforms in full, or that the defence secretary would prefer a fresh approach and a new top civil servant. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton will be taking over as Chief of the Defence Staff next month, while the recruitment for a permanent national armaments director is taking longer than expected. While Madelaine McTernan, Chief of Defence Nuclear, has been in post since 2022, replacing Williams at this stage could make sense.
Equally, Williams's departure could be seen as part of a wave of changes at permanent secretary level which often happen in the first year or so of a new government. Simon Case (Cabinet Secretary), Sir Matthew Rycroft (Home Office), Dame Tamara Finkelstein (Defra), Sir Philip Barton (FCDO), Dame Bernadette Kelly (Transport), Sarah Munby (DSIT) and Sir Jim Harra (HMRC) have all left the civil service within the past 12 months.
And yet… while the MoD is making no explicit connection between Williams's departure and the data loss, it is hard to escape the feeling that we are being invited to join the dots, and that the permanent secretary is an expiatory offering to the political gods. The whole scandal did, after all, take place on his watch, and he was in charge of the overall management and leadership of the Ministry of Defence, as well as formally being principal accounting officer responsible to parliament.
The MoD should under no circumstances be allowed to wipe the slate clean with Williams's departure. There is still a great deal we do not know about the Afghan data loss scandal, though the Intelligence and Security Committee, the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Public Accounts Committee will all be inquiring into the issue. But Williams – whatever his individual culpability – cannot be the fall guy.
Even based on what we currently know, the MoD has a shameful inability to prevent the loss of secret data, and data breaches have increased threefold over the past five years. There is also a systemic lack of accountability, particularly in relation to a number of disastrous equipment procurement projects. The readiness with which the department accepted the comfort blanket of a super-injunction for nearly two years speaks to a deeply ingrained culture of secrecy and dislike of scrutiny.
The Ministry of Defence is secretive, inefficient, unaccountable and almost pathologically unable to learn from its mistakes. That has been common currency in defence circles for decades, but the Afghan data loss cut through to the consciousness of the wider public. There is now a major issue of public trust, already a rare, valuable but rapidly disappearing commodity.
If ministers try to usher Williams off stage, bring in a new permanent secretary and assume that previous disasters can then be written off, they must have their feet held to the fire. This is not a failing individual. This is an ingrained, systemic, cultural malaise. And it has to be fixed.