Permanent Secretary to the Treasury

The UK Permanent Secretary to the Treasury is the most senior civil servant at HM Treasury. The post originated as that of Assistant Secretary to the Treasury in 1805; that office was given new duties and renamed in 1867 as a Permanent Secretaryship.
The position is generally regarded as the second most influential in His Majesty's Civil Service; Andrew Turnbull and Gus O'Donnell were Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury who then became Cabinet Secretary, the most influential post.
Previous incumbents have not always maintained the political neutrality expected of civil servants; in 1909 Sir George Murray was involved in lobbying various Crossbench peers in the House of Lords to reject the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposed budget. In 2014, during the Scottish Independence referendum campaign, Sir Nicholas Macpherson broke with convention by publishing private advice to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. The decision to publish was later criticised for compromising the impartiality of the Civil Service.

Assistant Secretaries to the Treasury

Since March 2009, Sir Tom Scholar had served as the Treasury's Second Permanent Secretary. The post of Head of the Government Economic Service was held by Sir Nicholas Stern until June 2007, then jointly held until 2010 by Vicky Pryce, Chief Economist at BIS, and Dave Ramsden, Managing Director, Macroeconomic and Fiscal Policy Directorate. Dave Ramsden was then sole head from 2010 to 2017.