Sir John Michael Medlicott Vereker, KCB, KStJ, FRSA (born 9 August 1944) is a former British civil servant who served as Permanent Secretary for International Development (1994-2002) and Governor of Bermuda (2002-2007). Family and education Sir John Vereker is the younger son of Commander Charles William Medlicott Vereker (1903-1995) and Marjorie Hughes Whatley (d. 1984) and is a descendant of the second Viscount Gort. He was educated at Marlborough College, from which he won a scholarship to the University of Keele, graduating in 1967. He married in 1971 and has two children with his wife, Judy. Career UK civil service After university, Vereker joined the newly formed Ministry of Overseas Development. He moved to the World Bank, working under Robert McNamara from 1969 to 1972. After returning to the Ministry of Overseas Development, he was appointed private secretary to three Labour Cabinet Ministers - Reg Prentice, Frank Judd and Judith Hart. In 1980, he was invited by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to join her staff in 10 Downing Street, where he served for three years as a member of the small three-person policy unit established by Sir John Hoskyns, working on public sector pay, the labour market and industrial disputes. He helped to establish the feasibility of withstanding a miner's strike, and when the detailed strategy defined by the policy unit was successfully followed, the foundation of the labour market reforms of the 1980s had been laid. On his return to international development in 1993, Vereker served as Under Secretary for Asia and then as Finance Director. From 1988 to 1993, he was Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education and Science, responsible for higher education and science. He was instrumental in doubling the higher education participation rate from 14% to 28%, transforming the old-style polytechnics into universities, establishing the UK's first student loans scheme and restructuring the UK's Research Councils. Permanent Secretary for International Development (1994-2002) In his time as Permanent Secretary, Sir John led the transformation of the Overseas Development Administration from a self-contained enclave of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office into the fully fledged and highly respected Department for International Development (DFID). He played a leading role in the establishment of the international development targets, which were subsequently adopted as the Millennium Development Goals, and in coordinating the international humanitarian responses to the conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Shortly before he left DFID, the Prime