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 (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 Cabinet Office 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 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, home secretary 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 in Iraq and the Hutton Inquiry into the suicide of MoD weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly. Sir Richard retired from the Civil