Senior civil servant during tumultuous times in Whitehall
SIR BRIAN BENDER, who has died aged 72, displayed one of the safest pairs of hands in Whitehall as permanent secretary at three departments, two of which – Maff (the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) and the Department of Trade and Industry – were reorganised under his leadership.
He was briefly second permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office before being appointed in 2000 to Maff, whose performance was causing concern. Matters came to a head the following year with a devastating outbreak of foot and mouth disease, which heightened doubts over Maff ’s competence and forced the 2001 general election to be postponed for a month.
The outbreak was a searing experience for Bender, but he reckoned that two good things came out of it: creation of the civil contingencies secretariat in the Cabinet Office to deal with such crises, and the establishment of a “corporate memory” of how to respond to challenges of that magnitude.
After the election, Tony Blair ordered Maff ’s incorporation into a Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Margaret Beckett replacing the agriculture minister Nick Brown. The department was relaunched as Defra (nicknamed “Deathra” by Mrs Beckett) in 2002, Bender making the process happen.
In 2005 Bender took over from Sir Robin Young as permanent secretary at the DTI, which Blair decided should be reorganised as the Department for Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform (BERR). His choice of title was “Productivity, Energy and Industry” – until the secretary of state Alan Johnson pointed out that it would inevitably be referred to as “Penis”.
Succeeding Blair in 2007, Gordon Brown ordered further changes at the DTI, with some of its functions being lost; by then John Hutton was the minister in charge. The financial crisis of 2007-08 led to hefty staff reductions, Bender concluding that if ministers wanted more, programmes would have to be halted. But he managed to damp down high-level discussion of whether his department was needed at all.
He left BERR on retiring from the Civil Service in 2009, and, soon after, the
department was reorganised again. Bender admitted to being “not a great fan” of the process, confiding: “If a PM were to ask my advice I’d say: ‘Only do it where there’s a real case for it’.”
Brian Geoffrey Bender was born on February 25 1949, one of two sons of the nutritionist Professor Arnold Bender and the former Deborah Swift. From Greenford Grammar School in Ealing he read Physics at Imperial College, staying on to take a PHD.
He joined the Department of Trade in 1973, recalling in retirement: “I was issued on day one with a towel and a piece of soap, and it’s hard to believe now but when you went to the Gents you took them with you.”
In 1976 he was appointed private secretary to the secretary of state, Edmund Dell. The next year he was posted to Britain’s mission to the EEC (Ukrep) in Brussels as a first secretary, handling trade policy. Two years at the DTI dealing with international steel issues followed before he returned to Ukrep in 1985 as counsellor for industry.
Bender moved to the Cabinet Office in 1990 as deputy head of its European secretariat, his tenure punctuated by a year back at the DTI as head of regional development. In 1998 he moved up to be head of public service delivery at the Cabinet Office, then in 1999 he was appointed second permanent secretary.
He chaired the London Metal Exchange from 2010 to 2019, and Water UK from 2015. He chaired an advisory committee for Honda’s European arm, and was a director of the Financial Reporting Council and a governor of Dulwich College.
He was appointed CB in 1998, and KCB in 2003.
Brian Bender married Penelope Clark in 1974; she survives him with their daughter and son.