£250,000 pay-off for Civil Service mandarin ‘ousted by Cummings’

BRITAIN’S top civil servant will walk away with a pay-off of nearly £ 50,000.

Sir Mark Sedwill will get £ 48,189 when he steps down later this year from his dual role as Cabinet Secretary and national security adviser.

It follows a power struggle with the Prime Minister’s aide Dominic Cummings. Civil service unions have accused No10 of orchestrating ‘corrosive and cowardly’ briefings against Sir Mark.

Mr Cummings is said to have seen him as a ‘roadblock’ to a Whitehall shakeup. Sir Mark, 55, who has more than 30 years of Government service, yesterday hit out at ‘unpleasant’ off-the-record briefings and ‘sniping’ as he addressed MPs. He called them a ‘regrettable feature of modern politics’.

He denied ‘resigning’, saying he had agreed with Boris Johnson to quit.

Former civil service chief Lord Kerslake had accused Mr Johnson of trying to make Sir Mark the ‘fall guy’ for the

Government’s failures in handling the pandemic. And former Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell suggested the Prime Minister wanted to surround himself with ‘yes men’.

Mr Johnson has sought to play down claims that Sir Mark’s position was undermined by hostile Press briefings.

He insisted Sir Mark, who will continue to be involved in the preparations for the UK taking on the presidency of the G7 next year, still had ‘a lot to offer’. Sir Mark was asked about briefings against him by MPs yesterday. In a parting shot, he told the joint national security strategy committee: ‘It is never pleasant to find oneself in the midst of stories of that kind. We appear to be in an era where some of us are fair game in the media.’