Sir Douglas William Gretton Wass (15 April 1923 – 4 January 2017) was a British civil servant who served as
Permanent Secretary to
HM Treasury
His Majesty's Treasury (HM Treasury), occasionally referred to as the Exchequer, or more informally the Treasury, is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for developing and executing the government's public finance policy and ...
from 1974 to 1983.
He was educated at
Nottingham High School
, motto_translation = Praise to the end
, address = Waverley Mount
, city = Nottingham
, county = Nottinghamshire
, postcode = NG7 4ED
, country = England
, coordinates =
, type = Independent day school
, established =
, closed =
, religious ...
and
St John's College, Cambridge.
[‘WASS, Sir Douglas (William Gretton)’, '' Who's Who 2012'', A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2011 ; online edn, Nov 201]
accessed 8 March 2012
/ref>
Wass was Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury from 1974 to 1983 and served as joint head of the civil service following the retirement of Sir Ian Bancroft in 1981 until his own retirement.
He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I of Great Britain, George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved Bathing#Medieval ...
(CB) in 1971, elevated to Knight Commander (KCB) in 1975 and further elevated to Knight Grand Cross (GCB) in 1980. In 1985, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) by the University of Bath
(Virgil, Georgics II)
, mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind
, established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...
.
In 1983, Sir Douglas presented the annual BBC Reith Lectures
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribu ...
. In a series of six lectures titled ''Government and the Governed'', he examined the role and responsibilities of government.
Wass died on 4 January 2017 at the age of 93.Sir Douglas Wass obituary
/ref>
References
External links
* BBC Radio 4
The Reith Lectures 1983 - Government and the Governed
* Podcast
Reith Lectures Archive 1976 - 2010
5 Part Radio Interview with Sir Douglas Wass on BBC, ''Douglas Wass: Government and the Governed: 1983
1923 births
2017 deaths
Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
People educated at Nottingham High School
Permanent Secretaries of HM Treasury
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