Gieve admits testing times as marching orders arrive

The resignation of Sir John Gieve will mark the end of a curtailed and controversial tenure as the Bank of England’s deputy governor.

Last year he was accused of sleeping on the job during the Northern Rock fiasco in a stinging attack from the Treasury Select Committee.

But it was not the first time he had to weather a political storm, having previously survived a 30-year career in the civil service punctuated by scandal.

His tenure as Home Office permanent secretary from 2001/05 included the David Blunkett visa affair and the foreign prisoner deportation row.

He and other civil servants were criticised by Opposition MPs for failing to recall how the visa for Mr Blunkett’s ex-lover’s nanny came to be fast-tracked.

But Sir Alan Budd, who led an inquiry into the affair, said he had no reason to believe anyone involved had deliberately withheld information.

Sir John also apologised to MPs for failing to spot the scale of the foreign prisoner crisis.

He was also heavily criticised just weeks into his Bank job for the Home Office’s failure to compile proper accounts.

But last year’s savaging from John McFall, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, over the handling of Northern Rock, was perhaps the most stinging blow.

Mr McFall told Sir John: “Frankly, I do not think you are doing your job”.

Educated at Charterhouse, Sir John, aged 57, gained a first in PPE at Oxford before joining the Department of Employment in 1974.

He spent 20 years at the Treasury where he served as private secretary to Chancellors Nigel Lawson, John Major and Norman Lamont and was in charge of the first two spending reviews led by Gordon Brown.

He was appointed Bank of England deputy Governor in January 2006, sparking concerns in the City that his Whitehall credentials could threaten the Bank’s independence from government.

In a message to staff when his departure from the Home Office was announced, Sir John, who was knighted in 2004, described his time at the department as “one of the most testing times of my life”.

Sir John is married with two sons.