Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister The Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister is a senior official in the British Civil Service who acts as Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The holder of this office is traditionally the head of the Prime Minister's Office. In the Civil Service, the role is currently graded as a Director-General. To date, no woman has ever occupied the office. In fiction, the character of Bernard Woolley in the television series "Yes, Prime Minister", occupied this post. The current Principal Private Secretary is Peter Hill, who was
Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service Minister for the Civil Service. Lord Diplock said the following: Lord Roskill said the following. The courts have traditionally been unwilling to subject prerogative powers to judicial review. Judges were only willing to state whether powers existed or not, not whether they had been used appropriately. They therefore applied only the first of the Wednesbury tests; whether the use was illegal. Constitutional scholars such as William Blackstone would have considered this appropriate. The GCHQ case, therefore, was highly important; it held that the application of judicial review would be dependent on the nature of the government's powers, not their source.