Education
He was educated at Street John"s College, Oxford between 1975 and 1978, before studying for a Master"s at the University of Edinburgh.
civil servant Permanent Secretary
He was educated at Street John"s College, Oxford between 1975 and 1978, before studying for a Master"s at the University of Edinburgh.
Devereux joined the Civil Service in 1979 and until 1983 he worked in the Overseas Development Administration, before working at Her Majesty Treasury until 1994. He was with the Department of Social Security between 1996 and 2001. From 2007 to 2011 Devereux was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport.
He became Permanent Secretary at the DWP on 1 January 2011.
As of 2015, Devereux was paid a salary of between £180,000 and £184,999 by the department, making him one of the 328 most highly paid people in the British public sector at that time. In 2013 it was reported Sir Jeremy Heywood informed the Prime Minister that he was concerned about the “concerted political briefing campaign” against Robert Devereux over failures in the Government’s Universal Cr programme.
He is understood to have made clear that he did not believe Devereux should be singled out for blame for the project and that responsibility also lay with Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary.
He is also said to have pointed out that the public undermining of a permanent secretary was harming Civil Service morale and was unfair because, as a Government official, Sir Robert was unable to defend himself.