My friend Richard Wallace, who has died aged 78, spent much of his career as an exemplary senior civil servant, first in the Department of Health and Social Security, then in the Welsh Office.
His colleague and the former DHSS lawyer Marilynne Morgan said: “In 1974 Richard was, I think, the youngest in the DHSS and already had a reputation as being extremely clever.
“The Social Security Act 1980 gave the government sweeping powers to regulate discretionary supplementary benefits payments. Richard and other staff turned them into regulations.”
Richard and Morgan then made the first DHSS staff video, Efficiency and Effectiveness in the Civil Service (1982).
He was born in New Haw, Surrey, to Norah (nee Willcox), a librarian, and Lawrence Wallace, a teacher, who then moved to the Isle of Wight. While at Bembridge Church of England primary school, Richard was IQ-tested by the island’s education authority, who urged his parents to accept a boarding scholarship for him at Clifton college, Bristol. His time there from the age of nine was endured rather than enjoyed.
While at school he became an atheist and pacifist, and was sent home for refusing to handle weapons during cadet corps. Lessons in literature, poetry and choir music sustained him.
Aged 17, he went to King’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1967. A fellow student, Richard Cook said: “He was sharp, physically, intellectually, and verbally. He went regularly to chapel. On Sunday, in the age of flower power, he wore a suit.”
Richard joined the civil service in 1968, becoming principal (1972), then assistant secretary (1981) in the DHSS.
Early in his career, on a training course at Derby’s sewage works, his acerbic manner was challenged by a fellow civil servant, Teresa Harington Smith. They married in 1970, and settled in Clapham, south London.
After Richard was transferred to the Welsh Office in Cardiff, in 1986, the family moved into a home near Bristol. The permanent secretary in Wales, Richard Lloyd Jones, welcomed him as “an outstanding civil servant” who got on well with the engineers working to improve traffic flow in north and south Wales and upgrade the M4. Lloyd Jones appreciated Richard’s ability to convey “bad news in clear and unthreatening terms”, especially after Richard was promoted to principal finance officer in 1990.
In 1997 Richard took early retirement and enjoyed country walks. He travelled to Cardiff for performances by the Welsh National Opera, listened to classical music and enjoyed English literature and poetry.
In 2005 Teresa was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. During the months before her death, Richard was her devoted carer.
Going to evensong in Bristol “for the words and the music, not for the religion”, drew Richard back to his childhood faith and the parish work of St Mary Redcliffe church.
Richard is survived by three daughters, Helen, Kate and Jessica, nine grandchildren, and by a sister, Susan. A son, Jack, died in infancy.
