Matthew Rycroft

Rycroft was appointed Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development with effect from January 2018. Rycroft replaced Mark Lowcock who ran the department from 2011. He was appointed Permanent Secretary of the Home Department in March 2020 following the resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam.

From March 2005 to July 2008, Rycroft served as Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In July 2008, he was appointed EU Director in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and then, in 2011, he became Chief Operating Officer. He became Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York in April 2015.

It was in this capacity that Rycroft issued the "Downing Street memo". During his time in Downing Street, in 2003, he was made a CBE.

In 1998, he joined the British embassy in the United States, where he served for four years. In 2002, Rycroft was appointed Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair, to advise him on matters related to foreign policy, the European Union, Northern Ireland and defence. During this time Rycroft wrote a letter to Mark Sedwill, private secretary to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw. The letter reveals that "we and the US would take action" without a new resolution by the UN security council if UN weapons inspectors showed Saddam had clearly breached an earlier resolution. In that case, he "would not have a second chance". That was the only way Britain could persuade the Bush administration to agree to a role for the UN and continuing work by UN weapons inspectors, the letter says. Dated 17 October 2002. "This letter is sensitive," Rycroft underlined. "It must be seen only by those with a real need to know its contents, and must not be copied further."

Rycroft's name became familiar to the general public as the author of a secret memo to the British Ambassador to the United States, David Manning, summarizing a 23 July 2002 meeting with Blair and other government officials "to discuss Iraq". The memo was leaked to The Sunday Times, which printed it on 1 May 2005.

Rycroft joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) after graduation, in 1989. Following short spells in Geneva and on the NATO desk in Whitehall, Rycroft spent four years at the British embassy in Paris. In 1995-96, Rycroft was Head of Section in the Eastern Adriatic Unit at the FCO: a demanding role, given the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars. Very soon after taking up this role, he served as a member of the British deputation to the Dayton peace talks. Between 1996 and 1998 he was a desk officer in the FCO Policy Planners.

Matthew John Rycroft CBE (/ˈ r aɪ k r ɒ f t / ; born 16 June 1968) is a British diplomat serving as Permanent Secretary at the Home Department since 2020, appointed following the resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam. Rycroft previously served as Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development (DFID) from 2018 to 2020 and as the Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York from 2015 to 2018.