Sir Nicholas Lionel John Montagu KCB (born 12 March 1944) is a retired British civil servant.
[2] Immediately after leaving Oxford in 1966, he became a lecturer in philosophy at Reading University, remaining there until 1974, when he joined the Civil Service as a Direct Entry Principal.
He was involved, as a civil servant, in a number of key policies for both Labour and Conservative governments, including the establishment of executive agencies, major pension reforms and the privatisation of the railway.
In his last year as chairman, Montagu became embroiled in two controversies, the first when the systems installed by IT firm EDS for the new tax credits system failed to work (EDS subsequently paid nearly £100m compensation for this failure [1]), and the second over the joint sale, with Customs, of the Revenue's estate to Mapeley Steps Limited headquartered in Bermuda.
Since retiring in 2004, Montagu has been associated with a number of commercial activities, mainly in the pensions and insurance field and on PricewaterhouseCoopers' Advisory Board,[7] and with higher education.