The post originated as that of Assistant Secretary to the Treasury in 1805; that office was given new duties and renamed in 1867 as a Permanent Secretaryship.
Previous incumbents have not always maintained the political neutrality expected of civil servants; in 1909 Sir George Murray was involved in lobbying various Crossbench peers in the House of Lords to reject the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposed budget.
[1] In 2014, during the Scottish Independence referendum campaign, Sir Nicholas Macpherson broke with convention by publishing private advice[2] to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
[3] Since March 2009, Sir Tom Scholar had served as the Treasury's Second Permanent Secretary.
The post of Head of the Government Economic Service had been held by Sir Nicholas Stern (now Lord Stern of Brentford) until June 2007, since when it has been jointly held by Vicky Pryce, Chief Economic Adviser and Director General of Economics at BIS (until 2010), and Dave Ramsden, Managing Director, Macroeconomic and Fiscal Policy Directorate.