Philip Rutnam

Sir Philip McDougall Rutnam, KCB (born 19 June 1965) is a British former civil servant who served as Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office from 2017 until his resignation on 29 February 2020. Prior to this, he was the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport for five years and also Acting Permanent Secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2010.

Rutnam is currently Chair of the National Churches Trust, the UK's national conservation charity for churches, chapels and meeting houses. He is also Chair of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and a Council Member of the University of Surrey. He was previously a Non-Executive Director of Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, where he chaired the partnership with the University of Oxford to redevelop the Warneford Hospital site as Oxford's new centre for treatment and research linked to brain science and mental health. He is also a Patron of the Independent Transport Commission.

After Rutnam resigned from the Government in February 2020, he began legal action against the Home Office for constructive dismissal, making clear that before his dismissal he had raised serious concerns about Ministerial conduct towards staff. As a consequence of his statement, the Prime Minister asked the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests to investigate the conduct of the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, towards staff. The Adviser later found that she had breached the Ministerial Code by bullying staff. The legal action was settled in March 2021 in a settlement worth approximately £376,000 including a contribution to Rutnam's legal costs of £30,000.