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Nick Macpherson

British civil servant

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ7025819
Source-derived summary

Nicholas Ian Macpherson, Baron Macpherson of Earl's Court, (born 14 July 1959) is a former senior British civil servant. He served as the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from 2005 to 2016.

Macpherson was Permanent Secretary to three Chancellors. He managed the department through the financial and wider economic crisis which began in 2007.

Macpherson was nominated for a crossbench peerage in David Cameron's 2016 resignation Honours, and joined the House of Lords on 4 October 2016.

Early life

Macpherson was educated at Ashdown House and Eton College. He later attended Balliol College, Oxford (where he read Politics and Economics) and University College London.

Career

Macpherson first worked as an economist at the CBI and Peat Marwick Consulting.

Treasury

Macpherson entered HM Treasury in 1985. From 1993 to 1997, he was Principal Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; he oversaw the transition from Kenneth Clarke to Gordon Brown as Chancellor.

Editorial summary

“Nick Macpherson” enters the record as british civil servant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nick, Macpherson and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 2005, 2016, 2007—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1959-07-14, 1959-07—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Nick, Macpherson and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Nick Macpherson” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Nick, Macpherson and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7025819. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 2005, 2016 and 2007.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Nick Macpherson primary sources, Nick Macpherson archive and Nick research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Nick Macpherson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.