First female head of the Treasury Solicitor’s Department who excelled at the "art of giving difficult advice constructively"
Dame Juliet Wheldon notched up a number of firsts over an illustrious career, the most notable of which was becoming the first female Treasury solicitor and head of the Government Legal Service.
She was also a committed cyclist, famed for traversing Whitehall by bicycle, as well as for being a neighbour of the late Queen singer Freddie Mercury.
Wheldon was just 50 when she reached the pinnacle of Whitehall lawyerdom at the Treasury Solicitor’s Department – a role which includes the title of “procurator-general” – in July 2000. She was the youngest person to do so for generations, regardless of gender.
By that time, Wheldon had already spent 24 years as a government lawyer, having converted a first-class honours degree in modern history from Oxford University’s Lady Margaret Hall into law. Apparently her legal ambitions were developed through her keen interest in the political and constitutional history that she studied at university.
After being called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1975, Wheldon opted to join the GLS ahead of going into private practice. Her rise through the ranks took in the Treasury Solicitor's Department – now the Government Legal Department; then the Law Officers’ Department – now the Attorney General’s Office; and a spell at the Home Office.
On the way, she served as legal secretary to the attorney general, legal adviser to the Treasury and legal adviser to the Home Office – all reportedly firsts for a woman.
During those years, high-profile cases she advised on include the Westland affair, the legality of the Gulf war, ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, and the “cash for questions” scandal. At the Home Office, which she joined in 1997, dealing with the Good Friday Agreement and the extradition request for Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet were significant areas of work.
Wheldon served as head of TSol from 2000 to 2006. Over that time the legality of further military action in the Middle East – this time the 2003 Iraq war – was an issue on which she advised. Domestically, she reportedly met with the late Queen to discuss options to circumvent potential legal threats to the 2005 marriage of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles – now King Charles and Queen Camilla. Several formal objections had been lodged in opposition to the wedding plans, one of them from an Anglican priest.
In interviews during her time as TSol head, Wheldon’s enthusiasm for the work of government lawyers shone through. In 2001 the Daily Telegraph asked her why anyone would join the GLS when they could earn considerably more in private practice. She replied: “Because it’s so much fun.”
Wheldon even used a 2003 interview with the Times to describe changes of government as "exciting”. “When you decide to make this type of legal work your career, you must recognise that governments can change, and the focus of your work can change,” she explained. At that point, changes of government had been few and far between in her in life as a civil servant.
Difference in pay between government lawyers and those in private practice was a recurring theme in Wheldon’s interviews.
“People make a conscious decision when they come into government work that they are not going to be megarich,” she told the Times. “If you are aiming for the million-pound earnings of some barristers and City partners you will not join the GLS."
However, she said the government was a good employer that respected the private life of its lawyers. She added that she had "never experienced any sort of glass ceiling in the GLS”.
After retiring from government in 2006, Wheldon worked for two years as legal adviser to the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King. She was the first female holder of the legal adviser post. Her time at the Bank coincided with the collapse of Northern Rock in 2007 and the start of the global financial crisis the following year.
Shami Chakrabarti worked at the Home Office in the 1990s and described Wheldon as a mentor-turned-friend in a 2005 Guardian article. Chakrabarti, who is now a Labour Party peer, was director of the human rights charity Liberty at the time.
She said Wheldon was a “phenomenal woman” who personified the independence and professionalism of the civil service. “There is something inspiring when the senior person in the organisation is working the hardest,” she said.
Chakrabarti said Wheldon would always find time to “pass on the tricks of the trade”. “I would sit in Juliet's room as she explained the workings of Whitehall, which, as a junior lawyer, is a world you are unprepared for,” she said. “Under Juliet's wing, that world opened up – the machinations of Cabinet committees and complex negotiations between departments. She taught me the art of giving quite difficult advice constructively, and in a way that makes it more persuasive.”
Multiple accounts exist of Wheldon’s cycling prowess, and her preference for an old-style sit-up-and-beg bicycle with a basket – rather than a chauffeur-driven car.
Chakrabarti said the image of Wheldon that would linger longest for many was of her riding her bike around Whitehall “hair and cardigan flailing in the breeze behind her; a basket full of government legal files perched in front”.
Reportedly, male members of Wheldon’s staff were expected to be “handy with the puncture repair kit".
Wheldon was diagnosed with lymph-node cancer in 2000 and took time off for treatment, which was successful. The disease, however, returned and she died in 2013.
The Daily Telegraph’s obituary noted that Wheldon’s colleagues had been “amused” that she was a one-time next-door-neighbour of Freddie Mercury but felt it “impossible to imagine conversations over the garden fence”.
The lawyer and the rock star could conceivably have bonded over a shared love of opera, ballet and travel. They would have been less likely to see eye-to-eye over cycling.
Despite being composer of the Tour de France-inspired Queen hit “Bicycle Race”, Mercury was not a fan.