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About 50,000 civil service jobs are dealing with the axe as ministers enter the ultimate section of a “brutal” public spending evaluate, as chancellor Rachel Reeves cuts spending throughout Whitehall.
Officers briefed on the negotiations anticipate about 10 per cent of Britain’s roughly 500,000 full-time equal civil service posts to go. “I wouldn’t be stunned if the quantity comes right down to 450,000 by 2030,” mentioned one individual.
The civil service jobs cull is one manifestation of a spending management course of that Reeves needs to wrap up by the beginning of subsequent week. “It’s virtually carried out,” mentioned one minister concerned within the talks.
Treasury officers mentioned that greater than half of presidency departments, together with massive spenders such because the Ministry of Justice, have settled their budgets for the following three years.
Nevertheless, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner is combating the Treasury for extra money for native council providers and housing, whereas house secretary Yvette Cooper is locked in negotiations to safe extra cash, notably for policing. “It has been brutal,” mentioned one official concerned within the negotiations.
Sir Mark Rowley, London’s police chief, joined the lobbying effort on Wednesday, in an eleventh-hour plea for extra money identified contained in the Treasury as “shroud waving”. The chancellor will ship her spending evaluate settlement on June 11.
“There’s been a bit much less of that this time than in earlier spending opinions,” mentioned one Treasury official. “However now can be a very good time for ministers to settle, holding out to the final minute isn’t a good suggestion.”
Darren Jones, Treasury chief secretary, is overseeing the last-minute talks. Ministers who maintain out for extra cash till the top discover themselves combating over a diminishing pot, as different departments settle their budgets.
A ten per cent discount within the civil service headcount is seen in Whitehall as manageable, given the numerous rise within the central paperwork in recent times, notably after Brexit and the Covid-19 disaster.
The Cupboard Workplace declined to remark, however one well-placed official confirmed: “A complete of about 450,000 civil servants by the top of the last decade is about proper.”
The Institute for Authorities, a think-tank, discovered that the variety of full time equal civil servants fell to beneath 390,000 in 2016, on the finish of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition authorities’s “austerity” programme and simply earlier than the EU referendum.
The additional strain brought on by Brexit noticed numbers rise to about 425,000 by the point the primary Covid-19 lockdowns befell, earlier than growing to 515,000 final 12 months.
“This progress occurred regardless of the previous chancellor Jeremy Hunt imposing an ‘speedy’ cap on civil service headcount in October 2023,” the IFG mentioned in its Whitehall Monitor report.
Senior Whitehall officers mentioned a ten per cent headcount discount was manageable, and might be achieved with out obligatory redundancies, if Britain entered a brand new interval of relative political and financial calm.
Dave Penman, head of the FDA civil service union, mentioned: “Civil servants don’t get to determine on the scale of the civil service, ministers do. The political chaos of the final decade was each inefficient and ineffective.
“It meant successive governments could have spent an excessive amount of power speaking about cuts, but in actuality they piled guarantees on prime of guarantees. The variety of civil servants needed to develop to try to match these political commitments,” he added.
Reeves introduced in March that Whitehall working prices can be reduce by 15 per cent by 2030, a goal that features job cuts, a streamlining of the federal government property and shifting some posts out of London.
The chancellor mentioned on the time she was “assured that we will scale back civil service numbers by 10,000”, though officers mentioned privately that Reeves anticipated to attain a lot greater falls in headcount.
Information visualisation by Amy Borrett
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