The chancellor’s confirmation, during her round of the Sunday talk shows, that the civil service will be included in the spending cuts to be announced in her spring statement marked a welcome recognition that responsible stewardship begins at home. With employers, pensioners, sickness benefit claimants and recipients of foreign aid all lined up for spending cuts over the eight months that Labour has been in power, for the government to exempt its own machine would have been politically, as well as economically, unwise.
Nor should it have been a particularly hard decision to take, especially now, with broad swathes of the population feeling the economic pinch. Civil service numbers have grown significantly since the Covid pandemic (when an increase could be justified). Pay has risen, as promotions have been used to offset pay curbs, with civil servants also among the beneficiaries of this government’s early largesse, promised a 5 per cent rise, far above the rate of inflation.
