Rishi Sunak has scrapped a Government target of axing around 91,000 civil servants’ jobs as he criticised the “top-down targets” set under Boris Johnson. The Prime Minister instead said in a message to civil servants on Tuesday that he and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will ask individual departments to “maximise efficiency within budgets”.
The target of reducing the Civil Service by around a fifth was being worked on earlier this year by Jacob Rees-Mogg while he was a Cabinet Office minister under Mr Johnson. Mr Sunak’s reversal of the policy comes as he seeks spending cuts and tax rises while trying to address a black hole of up to £50 billion in the public finances.
Writing to civil servants, he said: “Together, we must make sure every taxpayer pound goes as far as it possibly can. I do not believe that top-down targets for Civil Service headcount reductions are the right way to do that.
“Instead, the Chancellor and I will be asking every Government department to look for the most effective ways to secure value and maximise efficiency within budgets so that we can use taxpayers’ money sustainably in the long term.”
Liz Truss reportedly had already watered down the plans by slowing the timetable to reduce the Civil Service back to 2016 pre-Brexit staffing levels. Whitehall’s size swelled as extra staff were hired to deal with the challenges of departing the European and fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
There were concerns that redundancies could have cost billions of pounds.
A Government spokesperson said: “It is the role of a responsible Government to identify how to deliver the best outcomes for the public as efficiently as possible. That’s why departments have been asked to look for the most effective ways to maximise efficiency within their budgets, to ensure the best value for taxpayers both now and in the long term.”
