The government claims that there are too many civil servants (Ministers planning to cut more than 10,000 civil service jobs, 11 December). This sits oddly with your report (11 December) that unpaid carers are still being pursued for absurdly defined “overpayments” because there are insufficient staff to deal with cases, following a cut in the number of such staff of 14% in the past two years. Staffing numbers are enough to meet the department’s financial targets, but not to deliver justice to carers.
This situation is not exceptional but typical of all areas of the national civil service, local government and state regulatory bodies. Every public service and field of policy suffers from a shortage of officers, resulting in chaotic, inefficient or in some cases non-existent delivery of (supposed) government policies; egregious examples are PPE procurement and home-insulation grants.
