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.
This is true also of the regulatory functions of government with regard to wages, conditions and health and safety at work, product quality and safety, care homes and hospitals, industrial pollution, waste disposal, rented housing, water and sewage, energy, public transport and building. Inspections are carried out infrequently or not at all, and firms breaking the law are not prosecuted through lack of legal officers. The regulations are therefore a dead letter. One of the reasons for the glacially slow administration of compensation to victims of government misconduct (contaminated blood, Windrush and so on) is a shortage of staff. We desperately need more government officers, not fewer.
Dr Jamie Gough
Sheffield
• You report that the Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden wants the civil service to “operate more like a startup”. Has anyone pointed out to him that research shows most startups fail, and pretty soon after starting? Your editorial (11 December) makes the broader point that lining the pockets of shareholders is very different from meeting the needs of citizens.
Prof Peter Golding
Newcastle upon Tyne
• If Keir Starmer or Pat McFadden want to speak to civil servants about ways of working, they could just call us into a meeting – we do work for them. Imagine the CEO of, say, a tech startup choosing to talk to their staff through the media. Surely the only sensible response would be: “Isn’t that your job to sort that out?” The civil service isn’t some homogeneous block; we are a collection of people trying to do our best to deliver ministers’ priorities – and were hoping the new lot might recognise that more than the old lot.
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