The head of the union for senior civil servants has urged Rishi Sunak to stop letting ministers call officials “lazy, woke, inefficient, remainer snowflakes” or brand them “machiavellian geniuses” trying to unseat the government.
In comments released ahead of its annual conference, Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, also accused the prime minister of treating civil servants like “second-class public-sector workers” after the government offered them a worse pay deal than teachers and health staff.
Penman is due to speak at the conference in Whitehall after a year of strained relations between ministers and civil servants, following strikes, threatened job cuts, the sacking of the Treasury permanent secretary, and the bullying of officials by Dominic Raab and Gavin Williamson.
Penman, whose union represents senior civil servant grades, will tell the conference that the government may have withdrawn its threat of 91,000 job cuts, but “workloads are still increasing and resources are frozen as inflation delivers real-terms cuts to budgets”.
“Now, having been told you’re a lazy, woke, inefficient, remainer activist snowflake, you are also now a machiavellian genius, able to unseat ministers and undermine the settled will of government,” he will say, in an apparent reference to Raab’s claims of activist civil servants trying to get rid of him.
“I don’t know about you, conference, but I’ve had enough of this. At some point we need to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ Ministers need to demonstrate they value civil servants. It is they who have put a number on that, not us. It is they who believe that the cost of living crisis should be addressed for some public servants and not others, and it is they who have pushed the FDA over the edge into balloting for industrial action.”
The FDA has balloted nationally for strike action over pay for the first time in 40 years, meaning they may join civil servants from Prospect and the PCS on the picket line. It comes after the government offered most civil servants a pay rise of just 4.5% and no cost-of-living lump sum, which is on the table for other sectors.
Penman will also criticise Sunak for having stuck by Raab despite bullying complaints having been made against his deputy.
In his strongest comments on the subject, the general secretary will say: “Faced with those concerns from civil servants, what did he do? Not only did he appoint Raab as the deputy prime minister of the country, but he reappointed him to the very departments where those concerns had been raised. What exactly does that tell you about how the prime minister values civil servants?”
He will also address “accusations that have been laid at our door by the bully Dominic Raab and his acolytes”, after the former cabinet minister had said he was tipped off that unionised officials were targeting him.
“The FDA has no ‘hitlist’ of ministers. The FDA does not go around encouraging complaints – but the FDA has, and it always will, stand up to bullies on behalf of its members.
“As Adam Tolley KC made clear in his report Mr Raab, maybe if you spent a bit more time looking in the mirror, and a bit less time looking for reds under the bed, things might have turned out differently for you.”
Several senior former civil servants have also urged Sunak to stand up for the civil service in the wake of the Raab controversy. Bob Kerslake, the former head of the UK civil service, said last month that the prime minister needed to speak out against the “torrent of invective against the civil service” unleashed by Raab or else risk a toxic environment in Whitehall.
