Many civil servants breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the back of the Conservatives in July – a hoped-for end to long-running pay disputes, the looming axe of job cuts and a sense of overall chaos.
The past decade has seen a churn of ministers, with three different prime ministers in 2022 alone and 67 cabinet appointments. The civil service endured being dismissed as “the blob” by ministers and Jacob Rees-Mogg pushing for up to 90,000 jobs to be cut.
However, the message from the new Labour government appears to be more challenging to the civil service than many had expected.
Keir Starmer, a former civil servant himself as director of public prosecutions, has heaped praise on the unwavering commitment of civil servants to public service.
But last week he also delivered a message that change is necessary for those happy with a “tepid bath of managed decline” and a new approach will be coming soon.
Coupled with the chancellor’s requirement for 5% budget cuts to be modelled across departments, which is set to require job cuts, the civil service looks like it is in for a demanding period ahead.
Within the civil service, there is a high level of acceptance that the workforce has probably grown bigger than it needs to be, now that Brexit and the Covid pandemic are over.
Having fallen from about 480,000 full-time posts under Gordon Brown to 380,000 after years of austerity, the civil service grew to its current size of 513,000 under Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
The Institute for Government thinktank highlights that the biggest jumps in staffing were in departments charged with big roles in implementing Brexit – the Cabinet Office, the various business departments, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Department for Culture Media and Sport saw significant proportional growth after the referendum.
Meanwhile, between 2019 and 2021 the Department of Health saw the highest proportional growth of all departments – adding 4,220 civil servants (46%). All but four departments now have more civil servants than they did in 2010.
One Whitehall source said: “The civil service has grown because the Tories threw money at it and asked it to do more things while criticising it at the same time. You cannot blame the civil service for this. It’s about political direction and that’s what’s been lacking.”
An immediate cap on headcount was announced by the Tories in October 2023, but numbers grew in spite of that edict.
Starmer’s government has decided that such arbitrary limits do not work, with departments to be left to decide how best to make their corners of Whitehall more efficient.
However, the direction of travel will be similar. The civil service will be expected to be smarter about the way it works, more efficient, making great use of technology and with fewer people.
Cat Little, the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, summed up her view in a hearing of the public administration committee last week.
“Harnessing technology and innovation are critical, and we do need to get clearer about actually stopping some things. Even in my time in government, we have just continued to add to the list of services and activities that the civil service is asked to deliver,” she said.
The difficulty for the government will be to effect that change in a way that does not further harm morale or contribute to the high staff turnover that has dogged the civil service in recent years.
With Starmer determined to focus on delivery of his core milestones before the next election, he will need goodwill and high motivation from the civil service to deliver his goals – and not a workforce distracted by yet another attempt at structural reform.
