The prime minister’s plans to slash 91,000 civil service jobs has confronted recent criticism following a complete assessment by Downing Street’s former chief-of-staff.
In proposals outlined in May, Boris Johnson insisted {that a} discount of civil servants by 20 per cent would permit authorities to make use of the cash higher elsewhere, including this could possibly be achieved with out harming main frontline providers.
However, the Treasury’s confidence within the proposal has reportedly been diminished after a Whitehall assessment led by Steve Barclay.
“Now the government has not only belatedly come to the same conclusion, but also found this shoddy proposal would have cost the taxpayer over £1bn in redundancy payments,” Rachel Hopkins MP, Labour’s shadow minister within the Cabinet Office advised The Guardian.
Dave Penman, common secretary of the FDA, a union that represents senior civil servants, tweeted: “It’s almost as if cutting a fifth of staff, based on an artificial number devised solely for political headlines that takes no account of current demands on public services is a bad idea.
A Whitehall insider who had worked on the plans to reduce civil servant jobs by one fifth told the Financial Times that Mr Johnson had made the decision without considering in depth the consequences.
“You can only deliver 91,000 cuts by actual cuts to major frontline services,” the insider stated. “There’s no way you can get to that number through efficiency savings or reductions in HQ staff.”
Tory management candidate Liz Truss has supported the cuts and final week promised a “war on Whitehall waste” which might additionally see vacation entitlements for civil servants slashed.
Ms Truss initially promised to save lots of as much as £8.8bn yearly by “adjusting” officers’ salaries to match residing prices within the areas the place they work.
But she was pressured to desert the coverage after specialists on the Institute for Government identified the international secretary’s goal was virtually as a lot as the overall annual civil service pay invoice of round £9bn.
PCS common secretary Mark Serwotka stated: “Civil servants are not a political tool to be used and abused for one person’s ambition; they are the hard-working people who keep the country running, day in day out, and they deserve respect.”
A authorities spokesperson stated: “As people across the country are facing huge living costs, the public rightly expect their government to lead by example and to be run as efficiently as possible.
“Ministers have been tasked to draw up plans to return the civil service to its 2016 levels over the next three years and that work is ongoing.”
Source: www.unbiased.co.uk