Plans to slash 91,000 civil service jobs ‘would need cuts to major frontline services’

The prime minister’s plans to slash 91,000 civil service jobs has faced fresh criticism following a comprehensive review by Downing Street’s former chief-of-staff.

In proposals outlined in May, Boris Johnson insisted that a reduction of civil servants by 20 per cent would allow government to use the money better elsewhere, adding this could be achieved without harming major frontline services.

However, the Treasury’s confidence in the proposal has reportedly been diminished after a Whitehall review 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 in the Cabinet Office told The Guardian.

Dave Penman, general 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 said. “There’s no way you can get to that number through efficiency savings or reductions in HQ staff.”

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Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss has supported the cuts and last week promised a “war on Whitehall waste” which would also see holiday entitlements for civil servants slashed.

Ms Truss initially promised to save up to £8.8bn annually by “adjusting” officials’ salaries to match living costs in the areas where they work.

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But she was forced to abandon the policy after experts at the Institute for Government pointed out the foreign secretary’s target was almost as much as the total annual civil service pay bill of around £9bn.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “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 government spokesperson said: “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.”