Ease the cost of living crisis by making more people unemployed ?

growstuff I was running around after a free range 2 yr old whilst listening to the news, so I might have heard suggestions and taken them as the actual plan.

Nothing surprises me at the moment with this Government.

Redeployment and retraining to move people isn't quite the same as axing jobs to cut the numbers of civil servants. Which is what the announcement was about, actually cutting the number of civil servants employed.

As Zonne points out, there was an increase in civil servants to deal with Brexit. As Brexit is by no means 'done', and we still need civil servants to deal with matters which are a result of Brexit (like increased border staff and customs officers) a reversion to pre Brexit numbers is impossible.

Though I actually, for once, agree with Ug that it's just a meaningless soundbite which probably won't be going anywhere much.

I'd also suggest that anecdotes about wastage in some areas aren't particularly compelling evidence of the need to cut civil service numbers. Bad management happens in all large organisations, whether state run or private.

Zonne

I’ve just worked out the level of investment per person if the £3.5bn savings figure is right: it’s £53.

nandad you do realise that DWP staff are quite likely to be axed? And that council staff - whether county, unitary or district - are not civil servants?

Yes, I do and yes I do.
My point is that there are some parts of the civil service eg the DWP, where staff are working hard and unrelentingly for little money.
Re councils, my point is that these should also be considered for ‘culling’.
BTW the ESFA is the Education Department where had staff been more on the ball they would have realised what a shocking waste of money some of their schemes are, but they are also over staffed and so run around like headless chickens.

Tobias Ellwood MP
@Tobias_Ellwood
· 3h
I’m beginning to believe there’s a ‘Dead Cat Committee’ in No.10 spewing out a regular drumbeat of sensationalist headlines.

Sig. Just to correct one of the many incorrect 'facts' on this thread....HM Govt Passport Office is the only body which can issue UK passports, I don't know what this nonsense is about a French company, unless you mean the people who do the manufacturing. We have all read and sympathised with the many threads detailing GN members' trials and tribulations with government departments, in particular the NHS and DWP, so how on earth can making staff redundant or 'culling' them help? Or are we all happy to have yet more contracts being passed to those masters of efficiency Crapita?

Boris and Rees-Mogg are talking through their arses as usual, with absolutely no investigation into the achievability of this plucked out of the air target, as Smogg admitted this morning.

This makes very interesting reading if you want to see whether the cuts will fall (if it ever happens, which it won’t)
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/civil-service-staff-numbers

As I understand it, there's a suggestion that a French company supplying agency staff to the Passport Office.

They certainly use a great many agency staff according to the son of a friend of mine who works at the local passport office. Whether or not they are French I don't know.

Wasn't Johnson talking about privatising the Passport Office a few days ago?

Wasn't Johnson talking about privatising the Passport Office a few days ago?

Probably. He talks such utter nonsense and lies almost constantly, if he said it was Friday today I would check. It is getting quite frightening how he can just say what he likes, and nobody calls him out, nobody challenges him. Although, I was immensely sheered to see his fellow liar Suella Braverman given a verbal mauling by the majority of the QT audience last night. She should be struck off by the Bar Council.

Whitewavemark2

Tobias Ellwood MP
@Tobias_Ellwood
· 3h
I’m beginning to believe there’s a ‘Dead Cat Committee’ in No.10 spewing out a regular drumbeat of sensationalist headlines.

A spew of responses in the vein of cross the floor, do something about it.

Then I remembered that this is the MP who backed the 2015 move by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to increase salaries for politicians by 10% when the rest of the public sector were on a freeze of 1%.

He apologised for any offence caused by the comment that without the proposed raise to his £90,000 salary he would be "watching the pennies".

BJ wants to privatise the civil service. He will get rid of staff then outsource to private companies.
I think SERCO have been used before in the civil service according to my son who has worked there for 20 years.

If my experience in local government is anything to go by, I would be surprised if some departments didn’t need to be slimmed down.

A bit of useless information - Passports were printed in Gateshead by de la Rue. When the contract was lost to a Dutch/French company 3 years ago, de la Rue closed the Gateshead factory and made hundreds redundant. They concentrated all their production (they print banknotes) in Essex and reported an increase in profits of 61%.

Errmmm...

De La Rue profits slump after losing contract to make blue UK passports after Brexit

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-blue-passport-de-la-rue-profits-contract-gemalto-economy-a8653476.html

growstuff

I don't think any decisions have been yet GrannyGravy about how the "cull" will be achieved.

What's the betting the services currently being provided by the Civil Service will be outsourced to private providers?

Brexit has caused more work for the Civil Service because it's taken on extra red tape and the services which used to be provided by Brussels.

What's the betting the services currently being provided by the Civil Service will be outsourced to private providers?

It's been going on for years, then, when it all hits problems, the government of the day comes up with the thought that they actually need an in-house service after all.

Too late.
Plonkers

Germanshepherdsmum

If my experience in local government is anything to go by, I would be surprised if some departments didn’t need to be slimmed down.

Really?

Callistemon21

growstuff

I don't think any decisions have been yet GrannyGravy about how the "cull" will be achieved.

What's the betting the services currently being provided by the Civil Service will be outsourced to private providers?

Brexit has caused more work for the Civil Service because it's taken on extra red tape and the services which used to be provided by Brussels.

What's the betting the services currently being provided by the Civil Service will be outsourced to private providers?

It's been going on for years, then, when it all hits problems, the government of the day comes up with the thought that they actually need an in-house service after all.

Too late.
Plonkers

I couldn't agree more.

Germanshepherdsmum

If my experience in local government is anything to go by, I would be surprised if some departments didn’t need to be slimmed down.

So what's your experience of local gorvernment?

AGAA4

BJ wants to privatise the civil service. He will get rid of staff then outsource to private companies.
I think SERCO have been used before in the civil service according to my son who has worked there for 20 years.

And Capita.

Just to clarify, this proposed cut is nothing to do with local government, it’s civil servants, ie those who work directly for the English/UK government functions. It isn’t staff who work for the NHS either. The list of services affected is in the article I posted above. It is one in 5 approximately of all civil servants, and does not equate to the number of posts there were pre 2016.

Casdon

Boris and Rees-Mogg are talking through their arses as usual, with absolutely no investigation into the achievability of this plucked out of the air target, as Smogg admitted this morning.

This makes very interesting reading if you want to see whether the cuts will fall (if it ever happens, which it won’t)
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/civil-service-staff-numbers

Great article Casdon. Essential reading for anybody who wants to understand how any "cull" would be achieved.

My experience working in local government was that it was skimmed down to the bone.
People were being retired off early and not replaced.

AGAA4

My experience working in local government was that it was skimmed down to the bone.
People were being retired off early and not replaced.

I've never worked in local government, but I know people who have (and some who still do). That's what I've heard too.

What the government could do is get rid of overpaid, often maverick SpADs and use civil servants instead. That would save a bob or two.

Often those who applaud the culling of civil servants fail to think through the implications. The work of government still has to be carried out. If/when that work is privatised, or more likely, quangos are created to do it instead, costs rise.

Capita, Serco and G4S spring to mind, as do the unlamented Regional Development Agencies of the noughties. Certainly the RDAs employed former civil servants at inflated salaries - who paid? Correct, the jolly old tax payer.

Culling civil servants is a wheeze, a sound bite. Nothing substantial comes of it.

My friend works for the Civil Service in housing. He's been there years and is just a regular Joe who works very hard in a job he feels passionate about. He worked all through lock down, commuting across town on public transport (2 buses each way) to his office.

He works helping homeless people into housing. Ironically his salary isn't enough for him to buy or pay more than the basic rent so he lives in a second rate and depressing static caravan he rents on farmland.

These are the type of people who will be cast aside if this latest scheme ever gets off the ground. This is not about ditching overpaid fat cats. It's about discarding ordinary working folk who make an honest buck ensuring the nuts and bolts of our society work.

If the government really wanted to save money they would stop giving million pound contracts to their friends and would close all the necessary loopholes to ensure billionaires paid their tax fairly.