Hunt: We'll axe 'woke Whitehall' jobs to cut size of the civil service

JEREMY Hunt has vowed to drastically reduce the number of "woke" government equality and diversity bosses under plans to shrink the civil service.

- Martyn Brown

The Chancellor announced a freeze on civil service expansion to help trim the size of the state.

Mr Hunt said the move could save £1billion a year and indicated that improving public-sector productivity may allow him to reduce the tax burden.

Around 10,000 equality and diversity jobs are expected to go under the new plans.

He pledged to cap the Whitehall headcount at its current level of around 490,000 staff and set out an ambition to reduce the number of civil servants to pre-Covid levels.

The civil service workforce has 105,000 more full-time-equivalent staff than in 2016 and grew further to cope with the fallout from the pandemic.

But the Treasury stressed that the action did not amount to a recruitment freeze.

In his address to the Tory conference in Manchester, the Chancellor said: "We have the best civil servants in the world and they saved many lives in the pandemic by working night and day.

"But even after that pandemic, we still have 66,000 more civil servants than before. New policies should not always mean new people.