Labour's 'reform' measures won't solve the problem

Balancing the nation’s books is no easy job but there’s a limit to what efficiency savings’ can achieve, warns Andrew Grice

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The announcement that 2,100 of the Cabinet Office’s 6,500 jobs will be axed is cited by ministers as evidence that they are serious about reforms to “rewire the state”.

At first glance, it looks like a bold act by Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister and one of the government’s most powerful figures. It is an intended signal to cabinet colleagues to follow suit – to deliver the 15 per cent cut in civil-service running costs Rachel Reeves has demanded, as part of her government-wide spending review.

Labour politicians who once criticised their Conservative predecessors for attacking a self-serving Whitehall “blob” now tell me: “We know what they meant.” They, too, are convinced a “flabby” civil service (in Keir Starmer's words) is not match fit to deliver the change the government wants. To frustrated ministers who pull levers and complain that nothing happens, Whitehall’s “Rolls-Royce machine” at times feels more like a clapped-out, misfiring rust bucket.

A total of 50,000 civil service jobs are likely to disappear – many more than the 10,000 figure given by the chancellor. True, the size of the civil service has grown by 34 per cent to 513,000 staff since the pandemic. But as one senior Whitehall figure put it: “Ministers never talk about the extra functions given to us by their demands and their legislation.”