Chancellor says civil service cull isn’t return to austerity

Rachel Reeves is preparing to cut 10,000 civil service jobs as part of a sweeping 2bn Whitehall savings drive, as she gets ready to deliver a spring statement that will involve hard” choices.

- KATE DEVLIN

The Labour chancellor has ordered mandarins to slash 15 per cent from departmental administrative budgets by 2029-30 – saving an estimated £2.2bn a year – and pledged the money will be redirected to “frontline” services. She denied the cuts would amount to austerity but added: “People want to know we’re getting value for money.”

But the plans triggered an immediate backlash from unions, who said public services would suffer after years of underfunding.

Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, accused ministers of setting “an arbitrary figure for cuts plucked out of the air”. She predicted a backlash from the public “who will be affected by cuts in the services they receive”.

She added: “After 15 years of underfunding, any cuts will have an impact on frontline services. We’ve heard this before under Gordon Brown when cuts were made to backroom staff – and the consequence of that was chaos.”

Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect union, warned ministers against “an arbitrary civil service headcount reduction” and said there must be “a realistic assessment of what the civil service doesn’t do in future as a result of these cuts”.

A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “Of course we want to see a more efficient civil service … but saying it won’t make it happen. We now need to see concrete proposals on how they will achieve this. This also isn’t going to help the government grow the economy – we need a proper plan for growth including scrapping the jobs tax and fixing our trading relationship with the EU.”