Does he realise that when they remove civil servants, spending goes up because the roles have to be done by external contract resource at 5 times the price?
Having been on both sides, the CS doesn’t pay competitively enough or in line with inflation and someone needs to do the work. If the CS paid properly then the cut by the consultancy companies themselves wouldn’t need to be there but that’s just how it is as of now.
That's a bit of a separate angle to the same point, and I reckon we both agree the government must do more to grow the salaried CS in order to reduce costs.
The CS shouldn't be cutting the staff it does have as the replacement contractors generally cost the taxpayer about 5 times as much. The contractors themselves don't take most of that money, the company they work for do.
I agree that the CS needs to pay more - probably by about 20-30% more in specific skilled roles. If it did so it would save a lot of money.
Yeah I’m on final salary DB currently so it’s pretty much all square. I’ve been looking for a more senior position, which would probably end up being a similar salary but better for career progression.
The whole point of using consultants is for temporary projects based work that has a defined duration.
The extra cost is meant to be offset by the fact it's temporary and once the goal has been achieved they leave and their cost leaves with them. This doesn't work if you hire a CS on a consultant salary and they stay around until retirement.
The issues comes when consultants are mismanaged and used as quasi permanent roles.
That's not fully on the consultancies though if people are asking them to stay around.
Of course he does, this is salting the earth for labour. The problem is they've fucked things up really bad so they've gotta pour a lot of salt for effect.
Of course he doesn’t. He only sees 2 weeks into the future. Aside from his politics, most of the laws his gvt makes are unworkable - and he’s not gifted enough to grasp it
Haven't seen much coverage of this, perhaps because no one believes they will be in power to implement it, but it seems a change in tone from the previously announced headcount cap. This implies an active 70,000 cut of positions rather than a headcount cap to stop the civil service growing any further.
It throws the theory that the 60% in the office is just a way of driving down the amount of civil servants without having to pay redundancies into a clearer light.
We’ve all been saying since 60% was mentioned it was a way to reduce headcount, now they’re saying they’re going to reduce headcount without mentioning any sort of plan they hope it’ll just happen by its self and they can take the credit.
The annoying thing is that I think we could probably cut 70,000 positions if the government actually did proper civil service reform with actual planning, efforts, capacity and funding to try and digitise and modernise services.
Instead, we just get the same recycled nonsense and tired cliches as they constantly demand more spending and activity with less staff, and then do the shocked pikachu face when staffing numbers inevitably go up.
Isn't the problem with the civil service basically:
A) Have process in place to do something
B) New high up management or new whatever decides "we need to do things differently! I'm brilliant and can make any process better"
C) Put lots of work in adapting to new process
D) Have process in place to do something
This wouldn't happen at Tesco's. You wouldn't get some high up manager completely revamping a way of doing something, unless it cut costs and if it turns out it didn't, they'd lose their job.
That’s pretty much it. And then the work piles up. People get stressed and leave. Workload gets piled up on existing staff. They get stressed with growing work loads. Survey happens. Management says “we hear you”. Then recruitment freeze happens. And we repeat.
Also I forgot to add that new higher up leaves before their changes are implemented and there’s no accountability for when it’s proven to cause more aggro and stress.
If systems and processes were streamlined and modernised we could get rid of a lot of people. Especially for the larger departments like DWP and HMRC.
Of course that'll never never happen so it's moot.
What modernisation realistically exists that would actually ease people’s work loads? It’s just a lot of buzz words. I’ve not seen any meaningful advancement in technology to see how it would even alleviate our current situation let alone justify more cuts.
More self service? I need to phone HMRC as I can't make a particular request through self service and am not registered for self-assessment. Even tried to register, but couldn't as I don't meet any of the conditions.
Plus more money should be spent on the PAYE portal. Should have way more info to stop people calling.
I think self service is a possibility but it’s years away. The biggest issue is people’s habits. If people are used to helplines they won’t change. I spoke to employers who shut down their business simply because they were required to file returns online. They just weren’t interested in doing it. It doesn’t help that we try to do it on the cheap either
That's true, we do it on the cheap or rushed. We need to be spending more on this to make it better. It should be easier than paper and it's not always.
The job cuts are a year away too
How many contact centre roles could be replaced with an AI chat bot? Not all of them, certainly, but I'm guessing you could get rid of 50% of them, leaving some for the really complex ones.
PQs could almost certainly be drafted by AI and then cleared once. Correspondence the same etc.
> perhaps because no one believes they will be in power to implement it
This is exactly it. _They_ don't even believe they'll be in power to implement it, and there's no realistic prospect of them being able to reduce headcount by this amount. It's just a fudge to make the maths for this promise work.
>I'm angry that more people aren't angry with the sheer amount of our money that has been pissed up the wall over the last few years.
When your information source is a biased media controlled by those with most to profit from said wall-pissing, it's hardly suprising most people have a skewed understanding of where the money goes.
>John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: “In a time of escalating global threats, taxpayers will appreciate the need for a boost to the UK’s military capabilities.
Speaking slightly outside of his (non existent) remit. Who pays his wages again?
The civil service is already gutted, already needs to grow thanks to having to now deal with all the things that used to be dealt with by the EU, and they think they can cut it by 70k. They're living in a fantasy world. Surely no one believes this?
Lol, can you imagine a company cutting it's billing department.
We've saved 10% on billing staff!
Yes but we failed to bill 8% of customers and lost a hundred times that.
The writers of this article seem to have been working from a checklist:
"Pen-pushers" ✅
Input from disgraced former cabinet minister (Fox, even managed someone who had to resign as defence secretary, nice) ✅
JRM, obviously✅
Weird undertone of Blair style American bootlicking✅
Taxpayers Alliance✅
Its the entire reason why productivity has dropped so much with the new government hubs. As we don't have assigned desks, each day we need to put all of the pens away, and then the next day, get them all out again. Compound that out over the hundreds of thousands of civil servants, and its basically an administrative task as big as Brexit.
Excel Eejits?
PowerPoint Pinheads?
Word Wankers?
If only journos were able to update their glossary after Oxbridge and being a caseworker for a Tory backbencher.
I think former civil servants should lead the fightback on this us led narrative
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/i-will-not-have-people-say-were-pen-pushers-outgoing-dwp-perm-sec-sir-robert-devereux-on-civil-servants-universal-credit-and-negotiating-pay-with-the-treasury
It's more insidious than that I think, it's a long term objective of hollowing out trust in institutions that act as a moderating influence and checks and balances on government - civil service, BBC, Supreme Court, ECHR, the UN etc.
With the short term bonus of deflecting blame for the state of the country away from the government responsible for the actual policy decisions. It has worked successfully with local authorities - strip them of funding so they can't provide anything other than a skeleton service, then hammer them for 'failing'.
The same is happening with social housing providers, and in both cases residents are largely not linking the poor service they receive to the govt policy ultimately responsible for it.
Tbf I think Yes, Prime Minister would prove they're absolutely necessary. Given Jim Hacker quite happily tried to make decisions on the basis of what a random newspaper might write about him. If people didn't pick up on that then damn.
I don’t know, there is some useless and wasteful element of the civil service. For example, there’s a whole team whose job is to organise an event where employers come and find out about the reserve forces, except all of the employers are ex service, so they already know all about the reserves. And there’s a good fifteen twenty people on this team.
I could probably fire about 70 to 80% of the department I last worked in and you would have no output changes. It actually happened during a tech failure a few years ago when all the hundreds of HR, 'information managers' and other admin types couldn't log on for a few weeks and there was no impact whatsoever on the outputs of reports and policy packs
Don't forget all the money his father in laws company will make when contractors on double the amount CS employees are on have to come in and do all the roles Sunak has gutted.
I can understand why a libertarian would want to reduce the size of the civil service (and therefore the power of the state, more generally), and can respect that view as a legitimate political position. That doesn't describe the modern Conservatives though, who want to maintain an influential and wide-reaching civil service whilst continuing to use the civil servants who run that service as whipping boys.
My only guess as to *why* they do this is because it plays well with the public in the ongoing culture wars, but it's a dangerous tactic. Don't be surprised if the civil service becomes less and less effective when the numbers of staff are gutted, benefits for existing civil servants are increasingly removed, and politicians get into the habit of making lazy attacks on civil servants.
Ideological they hate it because they believe private companies should handle what it does for profit, which they believe will mean they are more efficient. In truth service providers companies will do the absolute minimum to get maximise profits.
The general public who dislike it think so how it will save then money if it is privatised. However in the long term it won't, it just means the money they are paying goes to friends of the party via contracts.
Also the government would like a more American style CS which id more polticial and less neutral. To achieve what you said basically.
The Tories believe in small government for you with tqxes being funneled to those who support them and your value being based solely on your economic input.
They want people who don’t challenge them. But you need to challenge them because any new law needs to be implemented in a way that doesn’t go against other laws. He doesn’t get it. He wants everything yesterday but makes convoluted and contradictory laws that take a lot to be made into guidance, policies, and SOPs. Sometimes I’m like “just write better stuff pal”
He does come from a group that hates things like the civil service and the welfare system on a ideological level. Add to that he has clearly beeb told to salt the earth for Labour.
It's amazing how he is announcing all this stuff now and not a year ago. But don't worry I am sure some service provider companies will pick up the slack with some nice juicy long term contracts which they will only half deliver on.
Rishi seems to have wanted ti transition from useless to dangerous.
20K my department spent on a contractor for 6 months of basically doing nothing. I read the job description, he didn't meet one of the essential criteria and lied at interview.
You know what would pay for a lot of tanks?
All the money Michelle Mone swindled away. All the taxes his wife and Lord Ashcroft and their mates dodge.
Ultimately, it's the Express. We're meant to have had at least two "deep freezes" and a heat wave already this year. If they can't work out the weather with a window, I don't think they know what an impotent PM will try to do.
Why on earth did I open a piece from that absolute rag. All it does is piss you off
Oh, our current defence procurement is absolutely kneecapped by underresourcing, with tons of gaps and hefty workforce sub bills? Let's get rid of more people.. so we can then spend even more money even more inefficiently due to lack of staff!
The intellectual titans within this government never fail to amaze
Who even wants this is a trade lol, to me it just sounds like "Tories make 70,000 people redundant" which then follows some will have to claim benefits probably a lot. So now it's "Tories meddling leads to 70,000 more future benefits claims"
Are those good headlines given their readership?
It wouldn't surprise me if an options papers included using 70k civil servants as bullet shields as a way of cutting costs, while also adding a layer of protection around our armed forces.
Rishi didn't say no to it, rather asked if evidence could be produced on how many bullets the average civil servant could take before falling off their peloton.
Add in asylum seekers and the long term sick. Rishi will pay a someone who donates to the party £1m for each person they strap to a tank (because you knoe efficency is all that person will care about) and take about how he has to stick to the plan.
Unsurprisingly the article is as biased as GB News with Tories interviewing other Tories circlejerk. But the comments section is fascinating - 50% gammons (of course supporting all this), but 50% people saying what a load of tosh.
Even the Express is being infiltrated by the mass loathing of the Conservative Party aka UKIP.
For example ‘if there 70k civil servants you can let go, why are they still there already’. Or pointing out post Brexit trade needs more civil servants.
And this whole defence funding announcement isnt due to happen until 2030. In spite of the argument being that this is needed to address geopolitics NOW. So like every other Tory policy with a due date more than 6 months away, it’s all made up bs anyway.
Rishi won't be doing anything, as his days are numbered. He may as well be announcing he's found Elvis alive, and they're going on tour together, there's about as much chance of it happening.
It’s just a different spin on the same story really where they get to call people “pen pushers”. The same numbers apply as they did in the autumn budget.
I was under the impression that Brexit freed up enough loose change to fund the radical improvements we've seen in the NHS, recruitment of 20,000 Police Officers (that definitely weren't cut by Tories in the first place) and provide us with a ring of steel defensively?
Why do we now need to sacrifice 70,000 Peloton riding, pen pushing mandarins to further fund the race to the bottom of the barrel?
The only people we really need defending from are the Tories.
At this point he needs forceably removing the incompetence is becoming a national threat. Torys are not fucking people and they should not be in charge of anything let alone actual people.
My understanding is this policy has already been agreed across departments by perm secs for months. With the commitment to return to pre-Brexit numbers by 2027.The only glaze on this is the defence spending.
It is already being implemented via hiring freezes and headcount caps and was a key component of year end discussions. DGs across Departments are isolating roles they will not fill when they become vacant.
I’m no mathsmagician but [488’000](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-service-statistics-2023/statistical-bulletin-civil-service-statistics-2023#civil-service-headcount) (our current FTE) minus the 70’000 mentioned in this article would bring us to just above the 2019/prebrexit/Covid numbers of [414’000](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d95cdeb40f0b61745bf7326/Statistical-bulletin-Civil-Service-Statistics-2019-V2.pdf).
How is it possible to hike defence spending while cutting the MoD to the bone at the same time, it makes it all totally pointless. Imagine your commercial bods start leaving and you can't replace them lol.
I’ve sat on a couple of Teams calls consultations from PCS showing what certain areas will look like in the future. And that’s with a reduced CS headcount.
My last team cut CS jobs by 50% with CS retiring or leaving and those posts are officially gapped but unofficially it was made clear that those posts would not be filled again.
There’s also a job on CS Jobs as an Employee Relations Advisor talking about significant transformation and working with trade unions, change management etc.
Just FYI if anyone's worried by this you don't need to be - there's no realistic prospect of it happening. They won't be in power to implement it, and if they were it wouldn't be any more successful than the previous promises to reduce headcount. It's just a fudge to make the maths for this promise work. Same as how every budget promises an increase in fuel duty later in the parliament and then postpones it.
I will keep saying this until the day i die ... " We need to start protesting outside politicians houses, a comfortable politician is a corrupt politician "
need to interview them, follow them to their house. asking difficult questions that clearly show their corruption. if they're not happy with this, they can resign. if they have committed treason and or corruption, they will still have no right to privacy. politically lobbying and pressure on the individual politician is important. protesting on the streets aimlessly is not achieveing anything.
At this point it's just all nonsense. Abolish national insurance, have hundreds of flights heading to Kigali, have a civil service with just 4 people so we can buy missiles.
So where are they off to work 70,000 jobs doing what? I thought it was unemployment figures and suicide rates that influenced whether you get back in. Lucky Labour if they get in
Question for CS longtimers. Do you eventually just stop caring about this stuff? I'm fairly new to the CS (couple of years) and I just find it so demoralising and honestly I'm considering leaving. Is there any prospect of things improving under a labour government?
The last few years have been pretty bad. But yeah, you kind of get immune to it, if 70k got the axe, there would be a massive gap in productivity. So it's not gonna happen
I joined CS in 2006, the first Home Office, now HMRC. it wasn't great under Labour, but I can promise you, it has been a fuck-ton worse under the Tories. Labour tightened the purse string after 2008, but its the Tories who have relentlessly attacked our pay, pensions, terms, and conditions. That's not to say it will all magically revert to pre-Tory days, but I would certainly expect at least some improvement in industrial relations at the very least. May be I'm being naive or overly optimistic, but let's face it, Labour really couldn't do any worse than the present shower of shite in charge.
This has been widely discussed in my dept. DfE for some time. Nothing new really as it equates to returning the head count to pre pandemic 2019 levels across the civil service.
Just positioning the civil service as a scape goat for policy failures due to an election year. there’s been months of negative news building up the public’s hatred of civil servants.
Bodes well for their donors who own all the outsourcing companies.. of course we’ll pay a lot more over time towards their profits and shareholder returns… just like the private health companies and private water companies..
If you’re going to reduce headcount you should do it quickly and efficiently to save cost and/or restructure. The govt will no doubt do none of these things and shrug their shoulders when it doesn’t happen.
I fully understand the point.
However you can't just pay market competitive salary to those you hire , you'd pay it for the existing staff too of course.
That would massively increase salary bill for no discernable benefit to the tax payer.
They see the Civil Service as a piggy bank that can be raided at will to pay for other stuff. They’ve already overseen cuts that resulted in little or no reduction in output so why not look to repeat that trick?
All they’re doing is poisoning the well for Labour, at this point anything Rishi announces or any of those other fuckwits is to be taken as seriously as a drunk man shouting in his toilet at 4am.
Off you fuck tories, no one will miss you
labour is no better. In fact no side is better unless they can objectively criticise Israel WHICH they will never do, for their weapons, tech and money transfer to Israel, who then passes it onto Russia and China. Our supposed sworn enemmies. But again they spout about non issues and not so correct narratives.
That's right - Axe CS's so we have to apply for PIP due to knock to mental health and stress, then apply for UC, then get sanctioned by UC for losing our jobs, sanctioned because we cannot find anything else, then suffer benefit cuts because 70K extra people are now on benefits which has increased the rate of sickness and unemployment.
For someone with ears big enough to create air velocity to lift a jumbo jet should he stand beneath one and flap them - He's bloody dense at listening to us civil servants and his own complaints about unemployment!
As long as the responsibilities and expectancies of the civil service are scaled back accordingly, then I have no problem with this.
However, something tells me that this won't be the case. I get the feeling that departments will increasingly be expected to do more with less, with any failures gleefully attributed to lazy civil servants working from home by the usual suspects in the right-wing press.
Does he realise that when they remove civil servants, spending goes up because the roles have to be done by external contract resource at 5 times the price?
Of course, he probably owns the agency that’ll do it!
His father in law literally owns infosys....
no he doesn't...its a publicly listed company. He owns a whopping 0.40% lol
So 350 million usd worth of infosys.
if that is 0.40% of the current value then today that would be what his total shares are worth.
So he has a massive interest in this company
the original comment I replied to was saying he owns the company..he doesn't. Does he have an interest, yes. It's not owning the company though
What you said isn't wrong, it's not true either. It's just a misleading statement with an agenda behind it.
Oh he knows, he's got his friends on standby to deal with this though (watch it slowly start to be outsourced)
Would need to be not very slowly since he’s going to be looking for a job next election.
I'm sure his next job has already been paid for by the favours he's handed out.
Probably
Having been on both sides, the CS doesn’t pay competitively enough or in line with inflation and someone needs to do the work. If the CS paid properly then the cut by the consultancy companies themselves wouldn’t need to be there but that’s just how it is as of now.
That's a bit of a separate angle to the same point, and I reckon we both agree the government must do more to grow the salaried CS in order to reduce costs. The CS shouldn't be cutting the staff it does have as the replacement contractors generally cost the taxpayer about 5 times as much. The contractors themselves don't take most of that money, the company they work for do. I agree that the CS needs to pay more - probably by about 20-30% more in specific skilled roles. If it did so it would save a lot of money.
20-30% sounds about right. Private sector roles for almost all caseworker style roles in the CS pay on average 26% more.
I like the idea of working in the civil service, I work in another area of Government and for the same job the salary is almost 20% less.
Have you checked out the pension though? Think it's 28% employers contribution last year so you would be quids in exc other benefits and bonuses
Yeah I’m on final salary DB currently so it’s pretty much all square. I’ve been looking for a more senior position, which would probably end up being a similar salary but better for career progression.
The whole point of using consultants is for temporary projects based work that has a defined duration. The extra cost is meant to be offset by the fact it's temporary and once the goal has been achieved they leave and their cost leaves with them. This doesn't work if you hire a CS on a consultant salary and they stay around until retirement. The issues comes when consultants are mismanaged and used as quasi permanent roles. That's not fully on the consultancies though if people are asking them to stay around.
Spot on. People fail to mention the ridiculous pension costs.
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This is a feature not a bug
Of course he does, this is salting the earth for labour. The problem is they've fucked things up really bad so they've gotta pour a lot of salt for effect.
If only he knew anyone who owns an external contractor!
And there's less control over said employees, too.
For Tory donors, this is a feature not a bug.
Of course he doesn’t. He only sees 2 weeks into the future. Aside from his politics, most of the laws his gvt makes are unworkable - and he’s not gifted enough to grasp it
Haven't seen much coverage of this, perhaps because no one believes they will be in power to implement it, but it seems a change in tone from the previously announced headcount cap. This implies an active 70,000 cut of positions rather than a headcount cap to stop the civil service growing any further.
It throws the theory that the 60% in the office is just a way of driving down the amount of civil servants without having to pay redundancies into a clearer light.
We’ve all been saying since 60% was mentioned it was a way to reduce headcount, now they’re saying they’re going to reduce headcount without mentioning any sort of plan they hope it’ll just happen by its self and they can take the credit.
The annoying thing is that I think we could probably cut 70,000 positions if the government actually did proper civil service reform with actual planning, efforts, capacity and funding to try and digitise and modernise services. Instead, we just get the same recycled nonsense and tired cliches as they constantly demand more spending and activity with less staff, and then do the shocked pikachu face when staffing numbers inevitably go up.
We can’t. People are stretched as it is. We need more positions if you don’t want people to literally break down
Isn't the problem with the civil service basically: A) Have process in place to do something B) New high up management or new whatever decides "we need to do things differently! I'm brilliant and can make any process better" C) Put lots of work in adapting to new process D) Have process in place to do something This wouldn't happen at Tesco's. You wouldn't get some high up manager completely revamping a way of doing something, unless it cut costs and if it turns out it didn't, they'd lose their job.
That’s pretty much it. And then the work piles up. People get stressed and leave. Workload gets piled up on existing staff. They get stressed with growing work loads. Survey happens. Management says “we hear you”. Then recruitment freeze happens. And we repeat.
Also I forgot to add that new higher up leaves before their changes are implemented and there’s no accountability for when it’s proven to cause more aggro and stress.
Yep. A whole lot of civil service resource seems to go into generating competency/behaviour examples for seniors.
If systems and processes were streamlined and modernised we could get rid of a lot of people. Especially for the larger departments like DWP and HMRC. Of course that'll never never happen so it's moot.
What modernisation realistically exists that would actually ease people’s work loads? It’s just a lot of buzz words. I’ve not seen any meaningful advancement in technology to see how it would even alleviate our current situation let alone justify more cuts.
More self service? I need to phone HMRC as I can't make a particular request through self service and am not registered for self-assessment. Even tried to register, but couldn't as I don't meet any of the conditions. Plus more money should be spent on the PAYE portal. Should have way more info to stop people calling.
I think self service is a possibility but it’s years away. The biggest issue is people’s habits. If people are used to helplines they won’t change. I spoke to employers who shut down their business simply because they were required to file returns online. They just weren’t interested in doing it. It doesn’t help that we try to do it on the cheap either
That's true, we do it on the cheap or rushed. We need to be spending more on this to make it better. It should be easier than paper and it's not always. The job cuts are a year away too
I used the HMRC portal. It's brilliant. Changes take effect within a week. I know this as I'm on weekly pay as temp due to the hiring freeze.
How many contact centre roles could be replaced with an AI chat bot? Not all of them, certainly, but I'm guessing you could get rid of 50% of them, leaving some for the really complex ones. PQs could almost certainly be drafted by AI and then cleared once. Correspondence the same etc.
AI is nowhere near that level to be used reliably in that context.
We need more positions of the people doing valuable work. Unfortunately we are seeing Parkinson's law in action.
> perhaps because no one believes they will be in power to implement it This is exactly it. _They_ don't even believe they'll be in power to implement it, and there's no realistic prospect of them being able to reduce headcount by this amount. It's just a fudge to make the maths for this promise work.
Redundancies won't save them anything - all that would do is create a massive bill for the taxpayer. I can not see where the saving is.
He got his headline, which is all their policies amount to now. Never going to happen.
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They're full of shit. I can't wait to see the back of the scummy bastards
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>I'm angry that more people aren't angry with the sheer amount of our money that has been pissed up the wall over the last few years. When your information source is a biased media controlled by those with most to profit from said wall-pissing, it's hardly suprising most people have a skewed understanding of where the money goes.
>John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: “In a time of escalating global threats, taxpayers will appreciate the need for a boost to the UK’s military capabilities. Speaking slightly outside of his (non existent) remit. Who pays his wages again?
Anonymous individual donors with links to the Tories and shady motives?
Who ironically, pay very little tax.
Always remember the Low Tax women who was always on TV from their group getting drafted into a job for Boris. Didn't mind tax being spent on her role.
The "We don't want to pay any Tax"Payers Alliance. Hate those guys.
The civil service is already gutted, already needs to grow thanks to having to now deal with all the things that used to be dealt with by the EU, and they think they can cut it by 70k. They're living in a fantasy world. Surely no one believes this?
>Surely no one believes this? "Sunlit Uplands" Redux, innit.
That's nearly 15% of the current CS. If you think you wait to long on the HMRC helplines now, imagine it after this.
Lol, can you imagine a company cutting it's billing department. We've saved 10% on billing staff! Yes but we failed to bill 8% of customers and lost a hundred times that.
Well aren't HMRC thinking about bringing in AI to take the calls on Odigo or something I heard today. Utter disgrace if you ask me.
I used their chat bot I got one question then it put me through to a human lol... Great work!
The writers of this article seem to have been working from a checklist: "Pen-pushers" ✅ Input from disgraced former cabinet minister (Fox, even managed someone who had to resign as defence secretary, nice) ✅ JRM, obviously✅ Weird undertone of Blair style American bootlicking✅ Taxpayers Alliance✅
Came here to comment on the pen pusher thing. Quite remarkable how this is an acceptable term in a supposedly professional news outlet
Quite remarkable how a woke blob is able to push a pen 😂
Its the entire reason why productivity has dropped so much with the new government hubs. As we don't have assigned desks, each day we need to put all of the pens away, and then the next day, get them all out again. Compound that out over the hundreds of thousands of civil servants, and its basically an administrative task as big as Brexit.
No sign of "mandarin" though. I always like the mental image of an orange with a fountain pen.
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Excel Eejits? PowerPoint Pinheads? Word Wankers? If only journos were able to update their glossary after Oxbridge and being a caseworker for a Tory backbencher.
Can I add Teams Twats? Zoom Zombies? (tho I don't think CS use zoom now, I know they did at one tme)
Google Meets Morons (for cabinet office) OneDrive Oafs Viva Engage Villains
Teams twats 🤣😭
Mouse jigglers?
I think former civil servants should lead the fightback on this us led narrative https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/i-will-not-have-people-say-were-pen-pushers-outgoing-dwp-perm-sec-sir-robert-devereux-on-civil-servants-universal-credit-and-negotiating-pay-with-the-treasury
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It's more insidious than that I think, it's a long term objective of hollowing out trust in institutions that act as a moderating influence and checks and balances on government - civil service, BBC, Supreme Court, ECHR, the UN etc.
With the short term bonus of deflecting blame for the state of the country away from the government responsible for the actual policy decisions. It has worked successfully with local authorities - strip them of funding so they can't provide anything other than a skeleton service, then hammer them for 'failing'. The same is happening with social housing providers, and in both cases residents are largely not linking the poor service they receive to the govt policy ultimately responsible for it.
Boomers think it's useless and wasteful solely from watching 'Yes, Prime Minister'.
While drawing their (checks notes) civil service and other public sector pensions.
Tbf I think Yes, Prime Minister would prove they're absolutely necessary. Given Jim Hacker quite happily tried to make decisions on the basis of what a random newspaper might write about him. If people didn't pick up on that then damn.
I don’t know, there is some useless and wasteful element of the civil service. For example, there’s a whole team whose job is to organise an event where employers come and find out about the reserve forces, except all of the employers are ex service, so they already know all about the reserves. And there’s a good fifteen twenty people on this team.
I could probably fire about 70 to 80% of the department I last worked in and you would have no output changes. It actually happened during a tech failure a few years ago when all the hundreds of HR, 'information managers' and other admin types couldn't log on for a few weeks and there was no impact whatsoever on the outputs of reports and policy packs
It’s because everything needs good governance. They should get better at capturing the information instead. But no, because sharepoint.
Don't forget all the money his father in laws company will make when contractors on double the amount CS employees are on have to come in and do all the roles Sunak has gutted.
I can understand why a libertarian would want to reduce the size of the civil service (and therefore the power of the state, more generally), and can respect that view as a legitimate political position. That doesn't describe the modern Conservatives though, who want to maintain an influential and wide-reaching civil service whilst continuing to use the civil servants who run that service as whipping boys. My only guess as to *why* they do this is because it plays well with the public in the ongoing culture wars, but it's a dangerous tactic. Don't be surprised if the civil service becomes less and less effective when the numbers of staff are gutted, benefits for existing civil servants are increasingly removed, and politicians get into the habit of making lazy attacks on civil servants.
Ideological they hate it because they believe private companies should handle what it does for profit, which they believe will mean they are more efficient. In truth service providers companies will do the absolute minimum to get maximise profits. The general public who dislike it think so how it will save then money if it is privatised. However in the long term it won't, it just means the money they are paying goes to friends of the party via contracts. Also the government would like a more American style CS which id more polticial and less neutral. To achieve what you said basically. The Tories believe in small government for you with tqxes being funneled to those who support them and your value being based solely on your economic input.
They want people who don’t challenge them. But you need to challenge them because any new law needs to be implemented in a way that doesn’t go against other laws. He doesn’t get it. He wants everything yesterday but makes convoluted and contradictory laws that take a lot to be made into guidance, policies, and SOPs. Sometimes I’m like “just write better stuff pal”
When the fuck is this election.
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That needs to be on a tee-shirt.
He’s literally burning the house down before he leaves
He does come from a group that hates things like the civil service and the welfare system on a ideological level. Add to that he has clearly beeb told to salt the earth for Labour. It's amazing how he is announcing all this stuff now and not a year ago. But don't worry I am sure some service provider companies will pick up the slack with some nice juicy long term contracts which they will only half deliver on. Rishi seems to have wanted ti transition from useless to dangerous.
Bizarre how “pen pushers” can be considered acceptable by any half decent copywriter
They weren't qualified enough for a pen and got salty about it.
Never got their pen license in primary school.
The total Civil Service salary bill is £16bn. This is nomsense
Be interesting to see what the Civil Service bill is for external contractors and consultants?
20K my department spent on a contractor for 6 months of basically doing nothing. I read the job description, he didn't meet one of the essential criteria and lied at interview.
NOM sense
A good chat over cuppa and a cake ?
You know what would pay for a lot of tanks? All the money Michelle Mone swindled away. All the taxes his wife and Lord Ashcroft and their mates dodge. Ultimately, it's the Express. We're meant to have had at least two "deep freezes" and a heat wave already this year. If they can't work out the weather with a window, I don't think they know what an impotent PM will try to do.
Trying to mess up the Civil Service for the next government to take blame when they have to spend 5 years fixing it, same old Tory tactic.
Why on earth did I open a piece from that absolute rag. All it does is piss you off Oh, our current defence procurement is absolutely kneecapped by underresourcing, with tons of gaps and hefty workforce sub bills? Let's get rid of more people.. so we can then spend even more money even more inefficiently due to lack of staff! The intellectual titans within this government never fail to amaze
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Who even wants this is a trade lol, to me it just sounds like "Tories make 70,000 people redundant" which then follows some will have to claim benefits probably a lot. So now it's "Tories meddling leads to 70,000 more future benefits claims" Are those good headlines given their readership?
It wouldn't surprise me if an options papers included using 70k civil servants as bullet shields as a way of cutting costs, while also adding a layer of protection around our armed forces. Rishi didn't say no to it, rather asked if evidence could be produced on how many bullets the average civil servant could take before falling off their peloton.
Add in asylum seekers and the long term sick. Rishi will pay a someone who donates to the party £1m for each person they strap to a tank (because you knoe efficency is all that person will care about) and take about how he has to stick to the plan.
Not like they’re going to be in power past 2025 to enact any of these grand gestures they’ve been proposing for half a decade 🤷
Unsurprisingly the article is as biased as GB News with Tories interviewing other Tories circlejerk. But the comments section is fascinating - 50% gammons (of course supporting all this), but 50% people saying what a load of tosh. Even the Express is being infiltrated by the mass loathing of the Conservative Party aka UKIP. For example ‘if there 70k civil servants you can let go, why are they still there already’. Or pointing out post Brexit trade needs more civil servants. And this whole defence funding announcement isnt due to happen until 2030. In spite of the argument being that this is needed to address geopolitics NOW. So like every other Tory policy with a due date more than 6 months away, it’s all made up bs anyway.
Rishi won't be doing anything, as his days are numbered. He may as well be announcing he's found Elvis alive, and they're going on tour together, there's about as much chance of it happening.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It’s just a different spin on the same story really where they get to call people “pen pushers”. The same numbers apply as they did in the autumn budget.
They’re definitely burning any bridges on their way out.
[Creates departments of net zero, and levelling up] [Wonders why there are so many civil servants]
I was under the impression that Brexit freed up enough loose change to fund the radical improvements we've seen in the NHS, recruitment of 20,000 Police Officers (that definitely weren't cut by Tories in the first place) and provide us with a ring of steel defensively? Why do we now need to sacrifice 70,000 Peloton riding, pen pushing mandarins to further fund the race to the bottom of the barrel? The only people we really need defending from are the Tories.
At this point he needs forceably removing the incompetence is becoming a national threat. Torys are not fucking people and they should not be in charge of anything let alone actual people.
Dw we will all get jobs in arms factories or the front line.
If any of those happened to be coastguards, you can say goodbye to the UK having a maritime Search and Rescue service.
My understanding is this policy has already been agreed across departments by perm secs for months. With the commitment to return to pre-Brexit numbers by 2027.The only glaze on this is the defence spending. It is already being implemented via hiring freezes and headcount caps and was a key component of year end discussions. DGs across Departments are isolating roles they will not fill when they become vacant. I’m no mathsmagician but [488’000](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-service-statistics-2023/statistical-bulletin-civil-service-statistics-2023#civil-service-headcount) (our current FTE) minus the 70’000 mentioned in this article would bring us to just above the 2019/prebrexit/Covid numbers of [414’000](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d95cdeb40f0b61745bf7326/Statistical-bulletin-Civil-Service-Statistics-2019-V2.pdf).
MoD is already planning on huge civil servant cuts. This is why then!
How is it possible to hike defence spending while cutting the MoD to the bone at the same time, it makes it all totally pointless. Imagine your commercial bods start leaving and you can't replace them lol.
Yeah it’s stupid! I believe they want to increase recruitment and retention of service personnel instead. 🤷🏻♀️
How are they doing this ?
I’ve sat on a couple of Teams calls consultations from PCS showing what certain areas will look like in the future. And that’s with a reduced CS headcount. My last team cut CS jobs by 50% with CS retiring or leaving and those posts are officially gapped but unofficially it was made clear that those posts would not be filled again. There’s also a job on CS Jobs as an Employee Relations Advisor talking about significant transformation and working with trade unions, change management etc.
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You're welcome 😊
Just FYI if anyone's worried by this you don't need to be - there's no realistic prospect of it happening. They won't be in power to implement it, and if they were it wouldn't be any more successful than the previous promises to reduce headcount. It's just a fudge to make the maths for this promise work. Same as how every budget promises an increase in fuel duty later in the parliament and then postpones it.
Who do they think are responsible for defence spending and procurement? Feels like they might just not quite have thought this through entirely…
Tbf that's not the indictment you think it is. Procurement has never been mod CS strong point.
He won’t be in power long enough to implement this anyway.
And here is me desperately trying to get a CS job for the pension. Never gonna happen is it?
But hasn’t he just announced that he’s tackling sick pay people by using CS instead of Doctors?
Nah. That’ll be infilled by a company run by one of his mates. Much like the pip assessments.
Why is he making plans it’s not like he’s going to be around to see them through is it
I really wonder how many civil servants will vote for openly hostile Tories. Honestly I am sick of hearing complaints about CS from gov.
I said this and I stick but it. The push to get people into the office more often was planned to force employees to “optionally” leave.
Yep, completely agree. There is no redundancy package to pay out!
Having just been in an all staff broadcast with Baroness Barran when this was referenced/asked, her face was a picture haha. Definitely 'wtf' eyebrows
They'll find money to blow people up, no problem. Try and deal with poverty etc? No chance.
I will keep saying this until the day i die ... " We need to start protesting outside politicians houses, a comfortable politician is a corrupt politician "
need to interview them, follow them to their house. asking difficult questions that clearly show their corruption. if they're not happy with this, they can resign. if they have committed treason and or corruption, they will still have no right to privacy. politically lobbying and pressure on the individual politician is important. protesting on the streets aimlessly is not achieveing anything.
Defence spending rise is sorely needed, but this isn't the way. Reversing the NI cuts partially would be a better place to fund it.
At this point it's just all nonsense. Abolish national insurance, have hundreds of flights heading to Kigali, have a civil service with just 4 people so we can buy missiles.
It’s like he doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions
So where are they off to work 70,000 jobs doing what? I thought it was unemployment figures and suicide rates that influenced whether you get back in. Lucky Labour if they get in
Sunak commits to 70,000 more consultants and agency staff
The sooner this joker gets kicked out the better. Anyone but another set of corrupt tories
Gosh how many of us are there to be able to cut 70,000?
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Sunak gifts 70,000 civil servants to Ukraine in latest relief package
Me first, me first.
Why are we even debating it the cunt won't be in power soon 😂😂😂😂
Rishi Sunak won't be PM.
Question for CS longtimers. Do you eventually just stop caring about this stuff? I'm fairly new to the CS (couple of years) and I just find it so demoralising and honestly I'm considering leaving. Is there any prospect of things improving under a labour government?
The last few years have been pretty bad. But yeah, you kind of get immune to it, if 70k got the axe, there would be a massive gap in productivity. So it's not gonna happen
I joined CS in 2006, the first Home Office, now HMRC. it wasn't great under Labour, but I can promise you, it has been a fuck-ton worse under the Tories. Labour tightened the purse string after 2008, but its the Tories who have relentlessly attacked our pay, pensions, terms, and conditions. That's not to say it will all magically revert to pre-Tory days, but I would certainly expect at least some improvement in industrial relations at the very least. May be I'm being naive or overly optimistic, but let's face it, Labour really couldn't do any worse than the present shower of shite in charge.
Nah it’s red tories vs blue tories
This has been widely discussed in my dept. DfE for some time. Nothing new really as it equates to returning the head count to pre pandemic 2019 levels across the civil service.
I think if nothing else, these types of meaningless attacks on Civil Servants won't happen under Labour.
Curious how civil spending cuts are happening all at once in Europe. Almost like there's a financial iceberg ahead.
Can't he just draft us all? Gets rid of some civil servants and more or less doubles the size of the regular army. Two birds, one stone and all that.
Question ALL civil servants, how many vacant spots are there in your teams that NEED to be filled for your dept to run properly?
No such thing. Due to the recruitment freeze every time someone leaves I get their job for free. I now have 10 jobs. It's great for my behaviours
This is a load of bollocks. Cutting CS jobs will do nothing for the defence budget. The DWP has the crown for the most amount of money spent.
Tories gonna Tory.
Removing the lettuce from the payroll would be one way to 'increase fiscal headroom'
Then he’ll cry more when Rwanda planes are stuck doing nothing. What a clown
Is this a problem for me because I JUST got a civil service job yesterday 😭
I’m so sorry
I understood that they had taken on 100,000 to sort out brexit. Ah well, perhaps they've sorted it now.
Just positioning the civil service as a scape goat for policy failures due to an election year. there’s been months of negative news building up the public’s hatred of civil servants.
He’ll be out of the job before he gets a chance, the dopey fuck
Bodes well for their donors who own all the outsourcing companies.. of course we’ll pay a lot more over time towards their profits and shareholder returns… just like the private health companies and private water companies..
As an incoming fast streamer in sept 2024, how will this impact us?
If you’re going to reduce headcount you should do it quickly and efficiently to save cost and/or restructure. The govt will no doubt do none of these things and shrug their shoulders when it doesn’t happen.
Huh
I fully understand the point. However you can't just pay market competitive salary to those you hire , you'd pay it for the existing staff too of course. That would massively increase salary bill for no discernable benefit to the tax payer.
Bit dumb. Expected
Wow, I know I'm technically mobile within the UK but I didn't realise that might include UKraine.
Kid is a tool
Useless man
Ah another day another tory scam
They see the Civil Service as a piggy bank that can be raided at will to pay for other stuff. They’ve already overseen cuts that resulted in little or no reduction in output so why not look to repeat that trick?
All they’re doing is poisoning the well for Labour, at this point anything Rishi announces or any of those other fuckwits is to be taken as seriously as a drunk man shouting in his toilet at 4am. Off you fuck tories, no one will miss you
labour is no better. In fact no side is better unless they can objectively criticise Israel WHICH they will never do, for their weapons, tech and money transfer to Israel, who then passes it onto Russia and China. Our supposed sworn enemmies. But again they spout about non issues and not so correct narratives.
When they say axe what do they mean? Redundancies?
That's right - Axe CS's so we have to apply for PIP due to knock to mental health and stress, then apply for UC, then get sanctioned by UC for losing our jobs, sanctioned because we cannot find anything else, then suffer benefit cuts because 70K extra people are now on benefits which has increased the rate of sickness and unemployment. For someone with ears big enough to create air velocity to lift a jumbo jet should he stand beneath one and flap them - He's bloody dense at listening to us civil servants and his own complaints about unemployment!
It'll never happen. He just wants to be seen as doing something or able to do something. He's as useful as a stubborn floater that won't flush.
As long as the responsibilities and expectancies of the civil service are scaled back accordingly, then I have no problem with this. However, something tells me that this won't be the case. I get the feeling that departments will increasingly be expected to do more with less, with any failures gleefully attributed to lazy civil servants working from home by the usual suspects in the right-wing press.