Boris Johnson’s civil service job cuts are ambitious – and ideological

theguardian.com:

In Stoke on Thursday to discuss the cost of living crisis, Boris Johnson told his cabinet: “Folks, we’re going to get through this … jobs, jobs, jobs is the answer.” Just hours later, it emerged that almost one in five civil servants are set to lose theirs.

Rishi Sunak’s spending review last October had already set an aim of returning to 2019-20 levels of Whitehall staffing – pre-pandemic levels – by 2025; but this new pledge would see the civil service back to its pre-Brexit size.

It is the only the latest in a long line of efficiency drives aimed at slimming down Whitehall. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown commissioned businessman Sir Peter Gershon to recommend ways the civil service could be leaner.

One of his recommendations when the report was published in 2004 was a reduction of more than 70,000 civil service posts – as well as large-scale redeployment from backroom to frontline roles.

When the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition arrived in 2010, pledging to repair the damage done to the public finances by the global financial crisis (or as they would have it, by Gordon Brown), civil service job cuts were a central part of its austerity strategy. Frances Maude was brought in to recommend reforms.

The size of the civil service declined sharply throughout the coalition’s period in office, from a peak of around 490,000 in 2009, to fewer than 390,000 before the EU referendum in 2016.

As the cuts intensified, there were growing strains in some departments – as well as stories of seasoned experts being hired back into departments as consultants at a higher cost.

Alex Thomas, of the Institute for Government, points to the Department of Health and Defra as departments where crucial expertise was lost in repeated efficiency drives