Ministers to axe more than 10,000 civil service jobs in budgets purge

Ministers are to cut more than 10,000 civil service jobs as Whitehall departments battle to stay within spending limits under a new government efficiency drive, the Guardian has learned.

- Rowena Mason

Multiple sources said there was an acceptance that the civil service had become too big and unwieldy after expanding due to the demands of Brexit and the Covid pandemic.

With Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, having ordered departments to find 5% cuts to their budgets as part of a spending review, insiders said job cuts would be inevitable.

One Cabinet Office source said departments would have to make some "very hard choices" about headcount if they were going to stay within budgets set by the Treasury.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet office minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, refused to be drawn on job cuts when pressed earlier this week, but gave a speech outlining how he wanted the civil service to be "more like a startup" in its operation.

"We don't have a target for headcount," he said on Monday. "My focus is on making the people who work for us into being as productive as they possibly can. That's why those efficiencies that the chancellor announced in the budget are important and there will be more to come. And technology should help us become more productive in the future."

There are 513,000 full-time civil servants in central government, up sharply from a recent low of about 380,000 in 2016.

Over the summer, the Labour government abandoned the Conservatives' target of cutting 66,000 civil service roles - but more than 10,000 jobs are expected to be slashed.

The Cabinet Office is understood to be one of the departments considered to have grown too big. Parts of it could be broken up, or some staff redeployed to other parts of Whitehall.