Boris Johnson's latest challenge to Ministers to cut 91,000 Civil Service jobs continues a trend that strikes at the heart of Britain. Following on from the National Insurance rise clumsily tagged to "supporting the NHS" on payslips, the 91,000 job cuts will supposedly free up cash to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.  As usual, it appeals to a certain mentality. One that used to think most Civil Servants are sitting in Whitehall, clocking up "Gold Plated Pensions" and now think they are sitting at home, "skiving off" (or alternately working hard churning out meaningless red tape, depending on which axe you're grinding). Like the Ministers themselves, that mentality doesn't actually know what the Civil Servants are doing. It doesn't know that a lot of them work outside Whitehall, and it doesn't know that a lot of them are so lowly paid that they qualify for in-work benefits. To be fair though, the Government has been doing its best to...

  Mogg, following in the soggy footsteps of the shoe-chewing Francis Maude, wants to cut civil service jobs. Like most of his ilk, he doesn’t know what those civil servants do, or what the effect of cutting them would be. He just wants them gone. Mogg also thinks everyone should be working in the office. Give him his due – it’s not just the oiks that he wants back in the office – as Father of the House, he ordered MP’s back to Parliament and vetoed online debates, in 2020 when the Pandemic was at its height. The reasons Mogg gave were to  “restore the cut and thrust of debate” and to “set an example to the rest of the country.”  You might ask what kind of example the Commons sets for the country with their “cut and thrust” – or Bash Street Kids barracking – but you can at least see that Mogg is consistent. As a Conservative, he wants things to stay like they’ve always been. So, no surprise that at the end of April, he crept round Civil Service offices leaving “Sorry I Mis...

  A common sense suggestion to merge civil servants and council officers could be the start of cuts to local authorities. Baron Bichard, writing in the latest Civil Service World suggests scrapping distinctions between civil servants, council officers and NHS staff and creating a unified public service. The argument, on behalf of “the Commission for Smart Government” makes sense.  If you have one public service, it will smash the bureaucratic boxes which make it hard to solve real-life problems. Michael Bichard hints that last year’s PPE crisis would have had a happier ending if – instead of lots of agencies around the country – there had been just one public service. https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/time-to-end-the-great-divide-lets-scrap-distinctions-between-civil-servants-council-officers-and-nhs-staff And of course, Michael Bichard was the first chief executive of a county council to be put in charge of a government agency (the Benefits Agency).  So ...

  I've been reading through the Institute for Government's new report on Finding The Right Skills for the Civil Service and had a few random thoughts.  The report has a "ripped from the headlines" recommendation about "porosity" (expertise moving between the Civil Service and the Private Sector). It says ACOBA is the gatekeeper that limits ‘revolving door’ abuse of government insider knowledge "(but)...there are.no firm sanctions for those who break the rules, and those who follow them are unlikely to be the people behaving improperly. " So,"...the system needs a thorough overhaul." As I said here , it's clear the problem lies on the top shelf of the oven, and I hope any remedies don't end up dripping down to the bottom levels. As far as the findings on skills goes, I still felt a bit of residual pride that HMRC is identified as a bit of a leader here with a large number of civil servants who are members of a profession that in...

 Call me suspicious, but as sure as slurry runs downhill, I suspect the current row over Greensill and second jobs for civil servants will eventually end up having the biggest impact on those at the bottom of the oven. The current row started with a former head of Whitehall procurement being revealed to have a "second job" with Greensill Capital. As a result the head of the civil service has ordered Government departments to tell him how many other civil servants have second jobs. I assume the Cabinet Secretary is just interested in "top" civil servants - senior managers with the knowledge and connections to benefit private enterprise. I really hope this isn't going to be the start of a grand campaign that blusters down to the lowest levels of the civil service. At the lower grades, some civil servants are so poorly paid that - before the pandemic - they felt the need to take a second job. Others are involved with family businesses and do a bit of work at weeken...