Modest Civil Service Staff Cuts Could Reverse Farm Tax Ten Times – Guido Fawkes

Modest Civil Service Staff Cuts Could Reverse Farm Tax Ten Times

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Policy Exchange has just dropped a new report by ex-Home Office director Stephen Webb estimating that £5 billion a year could be saved by cutting 80,000 roles in the civil service. That could reverse the family farm tax, from which the Treasury hopes to bring in £500 million a year, ten times over…

The report recommends:

• Reduce Senior Civil Service (SCS) by 50%
• Cut Grade 6 and Grade 7 staff by 40%
• Cut SEO and HEO numbers by 20%
• Reduce other grades by 5%
• Target overall civil service reduction of 15%
• Reduce policy function staff by 50%.
• Cut HR function by 50%
• Cut communications function by 60%
• Reduce commercial staff by 30%
• Eliminate G6 and Second Permanent Secretary as a management layers
• Impose a Whitehall-wide cap on number of senior civil servants

Policy Exchange also points out that civil service dismissals are a pitiful 0.5%. Labour’s plan to shave £1.5 billion off the Whitehall budget by the next election looks like small beer compared to what’s possible. Meanwhile briefings that Rachel Reeves could swing the axe on 50,000 civil servants in the spending review still wouldn’t be enough to bring numbers back to pre-pandemic levels – Whitehall has ballooned from 380,000 to 514,000 since 2016. Time to cull the no-longer-world-leading civil service…