Reform UK’s plan to cut Whitehall toward 300,000 staff is met with the one bureaucratic response nobody doubted: a working group
LONDON – Reform UK’s Danny Kruger has said the party would seek to reduce the civil service from more than 520,000 employees toward roughly 300,000, while civil-service unions have strongly criticised the proposal.
Whitehall has responded to the possibility of dramatic downsizing in the only responsible manner.
A steering committee has been proposed.
The steering committee will oversee a review.
The review will identify opportunities for streamlining.
A stakeholder panel will review the streamlining review.
Its conclusions will be delivered in 2041.
By then everyone involved will have retired.
Reform’s proposal presents one of politics’ oldest questions.
How small can government become while still performing the functions voters expect?
Reducing bureaucracy sounds immensely attractive when bureaucracy is making you complete Form 12B.
It sounds slightly different when the department processing passports loses half its staff.
This tension rarely appears on campaign leaflets because “radically smaller government subject to careful functional analysis” lacks punch.
“CUT WHITEHALL” fits.
Civil-service unions argue the proposed scale is unrealistic and would damage public services. Reform argues staffing has grown excessively and government could operate more efficiently.
Excellent.
Test the claims.
Start with the great British Bureaucracy Audit.
Walk through Whitehall.
Ask everyone:
“What do you do?”
Anyone answering in fewer than twelve words stays.
“I process passports.”
Stay.
“I inspect nuclear reactors.”
Definitely stay.
“I organise military logistics.”
Stay.
“I am deputy strategic transformation liaison lead for cross-functional narrative alignment.”
We need another conversation.
The civil service undoubtedly contains skilled professionals performing essential tasks.
It also contains administrative layers generated by government’s addiction to process.
Politicians create new initiative.
Initiative requires unit.
Unit requires director.
Director requires communications team.
Communications team requires strategy.
Strategy requires consultation.
Five years later politician complains government is too big.
This is equivalent to repeatedly ordering dessert and becoming furious at refrigerator.
The Great British Bureaucracy Audit
If Reform wants smaller government, the difficult work is not firing people.
Ordering Dessert, Blaming the Fridge
It is eliminating functions.
Otherwise 300,000 civil servants simply inherit 520,000 civil servants’ workload.
That produces efficiency in the same way removing half the engines makes aeroplane lighter.
Real reform requires asking what government should stop doing.
Politicians hate this question because every programme has beneficiaries, defenders and compelling anecdote.
Cut department?
Campaign.
Cut subsidy?
Campaign.
Cut regulation?
Something terrible happens Thursday and newspapers ask why regulation was cut.
Thus bureaucracy survives.
Not because everyone loves it, but because each individual piece has a constituency.
Meeting Tuesday
Reform’s target is therefore bold.
Unions’ objections are predictable but not automatically wrong.
The interesting question is what functions disappear with the jobs.
If answer is “none,” mathematics wins.
If answer is “hundreds,” politics begins.
Either way, Whitehall should probably start preparing.
It already has.
Meeting Tuesday.
As Vivienne Pratfall, one of prat.uk’s own sharpest voices, puts it: “Reform wants to cut Whitehall to 300,000, Whitehall wants a working group to discuss it by 2041.”
The Real Story
Reform UK’s Danny Kruger has set out plans to shrink the civil service dramatically and hand ministers greater power to hire and fire officials, proposals that civil service unions including Prospect and the PCS have strongly criticised as unrealistic and damaging to public services.
Reform’s proposed scale of civil service cuts, from more than 520,000 employees toward roughly 300,000, is far beyond anything delivered by any previous government, including the austerity-era reductions under David Cameron and George Osborne, and unions including Prospect and the PCS are right that headcount reduction alone does not automatically equal efficiency. Danny Kruger’s own blog has suggested achieving significant savings through automation, productivity gains and devolving responsibility to local councils and civil society. The genuinely useful debate, over which government functions should simply stop being performed altogether rather than performed by fewer people, is one that no party in Westminster has yet been willing to have honestly.
Reform’s own figures suggest the party believes as much as thirty per cent of current headcount could be removed through automation, productivity gains and devolving responsibility to local councils, though independent analysts have questioned whether savings of that scale are achievable without a corresponding reduction in the services those staff currently deliver.
Sources
Civil Service World: Unions slam Reform plans to politicise and cut civil service
This article is a work of British satire. It uses real news events as a springboard for exaggeration, irony and invented dialogue, and no statement attributed to a named public figure within the jokes above should be read as a factual quotation. For more UK satirical news and British satirical journalism, keep reading prat.uk.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
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Staff Writer at The London Prat
