All the main parties claim they will cut public spending. But whose jobs will go? It ought to be those of the civil servants doing work which may be desirable but is not absolutely necessary. But it is the civil servants who will be doing the sacking. They won't want to sack their own kind.

Here is a warning passage from a parliamentary debate in 1980, when cuts were being pushed through with more determination than is likely by any of the current political parties:

We have been assured on a number of occasions that, wherever possible, cuts in Civil Service manpower will be achieved through natural wastage rather than redundancies. In this instance, clearly there was a good deal of pressure on the Ministry of Defence to cut numbers, partly because it employs about one-third of the total number of civil servants. Against that background the cleaners may seem to be an easy target. After all, in the Government's statistics, as in the divine plan, one Mrs. Mopp counts the same as one permanent secretary. In this instance the axe was not spared, and it fell not on a single deputy secretary, under-secretary, assistant secretary, senior principal or principal, but on just under three and a half score cleaning ladies. It is not surprising that one or two of my constituents have suggested that the whole episode sounds as though it comes from the television programme—which I have not managed to get home in time to see—called "Yes, Minister".

The speaker was Michael Heseltine.The link is here.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Waste in public services

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