THE PCS trade union has responded to Labour’s huge civil service cuts pronouncements.
A shocked and shaken PCS said: ‘The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on.’
Ahead of the Spring Statement on Wednesday, the Labour Chancellor Reeves told the BBC that the government is to tell the civil service it must make savings of more than £2 billion a year from its administrative costs by the end of the decade and cut 10,000 jobs.
Labour is barging in where even Tories hesitated to tread!
Civil service departments will be instructed to reduce running costs by 10% by 2028-29 and then 15% the following year, an efficiency target that would save £2.2bn annually and cost tens of thousands of jobs.
PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote reacted by stating: ‘After 15 years of underfunding, any cuts will have an impact on frontline services.
‘You hear that every day from the public, that they wait too long on the phone when they try to make tax payments, jobseekers are rushed through the system in just ten minutes because there aren’t enough staff to see them, victims of crime are waiting until 2027 to have their cases heard in the courts as well as the backlog in the asylum system which results in additional hotel costs.
‘The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on.’
Heathcote warned that the government can expect a lot of opposition to its plans.
‘We’ve heard this before under Gordon Brown when cuts were made to backroom staff and the consequence of that was chaos. If the last government taught us anything, it’s that you can’t cut your way to growth.’
Addressing the Labour government, she said: ‘We’re happy to engage with the government over many issues but if they don’t talk to us about what is an arbitrary figure for cuts plucked out of the air in order to make it sound like an efficiency they will meet with a lot of opposition, not just from unions but from the public who will be affected by cuts in the services they receive.’
Dave Penman, head of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, said the distinction between back office and the front line was ‘artificial’.
‘The idea that cuts of this scale can be delivered by cutting HR and comms teams is for the birds,’ he said.
‘This plan will require ministers to be honest with the public and their civil servants about the impact this will have on public services.’
Meanwhile, Mike Clancy, head of the Prospect union, said: ‘Civil servants in all types of roles help the public and deliver the government’s missions.
‘Cutting them will inevitably have an impact that will be noticed by the public.’
Reeves has signalled she will not raise taxes or government budgets in her Spring Statement this week, telling the BBC that ‘we can’t tax and spend our way to higher living standards and better public services’.
She is constrained by self-imposed rules, including not borrowing to fund day-to-day spending and to see debt fall as a share of the UK economic output by 2029/30.
Pressed over whether some departments would see their budgets cut, Reeves said: ‘There will be real-terms increases in government spending in every year of this Parliament.’
However, she refused to confirm whether this would apply to individual unprotected departments like the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office, saying this would be set out in the spending review in June.
The Chancellor said every department had been asked to rank their spending from most important to least.
In the coming week, Whitehall departments will receive a letter from Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden with instructions to make ‘savings’ amounting to more than £2bn a year by the end of the decade.
Reeves added that cutting running costs by 15% was ‘more than possible’ with 10,000 civil service jobs to go!
In fact, the jobs massacre has only just begun. To stop it in its tracks the working class must take action to force the trade unions to call a general strike to go forward to a Workers Government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries, putting them under workers’ ownership! This is the only way forward. Take action now! There is not a moment to lose.
THE PCS trade union has responded to Labour’s huge civil service cuts pronouncements.
A shocked and shaken PCS said: ‘The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on.’
Ahead of the Spring Statement on Wednesday, the Labour Chancellor Reeves told the BBC that the government is to tell the civil service it must make savings of more than £2 billion a year from its administrative costs by the end of the decade and cut 10,000 jobs.
Labour is barging in where even Tories hesitated to tread!
Civil service departments will be instructed to reduce running costs by 10% by 2028-29 and then 15% the following year, an efficiency target that would save £2.2bn annually and cost tens of thousands of jobs.
PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote reacted by stating: ‘After 15 years of underfunding, any cuts will have an impact on frontline services.
‘You hear that every day from the public, that they wait too long on the phone when they try to make tax payments, jobseekers are rushed through the system in just ten minutes because there aren’t enough staff to see them, victims of crime are waiting until 2027 to have their cases heard in the courts as well as the backlog in the asylum system which results in additional hotel costs.
‘The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on.’
Heathcote warned that the government can expect a lot of opposition to its plans.
‘We’ve heard this before under Gordon Brown when cuts were made to backroom staff and the consequence of that was chaos. If the last government taught us anything, it’s that you can’t cut your way to growth.’
Addressing the Labour government, she said: ‘We’re happy to engage with the government over many issues but if they don’t talk to us about what is an arbitrary figure for cuts plucked out of the air in order to make it sound like an efficiency they will meet with a lot of opposition, not just from unions but from the public who will be affected by cuts in the services they receive.’
Dave Penman, head of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, said the distinction between back office and the front line was ‘artificial’.
‘The idea that cuts of this scale can be delivered by cutting HR and comms teams is for the birds,’ he said.
‘This plan will require ministers to be honest with the public and their civil servants about the impact this will have on public services.’
Meanwhile, Mike Clancy, head of the Prospect union, said: ‘Civil servants in all types of roles help the public and deliver the government’s missions.
‘Cutting them will inevitably have an impact that will be noticed by the public.’
Reeves has signalled she will not raise taxes or government budgets in her Spring Statement this week, telling the BBC that ‘we can’t tax and spend our way to higher living standards and better public services’.
She is constrained by self-imposed rules, including not borrowing to fund day-to-day spending and to see debt fall as a share of the UK economic output by 2029/30.
Pressed over whether some departments would see their budgets cut, Reeves said: ‘There will be real-terms increases in government spending in every year of this Parliament.’
However, she refused to confirm whether this would apply to individual unprotected departments like the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office, saying this would be set out in the spending review in June.
The Chancellor said every department had been asked to rank their spending from most important to least.
In the coming week, Whitehall departments will receive a letter from Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden with instructions to make ‘savings’ amounting to more than £2bn a year by the end of the decade.
Reeves added that cutting running costs by 15% was ‘more than possible’ with 10,000 civil service jobs to go!
In fact, the jobs massacre has only just begun. To stop it in its tracks the working class must take action to force the trade unions to call a general strike to go forward to a Workers Government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries, putting them under workers’ ownership! This is the only way forward. Take action now! There is not a moment to lose.
