UK to slash 91,000 civil service jobs to cut costs

TENS of thousands of U.K. civil servants are set to be laid off as Prime Minister Boris Johnson is said to have tasked his ministers with cutting the jobs to levels seen before Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016, as part of new cost-cutting measures.

Johnson is trying to find ways to cut costs at a time when millions of people in Britain are struggling with increasing food and fuel bills, targeting a workforce that has increased to help navigate Brexit and the COVID-19 outbreak.

The prime minister has ordered ministers to slash 91,000 civil service jobs to free up billions for tax cuts, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

“We have got to cut the cost of government to reduce the cost of living,” he told the newspaper, adding that it had become “swollen” during the pandemic.

Johnson used a “cost of living” Cabinet meeting in the Midlands on Wednesday to order his top team to redouble their efforts to ease the financial pressure on struggling families, it said.

They were given one month to come up with plans to cut the size of the civil service by almost a fifth of the current total, which would save about 3.5 billion pounds ($4.27 billion) a year, the newspaper said.

“Every pound the Government pre-empts from the taxpayer is money they can spend on their own priorities, on their own lives,” the report quoted Johnson as saying.

Britain’s minister for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency, Jacob Rees-Mogg, on Friday confirmed job cuts and did not deny reports that 91,000 Whitehall jobs were to go.

Asked if the cuts were a return to “austerity,” Jacob Rees-Mogg, told Sky News: “I don’t think it is.”

“I know it sounds eye-catching, but it’s just getting back to the civil service that we had in 2016,” he said. “That’s a perfectly reasonable and sensible ambition.”

The government is struggling to balance the books, having spent huge sums during the pandemic, and as it battles spiraling inflation that is holding back economic recovery and putting further pressure on public finances.

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, a union for public service managers and professionals, said in a tweet, “Unless they’ve got a serious plan, it’s either another headline-grabbing stunt or a reckless slash-and-burn to public services without a thought or care about the consequences.”