Rees-mogg’s war on ‘3-day week’ for the Civil Service
Working from home used as excuse for long weekends, says Cabinet minister
JACOB REES-MOGG has raised his “suspicions” that civil servants are working only a three-day week as the Government goes to war with Whitehall mandarins.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Rees-mogg, the Cabinet minister in charge of efficiency, accused civil servants of working from home on Mondays and Fridays because they “think that the working week is shorter than it really is”.
Mr Rees-mogg said he would examine Met Office weather reports over fears officials were staying at home on the sunniest days.
His broadside follows his frustration at the refusal of officials to return to their offices full-time, months after the Government lifted all working from home guidance during the pandemic.
In a further swipe at Whitehall, Mr Rees-mogg backed the Prime Minister’s plans to cut 91,000 civil service jobs out of a total of 475,000 over the next three years, which put Boris Johnson on a collision course with trade unions.
The two largest Civil Service unions, representing 200,000 members, are threatening a national strike if the cuts go ahead.
The Daily Telegraph understands that posts created for the management of the pandemic – such as Test and Trace and Covid taskforces – will be among the first to go.
The pandemic and Brexit have led to a surge in civil service jobs, and Mr Johnson is now pushing for a reduction in numbers to 2016 levels, with a promised saving of up to £3.5 billion a year.
Downing Street hopes that by driving down the number of civil servants, bil- lions of pounds of taxpayers’ money can be saved, to be spent on helping the cost of living crunch.
Mr Rees-mogg’s controversial comments will inflame a burgeoning row between officials and ministers over working practices and job cuts.
He told The Telegraph that one major government department said its office attendance figures would be improved if only “the popular days” were analysed. “Well, guess what the popular working in the office days were? Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday,” he said.
“I do worry that the desire to take off Monday and Friday is an indication that people think that the working week is shorter than the reality is. One can’t help but be suspicious about the desire to work from home on Mondays and Fridays.”
He also suggested staff might be working from home when major sporting events are on or when the weather is nice. He said: “We’re going to have to compare notes with the Met Office. Because we’ve got the evidence on Mondays and Fridays, we need to have the evidence on Lord’s Test matches and all that.”
It comes as civil servants at the new City Hall in east London have been told to spend two days a week in the office as it “improves productivity and well being”.
The building, called the Crystal, has enough room for 215 desks despite 408 members of staff working there, with one team of 90 civil servants told they have to apply for one of nine hot-desks if they want to work from the office, according to a memo.
In the interview, Mr Rees-mogg called on senior mandarins to set an example and ensure they are in the workplace full-time. “Leadership is about showing people how things need to be done. And leaders ought to be in their offices,” he said.
He also accused unions of blocking the return to work, claiming: “The unions clearly want to keep everybody at home.” Mr Johnson also waded into
the controversy, telling the Daily Mail: “We need to get back into the habit of getting into the office. I believe people are more productive, more energetic, more full of ideas, when they are surrounded by other people.
“My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another coffee, and then getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you’re doing,” the Prime Minister said.
An analysis by The Telegraph suggested the biggest percentage growth in numbers at the Civil Service had occurred in the Cabinet Office, Mr Reesmogg’s department, which has seen a fivefold rise in staff from 2,000 to more than 10,000 in five years.
Mr Rees-mogg said the Cabinet Office had suffered from the “duplication” of people’s jobs. Yesterday, unions lined up to warn of industrial action over the planned job cuts.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “The Government complains about longer delays for passports and driving licences at the same time as sacking the people who are working so hard to clear the backlog. Our members will not be the scapegoats for a failing Government … taking national strike action is very much on the table.”
Mike Clancy, Prospect’s general secretary, said: “The Government must stop chasing headlines to distract from its failure to address the cost-of-living crisis facing workers in all sectors of the economy. We will be talking with our members about the campaign ahead to save their jobs and to protect the services the public rely on.”
Senior civil servants also raised objections at learning of the cull in the press Jim Harra, permanent secretary at HM Revenue and Customs, told staff he was “sorry that you have learnt this from the media rather than from me or Civil Service leaders”.
Mr Rees-mogg said yesterday that the number of civil servants needed to be reduced to the levels last seen in 2016, and also suggested that arms-length bodies, such as quangos, could also be subjected to swingeing cuts.
Mr Johnson has told Cabinet colleagues they have a month to come up with plans to slim down departments.
Matthew Rycroft, the Home Office permanent secretary, told staff: “There are few additional details at this stage but we certainly understand that this will be unsettling news for people across the department and the wider Civil Service who are working with great professionalism and commitment on the most important and challenging issues of our time.”