Millionaire Tory peer suggests sacked civil servants can find work in farming

SACKED civil servants will be able to find work in farming and fishing, a Scotland Office minister has claimed.

Speaking to the BBC, Tory peer Lord Malcolm Offord defended the Prime Minister’s plans to cut 91,000 jobs, saying it would allow the UK Government to pass savings on to taxpayers.

He told the programme: “Those people who have got good skills will find work.”

Trade unions have warned of strike action if Boris Johnson pushes ahead with the proposal to axe one in five civil service jobs.

Lord Offord, an Edinburgh-based financier, who was made a peer and then appointed as a junior minister in the Scotland Office last year, told BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show that there were other sectors in Scotland in desperate need of staff.

He said: “Well, this is the proposal that’s gone through and it is based on the fact that the civil service expanded considerably in the region of 25 per cent in the last five, six years, principally to deal with Brexit and to deal with a pandemic.

“And we’re now coming through the other side of both of those, and I think it’s only fair that when the Government is saying to people, we’re going through tough times and we all have to cut our cloth a bit, tighten our belts a bit to get through this, perhaps the Government should also look to be more efficient, and should look to find savings.

“And if those savings can be passed on to alleviate some of the concerns you’ve talked about in your programme, that might be a fair balance.”

The Tory peer was asked if it would “alleviate the concerns of the thousands of civil servants who are going to be put on the dole”.

“No,” he replied. “But one of the things that’s interesting to me is that when I go around the country and talk to all employers, whether it’s talking to the farming community, the fishing community, the technical science community, the grocers’ community, there are jobs available.

“I’m not belittling in any way the concept of losing a job, no-one wants to be put out of work at all, but we are building a high-skilled, high-wage economy. And those people who have got good skills will find work.”

He added: “On Friday, I was at Rosyth, where Edinburgh University just unveiled the new testing concept of tidal wave technology. And we were talking about the fact that we are now in Scotland, through our excellent universities, and the whole renewable and net-zero agenda, in the process of requiring high-tech, highly-skilled jobs.

“That is what the future looks like for us. And therefore our economy, [if] we grab it, can be consisting of high-tech, highly-qualified, highly-paid jobs, and that is what I think is exciting part of the future that’s not often talked about.”

Meanwhile, the Scottish Tories have called on the Scottish Government to follow suit, and look at axing civil service jobs in Scotland.