Rees-Mogg’s WFH googly!
Cricket fan Minister in row over jibe that working at home means heading off to Lord’s
IT WAS enough to chill the bone of any civil servant working from home – a Government ‘threat’ to expose them if they were avoiding the office when the sun shone.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Minister for Government Efficiency, appeared to say yesterday that looking at local weather reports would be one of his weapons to check up on public officials and get them back behind their desks.
In an interview, cricket-loving Mr Rees-Mogg even seemed to suggest a link between civil servants staying away from the office and the dates of Lord’s Test matches.
He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘We’re going to have to compare notes with the Met Office. We need to have the evidence on Lord’s Test matches and all that.’
But Mr Rees-Mogg, who is also the Minister for Brexit Opportunities, has told The Mail on Sunday that the weather forecast threat had been ‘a joke’. He said there were no plans to match up the days civil servants took off with how sunny it was in their home areas.
Mr Rees-Mogg added: ‘It just shows the risk of making a joke in politics because even something fundamentally impractical gets taken seriously.’
The comments will come as a relief to WFH officials who find themselves under mounting pressure from Boris Johnson to get back to their offices.
In an interview with the Daily Mail yesterday, the Prime Minister bluntly insisted working from home did not work.
He said: ‘My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee, and then you know, 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.’
And in an article (below), Charlie Mullins – the founder of Pimlico Plumbers – warned that he was ‘considering whether to withhold part of my taxes until the bloated Civil Service starts getting back into the office and doing the job for which it’s paid’.
It comes as the Government faces the threat of strike action from Civil Service unions over plans to cut 91,000 jobs to save taxpayers’ money.
And in a new row, Government sources said that this would include scrapping next year’s Civil Service ‘Fast Stream’ programme – aimed at recruiting the future high-fliers and permanent secretaries. The sources said the decision was taken at last week’s Cabinet meeting.
But in a furious reaction last night, the Cabinet Office denied the claim, saying: ‘The Fast Stream will run as normal next year.’