Civil Service and Downing Street staff numbers should be culled - Bernard Ingham

Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s vindictive former chief adviser, was right, then. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.

He may well have hit the nail on the head in advocating more scientific and technologically savvy staff, though he wrecked his own case by advocating the recruitment of “weirdos” like himself and demonstrating utter contempt for existing staff – as well as politicians.

Read More
George Galloway said he may stand in upcoming Wakefield by election

He also paid little attention to whether these “weirdos” could run a whelk stall. If they cannot manage affairs they are neither use nor ornament.

Boris Johnson. Picture: Getty.Boris Johnson. Picture: Getty.
Boris Johnson. Picture: Getty.
Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But it gives me no pleasure as a civil servant for 24 years to record that the Civil Service itself is tending to confirm Cummings’s criticisms, even allowing for the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic.

The present insistence on working from home and even abroad is, as Boris Johnson says, not working. It has got to stop and the mandarins have to require staff to return to the office in the interests not only of the public but the Civil Service itself. No honours or substantive promotions before they do and last back first out should be the rule.

The failures in issuing vehicle and driving licences, clarifying tax matters, awarding powers of attorney, handling Ukrainian refugees or providing reasonably prompt access by telephone confirm the PM’s claim.

It is true that cases of prompt service are regularly reported but the picture is predominantly grief for the people who are actually paying the bureaucracy – the taxpayer.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The overwhelming impression is that so-called work/life balance matters more to the average

run of civil servants than duty to earn their keep. Worse still, there is evidence that their top managers are inclined to indulge them.

No wonder the trade unions are so belligerent over working from home and abroad. They sense they are on to a good thing, and to hell with their members’ responsibility for looking after the interests of the public.

Mr Johnson has to show who is the elected boss of the UK just as much as he needs to show the same resolve against the determination of the EU’s bureaucracy to colonise Northern Ireland. Otherwise, people will wonder why bother to elect a government. Therein lies anarchy.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He has not smoothed his path by ordering in the face of a threatened strike a 91,000 cut in Civil Service numbers, even though the growth since the EU referendum in 2016 has largely been to manage independence and, of course, bring Covid under control.

It may be argued that if we could have well over 1m civil servants at the end of the Second World War and around 750,000 when Margaret Thatcher came to office in 1979, we can easily cope with 475,000 today. But the target after the 2010 expenditure review was 380,000 and the PM wants to cut the numbers back to the 384,260 achieved by 2016 – the lowest figure since 1945 – presumably hoping that the pressure from the Ukraine conflict will soon ease.

Any strike will be his Thatcher moment. Either he wins or we all lose. He has a good case. It is not just that civil servants are exploiting the pandemic. They are claiming a privilege denied the vast bulk of the working population who keep industry, shops, schools, buses, rubbish collection, supply chains and hospitals running.

Why should clerical and administrative workers in the private as well as public sector be uniquely privileged simply because they can, theoretically, if not effectively, do their job remotely thanks to technology? It is disgraceful self-seeking.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ironically, those who took the risk of going to work during the pandemic’s restrictions are being fined for having a drink together at the end of the working day.

But if Mr Johnson is to succeed he will have to set an example. It is claimed that No 10 now has 400 souls working for it. Mrs Thatcher never had more than 90, including messengers, drivers and security. Even allowing for the demands created by 24-hour news and the anti-social media, the present bloated No 10 needs clearing out.

I managed to run No 10’s press office with seven others – a deputy, three press officers, an office manager and two secretaries. By David Cameron’s time it had 53 staff.

Mr Johnson would also help himself if he took an axe to the number of special advisers paid by the taxpayer and, I suspect, often double-guess civil servants. They have multiplied since

Mrs Thatcher tried to limit them to two per Cabinet Minister.

Mr Johnson: encourager les autres.