What else can we expect from the worst Chancellor we have had for years ?
Whitehall sees off pressure for redundancies By Robert Watts (Filed: 18/09/2005) Telegraph
There has not been a single voluntary or compulsory redundancy of a full-time employee in seven of the Government's most important departments during the 14 months since the Chancellor pledged to slash Whitehall costs. However, there has been an explosion of expenditure on management consultants, hired to find cost savings.
Under the Treasury's Efficiency Review, which was published in July
2004, Whitehall departments were instructed to shed more than 84,000 jobs by April 2008.But several departments, including the Home Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Department for Education and Skills, have failed to make anyone redundant since mid-2004, according to documents obtained by The Sunday Telegraph under the Freedom of Information Act.
All three departments said there were no plans for any staff redundancies.
The Efficiency Review, which was chaired by Sir Peter Gershon, the former GEC executive, urged both the Home Office and the DFES to axe nearly 2,000 staff. The FCO was instructed to lower its headcount by
310.The largest number of job cuts called for under the review was at the Department for Work & Pensions, which was advised to slash its headcount by 30,000. The DWP said no full-time employees had been made redundant since last summer. Some 300 part-time staff accepted voluntary redundancy, while 886 people had retired early.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department for International Development have also failed to make any redundancies. Under the Gershon review, which was supposed to lower the annual cost of running government by £21bn, these departments were supposed to shed 600 jobs within three years.
The implementation of the Efficiency Review has proved extremely lucrative for management consultants. Over the past year the Department of Health has hired 10 consultancies to advise on efficiency at a cost of £608,000.
So far the DoH, which was instructed to cut 370 positions by Gershon, has made just 27 civil servants redundant, with two more "under threat".
In 1998 there were 505,000 civil servants employed in central government departments, according to the Office for National Statistics. By mid-way through last year this total had risen to
570,000, a recruitment rate of 42 per day over a six-year period.Cutting waste in Britain's sprawling public sector was a battleground in the general election in May.
The Conservatives commissioned David James, the voluble company doctor who rescued the Millennium Dome, to produce a rival efficiency review. His report identified possible public sector savings of more than £35bn, substantially more than Gershon's.
James said last night: "This is clear proof that the Gershon plan is not on track ... they're just not serious about it."
The Treasury said that civil service numbers had fallen during the past year. Many staff who had retired or left to take jobs outside Whitehall have not been replaced, it said.
A spokesman said: "The Government is on course to deliver the cuts set out in the Gershon review. We always knew the majority of posts would go through natural staff turn-over, with redundancies as a last resort."