To wonder why civil service haters don't understand that cutting 10,000 jobs is going to hurt everyone

[Everythingisnumbersnow]

I can't believe Labour is doing what they're doing

People can move to where the jobs are. We seem frighteningly comfortable with people coming from all over the globe to fill vacancies here, but, God forbid somebody already here should have to move to find work!

I don’t see why not. My company is in the middle of making 7500 people redundant. It’s not that unusual.

Tell me in what way the country’s services will suffer following these redundancies. That’s what the OP ought to have told us if she wanted any sympathy.

Everyone seems to have this notion that civil servants are sitting around doing nothing all day. Where do they get this notion from? The Daily Mail? There is no evidence to support this. I think it's astonishing that one day KS is saying about how he needs to "get everyone working" by cutting benefits and then he wants to cut 10,000 jobs. I didn't vote for Labour this time round (voted Green) as he's always been a tory with a red tie but I never thought he would make Labour not be able to win an election for a generation by his actions.

If we were both made redundant tomorrow we would look for work in our current sectors for a bit but if unsuccessful downsize and move somewhere we could afford to live cheaply and find minimum wage work. Because we are adults and don’t expect the government to solve all of our problems for us.

Doesn’t pay anywhere near enough. I’m one of those accountants, would love to work for HMRC - but not for a 40% pay cut I wouldn’t, I’d rather go down to 3 days a week.

But I’m another who will be literally unaffected by civil service cuts. Rich people will still pay for my advice, I’m still highly skilled and experienced in a niche where not many others are.

We desperately need the economy to grow, paying for a inefficient Civil Service just so people are in work is not going to fuel this growth. Growth will come from the private sector, we need to focus the private sector rather than wring our hands worrying about redundancies in the CS. As a previous poster mentioned when banks were making thousands of redundancies, there was no outcry. It should be the same for our public sector. We shouldn't accept poor performance and poor value from it. It needs to be leaner and more productive.

It depends who is being made redundant and what their role is.

eg

• paying benefits and pensions
• running employment services
• running prisons
• issuing driving licences

Can't think losing personnel from any of these roles is helpful.

I’m not enjoying the gloating on this thread by posters who feel comfortable they themselves won’t be facing the loss of their job.

It may well be that the CS needs to trim down, but let’s not forget the real life impact on people of redundancy, some of whom will never regain the same earnings. And will be out looking for a new role in very lean times. There’ll be families struggling from this who were comfortable before, who will now face stress and hardship.

Fwiw, I’ve worked in both the public and private sector and seen waste and inefficiency in both. Also good practice in both. It really depends on the organisational culture and who’s running it. It’s not quite as simple as saying ‘civil service inefficient and wasteful and private sector the dream ticket for efficiency’. The actuality is somewhat more nuanced. I hope Starmer and crew know what they’re doing here.

So you're saying it's better to pay someone 30k+overheads (eg pension) for no reason so we can get back 4k in taxes from them?

If you want to explain why this is a terrible idea, it might have been better to start with the impact it will have on the patient experience?

I haven't seen anyone even try to explain what we'll miss about it.

Will the NHS function for patients? It’s not fit for purpose at the moment.

I work for the civil service and there is a lot of waste and it needs to become more efficient and poor performance 100% needs managing better. But if people think AI can be integrated easily with the ancient IT then they are in for a shock. It will take years, and then the tech will have updated again by time its done

In my team our intake of work increased substantially during the pandemic and its stayed at those high levels; in fact rising. Life post pandemic is very different.

@Everythingisnumbersnow - I have to disagree with you. I was a civil service for the majority of my adult life and there are a lot of people that are on the job that aren’t value for money. And I understand why the tax payer doesn’t want to fund that. It’s not fair on anyone. Civil service has to be a value for money situation especially because everyone is so squeezed right now.

Exactly, because it’s big business which holds the cards, not because it’s fair. Ie the biggest and most powerful get to create the rules that suit themselves. And no point pretending that the way global businesses structure themselves and move money around is not complicated - “not complicated” would only ever happen in a world without greed, selfishness and competitiveness, all of which are incentives to move money around for the sole purpose of tax avoidance or other competitive advantage, not for simplicity and transparency.

The benefits paid to them for being unemployed is less than the wages they're getting paid for doing a job that shouldn't exist in the first place. (Ex CS worker from DWP).

Want to cut the benefit bill? Half the number of staff running and make the remaining half actually work efficiently.

I agree with this. I've worked in the public sector and it was horribly disillusioning. The sheer number of people doing little /nothing, plodding along very very slowly and inefficiently and working on stuff that seemed to be completely pointless, was so depressing for someone who'd always believed in public service

There are so many people in the public sector who would lose their job very rapidly in the private sector (I've worked in both) due to just doing bugger all most of the time.

I think most will probably go over to other jobs on TUPE. They won’t all be in the dole queue.

I think it's the first good decision he has made. The bloated NHS England that has allowed the entire service to be captured by campaign groups needs to go. We need some common sense back in the NHS and medics in charge!

What I worry about is the immediate cost of all these changes, it might be cost effective long term but it’s going to cost a lot to actually implement all of this in the short term!

NHS England isn’t the civil service. Employees work for the NHS not the civil service. Those people talking about non jobs do you know anyone who works for NHS England? My close relative (won’t say more so as not to identify) has worked there for 9 years and their work is about patient experience and ensuring the patient voice is heard in the NHS. I suppose that’s a non job if we don’t want to check that patients are getting screwed over, certainly she lobbies hard for patients to be listened to. The roles are so varied and the people working there are often highly skilled. They could make much more money in the private sector (and many will now) but choose to work where they feel they can make a difference. But yeah let’s pile on the bureaucrats without knowing anything at all about them.

If there are jobs that are no longer needed then it is right to get rid of them.
I've worked in one in the past and my job (well my entire team) was made redundant. We were all qualified and skilled though so we took those skills and worked elsewhere.
I also once worked in a role where there was very little actual work to do. At first, it felt great, but eventually it started to erode my confidence and I felt like I was just useless. I left there and changed to a more productive job as doing nothing was really challenging.
If there isn't really the volume of work, then there's no need for the workers to be in the roles!

You say that but people in Eastern European countries are paid the same as UK workers now, for remote jobs where there used to be a massive pay difference.

Can some of them retrain as driving examiners please, the waiting times are completely ridiculous.
I know you can't do it while showing off your doggo to your colleagues via zoom but it's an important public service and it's very broken ATM