By David Williams
28 October 2010
Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell has told MPs that compulsory redundancies will be ‘part of the answer’ as senior civil servants draw up job-cutting plans.
The head of the civil service made the remarks this morning while giving evidence to the House of Commons public administration select committee.
Asked how he planned to manage an average proposed cut of 34% to departmental administration costs, he said the process was already underway.
O’Donnell said every department would have its own employee terms and conditions, and each would now be working out what the implications of the cuts would be for staffing. Top-level civil servants had been working on their cuts plans ‘for over a year’, he added.
‘Some have already started voluntary redundancies – there will be recruitment freezes, and I’m afraid I can’t rule out that there will be compulsory redundancies… they will be part of the answer.’
He said the amount of compulsory redundancies would depend on how high a department’s turnover rate was. In departments where turnover was low, it was more likely compulsory redundancies would have to be made. O’Donnell also said he would ‘proactively manage’ the process to allow departments to be able to recruit new people with the necessary skills.
The Cabinet secretary emphasised that the lay-offs should be ‘perceived to be fair’, be good value for money and preserve skills for the civil service in future.
O’Donnell also revealed that the service is being advised by unnamed private sector figures who had successfully managed downsizing programmes in their own organisations.
He said he hoped the Superannuation Bill, which would cap civil service redundancy rates, ‘will come through Parliament as a whole’. The Bill has already passed through the House of Commons and is currently at the committee stage in the Lords.
O’Donnell said he was not surprised at figures from a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development survey showing plummeting morale in the civil service.
He noted that, although ‘more people than ever’ wanted to join the fast stream recruitment scheme for graduates, it would be ‘challenging’ to keep morale up as jobs were cut.
‘If we had a real problem of reputation, recruitment would be a problem… the problem we have is that people really want to carry on working in the civil service, and are afraid of losing their jobs,’ he said.
O’Donnell also told the committee that the government’s drive to abolish or merge 192 quangos was primarily motivated by the issue of accountability – not money-saving.
