18 June 2010
The government’s first estimates of how many people work in Whitehall and related bodies show that 640,000 are on the central government payroll, and a further 20,000 are contractual or temporary staff.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the numbers, the result of a quick ‘scoping exercise’, were not official statistics but said it was important the government got a grip on this kind of management data.
‘Today’s figures may be a bit rough and ready, but we have to start gathering this kind of information straight away so that we know what the total workforce of government really is.
‘Until now, we’ve had only an incomplete picture of the true numbers of people working for us. But as we continue to push forward with our efficiency agenda, we need to ensure managers have this kind of basic management information.
‘Even though today’s numbers may not be perfect, it’s important to put what we do know into the public domain straight away as we have promised to be more transparent about what is really going on in government.’
The figures relate to people working in ministerial and non-ministerial departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Of these, the Department of Health, the Ministry of Defence and the Environment Agency had the largest numbers of contractual and temporary – or ‘contingent’ – staff.
The Cabinet Office said the figures were neither complete nor validated and ‘extreme caution’ should be used when drawing inferences from them.
It added that making comparisons between organisations was not recommended as organisations had interpreted some requirements, such as how to calculate contingent labour, differently.