Labour Facing Major Backlash from Unions Ahead of Whitehall Spending Cuts – Guido Fawkes

Civil service unions are gearing up for battle as Labour’s fiscal squeeze threatens job cuts in Whitehall. Rachel Reeves is scrambling to stick to her self-imposed fiscal rules in Wednesday’s Spring Statement (definitely not an emergency budget). The axe is swinging towards the civil service…

The Cabinet Office’s Pat McFadden is writing to departments this week ordering them to slash administrative budgets by 15%, a move designed to save £2.2 billion a year by 2029-30. Reeves took to the Sunday shows, claiming 10,000 pen-pushers will be culled. Though now ministers are reportedly quietly drawing up plans to sack 50,000 civil servants. Co-conspirators will remember the union backlash when ex-chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced plans to cut the blob by 66,000 in 2023…

Unsurprisingly, the unions are livid. PCS union boss Fran Heathcote fumed: “The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on. We’ve seen this before under Gordon Brown- cutting backroom staff led to chaos. Cuts plucked out of the air in order to make it sound like an efficiency they will meet with a lot of opposition”. FDA general secretary Dave Penman told ITV: “We’re talking about something close to 10% of the entire civil service salary bill over the next three to four years. The Civil Service is about half a million strong—so up to 50,000 jobs could go.” That number is now being briefed by the government…

Meanwhile, Mike Clancy, boss of the Prospect union, warned that ministers must avoid turning budget cuts into an “arbitrary” civil service headcount reduction. He pointed to Reeves’ pledge of a “zero-based review of spending” saying it must include a “realistic” look at what the government won’t be able to do after these cuts. Another grovelling letter from Starmer to civil servants to stave off more strikes incoming?