Reports have claimed that ministers’ proposals to make huge reductions in the civil service headcount will include the suspension of government’s graduate scheme – through which 100 budding digital and data leaders are recruited each year.
It was revealed last week that prime minister Boris Johnson wants to reduce the number of civil servants by 91,000, which equates to about one in five of government’s current workforce. The intention of these cuts – which have attracted fierce criticism from unions and other onlookers – is to return civil service employment to the same level as before the Brexit referendum of 2016. Since then, the process of leaving the EU, followed by the demands of pandemic response, has seen departmental headcounts grow markedly, after years of decline during David Cameron’s coalition administration.
According to efficiency minister Jacob Rees Mogg, about 40,000 civil servants leave officialdom each year, and ministers’ plan for achieving their intended reduction is to implement a hiring freeze. A recent report in the Spectator claimed that this recruitment moratorium would extend to the Fast Stream programme, a graduate scheme intended to identify and develop potential future leaders.
