Former Cabinet Office minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak of having a “no interest” in reforming the civil service and wasting the opportunity to cut thousands of jobs.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who served as secretary of state for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency under Boris Johnson and then as business secretary under Liz Truss, said the Sunak government had “failed” to reform the civil service during its 20 months in power.
The prominent Brexit supporter never held a ministerial position under Sunak’s government and lost his Somerset seat in last month’s general election.
Mr Rees-Mogg supported controversial plans made under Johnson to cut civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, first proposed in May 2022.
Departments had been told over the summer to come up with proposals to deliver 91,000 job cuts over three years, but the plans lost steam when Johnson’s plan was effectively thrown out the window in July 2022.
Mr Sunak announced the end of plans to cut 91,000 jobs less than two weeks after becoming chancellor in October 2022. The consistent message from his administration has been that the end of the target does not mean there will be no job cuts.
Last October, then-Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt set out new plans to “freeze” civil servant numbers at 2019 levels, and then said he would ask departments to draw up plans to cut 66,000 jobs in the next spending review period.
Nevertheless, the number of civil servants continues to grow, reaching 511,250 at the end of March this year, according to the latest annual civil service statistics.
Speaking on his own GB News show last week, Mr Rees-Mogg suggested the 91,000 job cuts under Mr Johnson’s plans could easily have been managed through “natural attrition”. He said Keir Starmer would face the exact same pressure to make cuts in the coming months, appearing to suggest that civil servants on flexible working arrangements are not working from home.
“We didn’t need any major logging, but we did need people to come to work, and part of the problem is people just don’t come to work,” he said.
“We knew how to do it – not hire, identify things that you don’t need to do. We had a programme that was about to start, some of it was being implemented and unfortunately Rishi Sunak’s government showed no interest for about a year.”
Mr Rees-Mogg added: “A year has been wasted doing nothing and now we are back to another year of nothing.”
“A year later, the government will realise the money doesn’t add up and then say they’re making big cuts to the civil service but then do nothing. They had a chance to do it in 2022 and sadly they missed it.”
Rees-Mogg has been a vocal opponent of remote working, famously leaving notes on empty desks at government offices saying: “I look forward to seeing you in the office soon”.