The Guardian has revealed that ministers are preparing to reduce more than 10,000 civil service positions as Whitehall departments strive to meet spending limits under a new government efficiency initiative.  

Sources acknowledge that the civil service has grown excessively large due to the demands of Brexit and the Covid pandemic. With Chancellor Rachel Reeves mandating 5% budget cuts across departments in a spending review, insiders believe job reductions are unavoidable.  

A Cabinet Office source noted that departments will face "very hard choices" about staffing levels to stay within the Treasury’s budget constraints.  

While Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden avoided commenting directly on job cuts, he recently outlined his vision for a leaner civil service, describing it as operating “more like a startup.”  

“We don’t have a target for headcount,” he said on Monday. “My focus is on making the people who work for us into being as productive as they possibly can. That’s why those efficiencies that the chancellor announced in the budget are important and there will be more to come. And technology should help us become more productive in the future.”

There are 513,000 full-time civil servants in central government, up sharply from a recent low of about 380,000 in 2016.

Although more than 10,000 jobs are anticipated to be eliminated, the incoming Labour administration abandoned the Conservatives' goal of eliminating 66,000 civil sector positions over the summer.

It is believed that one of the departments that has become overly large is the Cabinet Office. It might be divided up, or some employees might be moved to different areas of Whitehall.

Additionally, voluntary redundancies or a continuation of the general hiring freeze might result in the loss of staff throughout Whitehall.

The first-ever strategic personnel plan for the civil service will be released in June along with the expenditure review, examining Whitehall's size, shape, and suitability for contemporary administration.

Asked whether there was a need to reduce headcount in the civil service, Cat Little, the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, told a committee of MPs last week: “It is absolutely imperative that the civil service becomes more efficient, more productive and takes advantage of technology to become less dependent on people.”

Pressed on whether it was her position that the civil service needed to do fewer or different things, better, and whether that might be associated with a headcount reduction or a redeployment of people, Little said: “Exactly, and it has to work in tandem with the work we are doing on reducing consultancy and contingent labour.”

She added that a number of departments had already begun “voluntary exit schemes” allowing redundancy, but that it mattered how those were designed to make sure high-performing staff were encouraged not to leave.

The civil service was made up of about 490,000 people when Gordon Brown left office in 2010 and was subsequently cut to about 380,000 after years of David Cameron and George Osborne’s squeeze on Whitehall during the austerity years.

However, it steadily rose during Brexit and the pandemic to reach its current level of 513,000. Last year it grew by nearly 5%.

Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government, which had advocated for a workforce strategy for the civil service, said it was sensible not to have a fixed headcount reduction target.

Two years ago Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory minister for government efficiency, outlined a plan to cut the civil service by 66,000 people.

Thomas said: “The problem with a headcount target is that it creates a lot of perverse incentives in the system, usually to get rid of larger numbers of cheaper people who are easier to lose. It is not the most efficient way of doing things.

“But setting a reduced budget or some kind of efficiency target is more reasonable, and likely to lead to fewer people being employed by the civil service, you might expect, but it is doing that without creating perverse incentives.”

The prospect of tight budgets and job losses in the civil service may dent morale at a time when Whitehall staff are also frustrated by Keir Starmer claiming in a speech last week that many had become comfortable with failure.

“Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline,” he said in a speech on Thursday setting out new policy targets.

“I totally get that when trust in politics is so low, we must be careful about the promises we make. But across Whitehall and Westminster that’s been internalised as ‘don’t say anything’, ‘don’t try anything too ambitious’, ‘set targets that will happen anyway’.”

That prompted Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union for senior civil servants, to write to the prime minister urging him to rethink his “frankly insulting” criticism of Whitehall.

Starmer replied to Penman on this week saying he recognised the “unwavering and invaluable sense of public service” provided by civil servants, but emphasised that there were too many cases across government where the current approach to delivery was not working.

A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to making the civil service more efficient and effective, with bold measures to improve skills and harness new technologies.”