Sajid Javid has drawn up secret plans to sack up to 40 per cent of his department’s staff despite being locked in a battle to save British steel from extinction, documents leaked to The Telegraph have revealed.
Detailed proposals from the management consultancy McKinsey suggest firing more than 4,000 civil servants over the next four years to save money.
The cuts are a major escalation to those outlined by George Osborne in last year’s spending review which demanded a 17 per cent decrease in spending by 2020.
The revelation that Mr Javid, the Business Secretary, is considering such deep cuts while facing accusations the department is failing to cope with the steel crisis will likely cause embarrassment.
That steel crisis needs perhaps two people working on it. One to shout that the blast furnaces are going to go whatever, the other to shout that there’s a line of people wanting to buy everything except the blast furnaces.
Job done.
And that’s before we consider the point that we shouldn’t actually have a business department…..
There’s a few necessary bits: Companies House, the Insolvency Service, maybe the research councils. But honestly, go to their website
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-business-innovation-skills
And look down that list, recent news items, “more about what we do”. Strip out the stuff that shouldn’t be done (like minimum wage, sorting out Tata steel, space agency), strip out the stuff where they’re fucking useless (helping to improve skills), and yeah, it’s pretty easy to find 4000 jobs.
That last sentence. The question isn’t why they are sacking 4000. The question is why they aren’t sacking them all.
If his job is about anything, then surely it is about increasing productivity. In which case he is doing exactly the correct thing.
They aren’t ‘sacking’ or ‘firing’ people – they are making 4,000 roles redundant. There is a difference, a difference the old Telegraph (i.e. last year) would have known and understood.
The Telegraph doesn’t know which paper it now wants to be – the Mail, the Guardian or the Mirror.
‘And that’s before we consider the point that we shouldn’t actually have a business department.’
Get rid of ’em all, and their little dog, too.
If the 4000 civil servants were 4000 of the 5000-weak Senior Civil Service that would indeed be a mighty blow for freedom rather than a minor league cost-cutting exercise like to cause as many problems as it solves.
Even the Grinning Skull Osburke should have the gumption to realise that trying to create an almighty and ever more intrusive state while at the same time trying to sack all those who are supposed to deal with the ever-growing number of dickhead laws is likely to collapse the system.(Good).
If they want the CS run down start with a 200 year moratorium on all new laws. And massive repeal of those that already exist. But then that would be a threat to the 650s own nice little jobs wouldn’t it? And they can’t have that. Being sacked is only for little people.
There are more than 10,000 civil servants in BIS? 6,000 to go then.
Anyway, the way the CS works they’ll all be found jobs in other departments and the overall affect will be zero, or probably negative when we add in promotions and pay offs.
No, there will be 4,000 less CS interfering with British business. They can all eff off to the DoH or MoD Procurement which they can’t damage any further on the groups they are already effed up because they are run by HMG.
The only worse place to stick them would be DfID. We should at least keep our pointless parasites at home instead of inflicting them on the rest of humanity.
How much of the Tata thing is actually about the plant, and how much about pensions?
I think I’ve read there is something like a £500 million unfunded pension liabilty kicking about which I’d imagine all concerned are trying to find someone else to pay for…
theProle
The pensions are going to end up as a state liability or a liability on the pension protection fund. The key here is whether Tata are forced to pay something for disposal or whether the government are stupid enough to actually allow them to walk off with some cash – a key performance metric of whether the panic has led to really bad decision making.