Government departments have started to prepare their staff for job losses ahead of this autumn’s spending review, Coffee House has learned. George Osborne wants ministers to cut as much as 40 per cent from unprotected spending pots, which means that departments are likely to shed staff – or even close.
The Energy and Climate Change department, which is one such unprotected department, has started to talk to its staff about the need to have a smaller workforce in future. The department is not yet talking about specific redundancies, but it is preparing for bigger cuts due in the comprehensive spending review, which will be unveiled on 25 November.
A spokesperson for DECC says:
‘We have begin driving efficiencies across the department ahead of the spending review in the autumn, which includes reviewing how we operate in a more focused and efficient way.’
But it may be that those bigger cuts turn out to be the closure and merger of certain departments. I understand that there is sympathy all the way to Cabinet level, including from ministers representing unprotected departments, for saving money by reducing the number of ministries in Whitehall. There are currently 20 departments, all of which incur costs simply by replicating back office operations for policy areas that overlap: for instance, DECC could sit neatly in the Business department, or as a merged operation including the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs department. It is not clear, though, whether those ministers sympathetic to closures are in favour of their own departments shutting down, or whether they’d rather a Cabinet colleague took the bullet instead.
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