Oral Answers to Questions

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue. Components of the SCM criteria are planned in both the core awards and the supplementary route, and those in receipt of SCM payments can continue to receive those payments under the infected blood support schemes route. However, as I said in my evidence to the inquiry only a few weeks ago, that is a matter that I will consider further.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

15. What steps he is taking to reform the civil service.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Pat McFadden)]

We want to see a civil service that delivers for the public. The reforms that we are pushing through include greater adoption of technology; relocating civil service jobs around the country, as we have discussed; and, critically, a focus on outcomes in key public service areas, not just the processes that lead to them.

[Marie Goldman]

Many of my Chelmsford constituents are civil servants who travel into London most days of the week to perform their jobs. Last month, a Centre for Economics and Business Research report revealed that the UK may need 92,000 more public workers by 2030 to maintain the same level of output, due to falls in productivity in the sector. However, the Cabinet Office has refused to comment on reports in recent days that the Government plan to cut the number of civil servants by 10% by the end of the decade, which will have an impact on my Chelmsford constituents. Will the Minister confirm today whether a 10% cut to civil service headcount is planned and if any of that will take the form of compulsory redundancy?

[Pat McFadden]

It is fair to ask for productivity improvements from civil servants on behalf of the taxpayer. We have had an increase in hiring over the past 10 years. We do not have a target for a headcount reduction—that was tried under the last Government and did not work—but we do have a target for reduction in admin and overhead spend. We want to work with civil servants on how that will be done. I say to the hon. Lady that when the taxpayer is committing funds to public services, we want to ensure we get maximum productivity in the public sector; we cannot just resign ourselves to lower productivity and the answer always being to hire more people.