Mike Wood
Main Page: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)Department Debates - View all Mike Wood's debates with the Cabinet Office
Oral Answers to Questions
Mike Wood Excerpts(1 day, 21 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
Last year, the Government promised us that they were going to slash the size of the civil service, but instead the latest figures showed that the size of the civil service has increased by 7,000 compared with last year. It is not only other Departments that have failed to get a grip: the headcount of the Minister’s own Department is up by 7%. Will the Minister guarantee that when the next set of figures is published, it will show a reduction in the size of the civil service and the size of the Cabinet Office?
Anna Turley
Under the last Tory Government, Boris Johnson said that he would cut the number of people employed by the civil service by 91,000, but that figure went up. Jeremy Hunt said that he would cap numbers in the civil service, but they went up. The Conservatives lost control of the civil service, just as they lost control of our borders, our streets and our prisons, but we are taking action to bring those numbers down.
Mike Wood
I think that the Minister is missing the fact that she is in Government now and has been for well over a year, but the numbers are going up not down, as they promised. The Minister is correct when she says that the civil service must be able to recruit the brightest and the best, but surely she can see that that is not helped when the most senior civil servant, hand-picked by the Prime Minister barely months ago, faces a barrage of media briefings from within Government. Will the Minister and her Department commission an inquiry into the breach of the code of conduct for special advisers following the personal attacks on the Cabinet Secretary, and will she condemn the vicious media briefings that have clearly come from within No.10?
Anna Turley
We have full confidence in the Cabinet Secretary and we condemn all leaks and breaches. We undertake to look into how any leaks from Government take place.