min300,000 (upto 700,000) public sector jobs to go
Discussion
At least 300,000 Whitehall and other public sector workers are facing the axe as the coalition government sets to work on reining in the £156 billion budget deficit.
As George Osborne, the chancellor, prepares to unveil the first £6 billion of cuts tomorrow, the full scale of the job losses that will follow has begun to emerge.
The initial savings to be announced will target such items as civil servants’ perks which include taxis, flights and hotel accommodation.A Treasury audit of Whitehall spending, which was carried out over the past week, has revealed how officials spend £125m a year on taxis, £320m on hotels and £70m on flights.
The package will also include a £513m cut in the budgets for quangos, with some being abolished altogether.The organisations set to be axed include the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, which employs 723 people, the South East England Development Agency, which has 270 staff, and the 40strong Infrastructure Planning Commission.
The Skills Funding Agency, which employs 1,200 people, is also likely to be closed, along with the Higher Education Funding Council for England. They will be replaced by a new Council for Adult Skills and Higher Education.
Vince Cable’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will bear the brunt of the initial cuts, making savings of £900m.
While the first wave of cuts will mainly target Whitehall waste, more severe reductions of up to 25% in some departmental budgets will follow in a comprehensive spending review in the autumn.
Detailed research by The Sunday Times shows that at least 300,000 workers, including civil servants and frontline staff, will lose their jobs over the next few years.
Some estimates suggest that the number of job losses could reach 700,000.
These will include tens of thousands of health service managers as well as many thousands of doctors and nurses, according to internal documents from the National Health Service.
Three out of the 10 strategic health authorities have disclosed that they will reduce their headcounts by a total of 30,132, an average of 8.7%.
If these cuts were replicated nationwide, the total job losses would amount to 120,000.
A similar analysis of 75 local authorities suggests that at least 100,000 council workers will be axed across the country.
Thousands of police officers and their civilian support staff will lose their posts, with the Metropolitan police alone forecasting 445 job cuts.
About 20,000 jobs will be lost at the Ministry of Defence as the department faces a demand to reduce its administrative costs by 25%. Ministry insiders say the cuts are set to hit military personnel, including some frontline soldiers.
Ministers have tried to insist that any public sector job losses would be mainly among the “penpushing” bureaucrats, but answers received under freedom of information requests suggest that a wide variety of different professions will be hit.
Meanwhile David Cameron, who has given up motorcycle outriders and cut the number of ministerial drivers since becoming prime minister, has let it be known that he will personally foot the bill for the refurbishment of his Downing Street accommodation.
The axe is expected to fall on grants announced in the final days of the Labour government, including an £8m payment towards the refurbishment of Blackpool Tower.
The Foreign Office is expected to announce the closure of some overseas offices shortly. An audit has revealed widespread waste where different British government agencies operate out of separate sites in the same city.
For example, £20m could be saved by merging four offices in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, occupied by the high commission, the Border Agency, the Department for International Development and the British Council.
Even ministries whose overall budgets will be ringfenced are having to find cost savings, which will be reinvested in frontline services.
The Department of Health, for example, is expected to end its £275,000 funding of dance classes and competitions.
With the Ministry of Defence facing spiralling costs for big procurement projects, Liam Fox, the defence secretary, is considering bringing in Bernard Grey, an independent consultant, as a minister in the Lords.
Most of the large cuts will follow a strategic defence review that will get under way later this year.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/art...
As George Osborne, the chancellor, prepares to unveil the first £6 billion of cuts tomorrow, the full scale of the job losses that will follow has begun to emerge.
The initial savings to be announced will target such items as civil servants’ perks which include taxis, flights and hotel accommodation.A Treasury audit of Whitehall spending, which was carried out over the past week, has revealed how officials spend £125m a year on taxis, £320m on hotels and £70m on flights.
The package will also include a £513m cut in the budgets for quangos, with some being abolished altogether.The organisations set to be axed include the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, which employs 723 people, the South East England Development Agency, which has 270 staff, and the 40strong Infrastructure Planning Commission.
The Skills Funding Agency, which employs 1,200 people, is also likely to be closed, along with the Higher Education Funding Council for England. They will be replaced by a new Council for Adult Skills and Higher Education.
Vince Cable’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will bear the brunt of the initial cuts, making savings of £900m.
While the first wave of cuts will mainly target Whitehall waste, more severe reductions of up to 25% in some departmental budgets will follow in a comprehensive spending review in the autumn.
Detailed research by The Sunday Times shows that at least 300,000 workers, including civil servants and frontline staff, will lose their jobs over the next few years.
Some estimates suggest that the number of job losses could reach 700,000.
These will include tens of thousands of health service managers as well as many thousands of doctors and nurses, according to internal documents from the National Health Service.
Three out of the 10 strategic health authorities have disclosed that they will reduce their headcounts by a total of 30,132, an average of 8.7%.
If these cuts were replicated nationwide, the total job losses would amount to 120,000.
A similar analysis of 75 local authorities suggests that at least 100,000 council workers will be axed across the country.
Thousands of police officers and their civilian support staff will lose their posts, with the Metropolitan police alone forecasting 445 job cuts.
About 20,000 jobs will be lost at the Ministry of Defence as the department faces a demand to reduce its administrative costs by 25%. Ministry insiders say the cuts are set to hit military personnel, including some frontline soldiers.
Ministers have tried to insist that any public sector job losses would be mainly among the “penpushing” bureaucrats, but answers received under freedom of information requests suggest that a wide variety of different professions will be hit.
Meanwhile David Cameron, who has given up motorcycle outriders and cut the number of ministerial drivers since becoming prime minister, has let it be known that he will personally foot the bill for the refurbishment of his Downing Street accommodation.
The axe is expected to fall on grants announced in the final days of the Labour government, including an £8m payment towards the refurbishment of Blackpool Tower.
The Foreign Office is expected to announce the closure of some overseas offices shortly. An audit has revealed widespread waste where different British government agencies operate out of separate sites in the same city.
For example, £20m could be saved by merging four offices in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, occupied by the high commission, the Border Agency, the Department for International Development and the British Council.
Even ministries whose overall budgets will be ringfenced are having to find cost savings, which will be reinvested in frontline services.
The Department of Health, for example, is expected to end its £275,000 funding of dance classes and competitions.
With the Ministry of Defence facing spiralling costs for big procurement projects, Liam Fox, the defence secretary, is considering bringing in Bernard Grey, an independent consultant, as a minister in the Lords.
Most of the large cuts will follow a strategic defence review that will get under way later this year.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/art...
Mojooo said:
Whilst I dont have a problem with clean up the question is where do all these peopel go - on the dole?
Is that better or worse?
dole = no cushy public sector pension. Is that better or worse?
Doctor types will be able to go abroad etc, middle management types will be on £30+ so dole will be cheaper.
A lot will be screwed but thats the situation we are in
Jobs will be created in more needed sectors you would imagine along with grants/loans to entice the private sector to expand.
the private sector have had/ are still having their cuts/pains. for those in the public sector worried about losing their job from the cuts. well if you are a skilled productive valuable employee what do you have to worry about? unless of course you are a drain on your profession and are trying to cover your own backside.
I don't think anybody wants hundreds of thousands on the dole, but the economy will be better off if we move the talented ones into positions in the private sector where they might generate some wealth. Public service/govt jobs rarely build wealth. Maybe we could take a few billions out of papershuffling (tax credits for example we collect tax and then give some of it back. ) and invest a few billions into nuclear power infrastructure so we don't need to import all the knowlege and skills From france etc.
The baying right wing like us would not mind a £160bn deficit if we had poured it into infrastructure, research and industry so we could attact investment and create wealth instead we have poured money into a non productive sector of society who now refuse to help themselves by working in low skill (and therefor low paying) jobs.
What a mess.
The baying right wing like us would not mind a £160bn deficit if we had poured it into infrastructure, research and industry so we could attact investment and create wealth instead we have poured money into a non productive sector of society who now refuse to help themselves by working in low skill (and therefor low paying) jobs.
What a mess.
Matt.. said:
This might well turn out to be a major issue in Wales where approx 1/3 of the workforce are pubic sector! With Swansea alone having nearly 40% of their workers in public sector.
They are already Labour voters anyway. This whole economic situation could be great for Labour - they employ millions in the public sector, lose power, someone else comes along and lays them all off again and becomes the hated party. If Labour wins power again in the future they will re-hire all these Edited by Matt.. on Sunday 23 May 09:59
Jasandjules said:
And so it begins.
The necessary removal of those who drain tax pounds without any discernible benefit.
Up to 700,000? these people about to be made redundant are all from non jobs? I didn't realise things were that bad. The necessary removal of those who drain tax pounds without any discernible benefit.
There are already large sections of the country that wont vote Conservative. Any governmemt that makes 700,000 people redundant is going to find it hard to get re elected if they don't do it very carefully and manage to create growth and new jobs in other areas.
Nobody wants another 13 years of Labour after the nasty Conservatives make half a million people redundant.
el stovey said:
Jasandjules said:
And so it begins.
The necessary removal of those who drain tax pounds without any discernible benefit.
Up to 700,000? these people about to be made redundant are all from non jobs? I didn't realise things were that bad. The necessary removal of those who drain tax pounds without any discernible benefit.
There are already large sections of the country that wont vote Conservative. Any governmemt that makes 700,000 people redundant is going to find it hard to get re elected if they don't do it very carefully and manage to create growth and new jobs in other areas.
Nobody wants another 13 years of Labour after the nasty Conservatives make half a million people redundant.
rypt said:
whoami said:
Good.
Indeed, about time!700,000 useless public sector wasters will be on the dole. Hooray! Except, that means they won't be spending their vast, undeserved salaries with private sector businesses any more. And don't think they'll be able to switch to the private sector, because the opportunities simply aren't there. Not to mention the fact that these people are, as we are continually reminded, only in the public sector because they couldn't get a proper job in the first place...
Let's not even mention the myriad private sector enterprises who suckle directly at the teat of public sector largesse. No more cushy contracts. No more 'consultancy' fees... there'll be more than a few casualties there.
Still, that's going to save a nice big chunk of money that can be ploughed back into the private sector through tax cuts and investment, right? Except... isn't there the small matter of the gaping black hole in the nation's finances which will, at least in the short term, swallow it all up?
Do we need cuts to the public sector? Of course we do. But anyone who thinks the slash and burn approach being proposed is somehow not going to impact on our wonderfully efficient, productive wealth-generators in the private sector is, I fear, deluded. I certainly wouldn't be crowing about it just yet.
Good luck to everyone, private and public. I suspect we're ALL going to need it.
el stovey said:
Up to 700,000? these people about to be made redundant are all from non jobs? I didn't realise things were that bad.
Just take a look through the public sector job adverts to see what I mean.....ETA - and then you have the corrupt/incompetent middle management lot who just get a job with a different title instead of being sacked/shot. Take a look at the paper pushers in the NHS - if you want to know how bad it is, ask a junior doctor.
Edited by Jasandjules on Sunday 23 May 12:03
Bye bye EEDA 
(I hope).Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff