Boris Johnson news – live: Rees-Mogg denies 90,000 job cuts mark return to austerity Downing Street says axing one fifth of staff would free up cash for potential tax cuts

44 comments

  4. It’s all bullshit. The wages of those 90,000 is a drop in the ocean and will have zero impact other than putting 90,000 people out of work during a Tory-made cost of living crisis.

  5. Well of course, if we can cut the taxes of the wealth creators, then that’s a sure fire way of getting out of recession…in Kensington.

  6. It depends if they actually cut staff e.g. current staff working or just remove vacancies and then count leavers, those on short term contracts coming to an end and those retiring, then at a current level is it much of a saving?

  9. So it’s not a return to austerity but it’s the fault of civil service employees claiming minimum wage, that they just had to increase tax and NI for everyone.

    I’m sure that this won’t make people hate civil servants and make them believe that “greedy” or “lazy” civil servants are the cause of the nation’s problems and not this incompetent government, only elected to do one thing that they couldn’t even properly achieve.

    This is not yet another attack on civil servants, (whom they are understaffing and underfunding for ideological reasons) to force them all to return to the office.

    I’m sure that it won’t be the case that a civil servant legitimately working from home, won’t be on the firing line.

    I’m also certain that firing staff in huge numbers will improve prisons and have a positive impact on visas, passports and driving licences which have been delayed due to the pandemic.

  12. We really are just going to turn into mini-America at this rate.

    And the people who voted for it will be too rich/dead to care.

  14. Yes. Cut the people that sort out public services and lower taxes. That will certainly help the poorest, struggling 10% who don’t pay any taxes to begin with.

  15. Mogg has it in for any civil servant working from home.

    Should this policy be implemented, it’ll be interesting to see how many of these workers make up that 90k.

    …….because, cunts.

  16. How will 90,000 redundancy payments then unemployment benefits save us money? Especially as some of them will go private and be re-employed on a bigger wage

  17. Is anyone shocked?

    the entire conservatism political belief is 1) small government with as few staff as possible and 2) make everything that can be sold, awful under government management to justify selling it off to your mates

  18. It would free up £52 per household. That is a small return for 90,000 people losing their jobs. It’s austerity-lite.

  19. As we all know, making 20% of your staff redundant is a great way to improve public service provision.

  21. Wasn’t the civil service having a massive recruitment drive to fill jobs that used to be managed by the EU?

    Such as border control, foreign office, etc.

  22. POS JRM doesn’t even pay taxes on most of *his* money. It’s all offshore.

    It was the EU looking at ways to tax offshore that got him so hot for Brexit in the first place.

  23. Taking people’s jobs to to give us five quid off the council tax…. Tories are fucking economically illiterate. Or I should say they bank on us being stupid.

  29. How does putting 90,000 people onto unemployment benefits and removing them from the tax paying, spending worker pool, generate anything like enough headroom for a nationwide tax cut?

  30. 90,000 people no longer contributing to buying in our economy means higher taxes for us not less.

    We need people buying not cutting. Like the tories care.

  31. Disgrace! Probably back fill with private contracted staff that must attend the office every day and spend their reduced wages in busses, sandwiches and propping up their commercial landlord friends!!

  33. If you cut 90k jobs then the services provided by government will have removed 158m working hours a year capacity from the system. Surely this will lead to a reduced service to the taxpayer?

  35. Ah so that’s how they’re going to fund our 10% inflation linked payrise this year…wait you mean the rest will have to deal with up to 2%.

    I think it’s time to move to the private sector.

  37. It was only last night my mum was telling me to get a job in the public sector because it’s secure and you’ll never be laid off…

  39. A fifth of all staff? Jesus christ. There’s no way that is replaceable. This is just another way to outsource the exact same people and thus get lower wages and fewer staff benefits isn’t it?

  40. This talk of returning to 2016 levels of staffing masks that in 2016 the civil service had its lowest levels since the 1930s. The workload since 2016 has gone up enormously with the UK having to take on functions which were previously done by European agencies, dealing with covid, increased animal health issues, climate change, implementing the government’s desire for new legislation, war in Ukraine etc

  41. Stupid question here … How is firing and unemploying 91,000 persons supposed to solve any problem? Firing 91,000 people can mean that unemployed/homeless/starving persons of upwards from 91,000 to 3 times that many (people have families) … Would it not just be easier to shoot everyone in their big toe and just get it over with?

  42. Their strategy is to create a funding crisis and then justify horrible actions under the pretence that they could use the money to fix the artificial crisis they created. And then they won’t.

    The sad thing is it works over and over again.

  43. Assuming an average £30k salary X 90,000 = = £2.7B
    UK population is 67M, so 2700/67= £40 each

    So everyone gets £40 and there’s 90k civil servants jobless?

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