Liz Truss has been accused of making “ridiculous” claims as she vowed to cut civil servant pay and spending to restore the £11bn-a-year “war on Whitehall waste” if she becomes prime minister.
But the Conservative leadership candidate’s campaign, which received a fresh boost with the backing of Penny Mordaunt on Monday, was forced to change some of its figures within hours of publishing a series of proposals to cut civil service costs.
These include less pay for staff outside London and a reduction in annual leave allowance. Truss also pledged to “fight left-wing groupthink in government” and scrap diversity and inclusion jobs, saying they “distract from delivering on the priorities of the British people”.
“As Prime Minister, I will run a leaner, more efficient, more focused Whitehall that prioritizes the things that really matter to people and is laser-focused on frontline services,” she said. “There is too much red tape and outdated groupthink in Whitehall.”
Unions and political experts slammed the plans as unworkable and said the Trust had grossly overstated the potential savings, which it said would amount to £11 billion a year.
The most important element of the plan is the introduction of regional pay boards, which she says will “adjust pay to the cost of living where civil servants actually work”. It claims it will save up to £8.8bn.
Experts question whether the savings are feasible. Alex Thomas, program director at the Institute of Governance, said: “If you’re only talking about civil servants, it’s absurd; it doesn’t add up at all. The whole thing [annual] the civil servant wage bill is around £9 billion.
He suggested that regional pay councils might be a sensible plan, but would generate something like the savings discussed by the Trust if implemented across the public sector, including the NHS, schools and local government, which would likely involve a lengthy negotiation process.
“It is not a bad thing for the public sector to match its salary scales with the part of the country in which it operates. But you only get to those numbers if you’re talking about a doctor, nurse or school administrator who is already working outside of London on a lower salary,” he said.
The £8.8 billion savings policy echoes a report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance published at the weekend, but the newspaper claims it could be achieved through regional pay bargaining for the entire public sector of around 5.7 million people.
Government statistics show there are 478,090 civil servants on an average salary of £30,110. Boris Johnson had already promised to cut a fifth of civil servants, or around 90,000 jobs.
The Truss team claims that moving civil servants out of London would save £557 million a year by avoiding having to pay them a special burden to work in the capital. However, they overestimated the saving by around £400m and were forced to adjust it to £153m on Monday afternoon.
Addressing Truss’ suggestion that civil servant wages outside London could distort the labor market if they were higher than the going rate locally, Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, compared it to the approach of P&O Ferries , which was criticized for reducing staff pay and conditions.
“Rather than taking a page out of P&O Ferries’ book, Liz Truss should focus on ensuring the civil service has the right people with the right skills to deliver high quality public services and meet the challenges it faces government at the moment, including the recovery from the Covid backlog and the new war in continental Europe,” he said.
Other aspects of the Trust’s plan include saving £2bn by cutting civil servants’ annual leave allowance by two days. She also said she would bar civil service union representatives from using taxpayer-funded “facility time” to plan strike action.
The Truss team said it would save up to £137m a year, but unions insist there are already hard limits on how the facility’s time can be used. Oliver Dowden, then a cabinet minister, told MPs in 2019 that working time accounted for 0.06% of the public sector pay budget and the government was already cutting it.
Trots also announced he would stop a proposed ban on buy-one-get-one-free junk food deals in an interview with the Daily Mail, where he attacked “government nanny fees”.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said Truss was “declaring war on herself with her fantastic recipe for equalisation”. She said the Conservative government had overseen the “epic waste”, including during the pandemic.
“Her ‘tailored’ pay plans would reduce northerners’ pay, exacerbating the divide that already exists. This unaffordable government’s commitment to equalization is dead.
“Now Liz Truss is promising more cuts that will only worsen the backlogs we already have at courts, airports and GPs, leaving people waiting for passports, driving licenses and vital appointments.”
In her final message to Tory members as the ballot papers were published, Truss vowed to “be brave” and “work tirelessly to deliver on her promises” to win the next election, which she says will be in 2024 .
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In the latest swipe at Rishi Sunak, her leadership rival, she said: “We cannot continue business as usual and I have a bold plan to get our economy back on track.”
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