Spending review: civil service job cuts to be fast-tracked

Ministers are preparing to fast-track job cuts in the civil service with redundancy notices expected to go out before Christmas, to start making savings for the Treasury before the next election, the Guardian has learned. More than 6,400 Whitehall jobs have already gone through a recruitment freeze and the chancellor has ordered a 30% cut in government administration costs, with a shakeup across government ministries. Separate back office functions – including marketing, finance and property management – will be pooled between departments and their quangos. Francis Maude, the cabinet office minister, has already said there will be a centralisation of procurement processes across government. But further job losses are expected to make up the bulk of the savings. Changes to civil servants' redundancy schemes are being pushed through parliament to speed up job cuts. A Whitehall source said: "The first aim is to reverse the culture of people staying around as long as they can to maximise the benefit. Secondly, it's to get more people through the door earlier rather than later in the spending review. Early exits will make more savings and when you know jobs are to go you want them to go sooner rather than later." Civil servants' contracts today require six-month redundancy periods, though this will soon be cut to three months, so any compulsory redundancies will have to be notified quickly after next week's spending review for people to be off the payroll by April when departments' reduced budgets kick in. The new redundancy scheme for civil servants provides for much more generous voluntary redundancies – up to 21 months' pay compared with 12 months for compulsory redundancies – and ministers are expected to use this as leverage to lay off workers without nasty confrontations with the unions. To make savings from job losses within the four-year target for obliterating the £83bn structural deficit, redundancies must happen as soon as possible, as the government will in effect continue to pay people's wages for nearly two years after they leave. The government today published the names and salaries of nearly every senior civil servant in a "map" of Whitehall, making public the pecking order of officials in every department. Maude said the move was designed to make government more accountable for its actions and it was welcomed by freedom of information campaigners. Unions aired concerns that it was being done to focus attention on the highest earners to later justify cuts. The figures show that the median salary in the senior civil service is £78,088 compared with £22,850 across the entire civil service. "There is some suspicion this is just about setting up headlines about the bloated civil service. That would not be fair," said Jonathan Baume, general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants. Job losses in some areas of Whitehall are expected imminently. The Central Office of Information, which was set up with the intention that it would form the backbone of the government's communications strategy, will be drastically reduced and is seeking 300 voluntary redundancies. Revenue and Customs are also bracing themselves for another round of job losses. A senior Whitehall source said: "There is a strong feeling of needing to get to grips with this as soon as possible so that we can get on with the job of reforming the way government works. There's a fear some areas will try to be kind by doing reductions through natural wastage but that creates uncertainty for people. It's the uncertainty that kills. It needs to be decisive." Baume said: "There's a natural tendency to frontload these savings. What that will mean in practical terms will vary from department to department. This is a period of enormous uncertainty for very hardworking public servants and there is going to remain a real issue about maintaining morale." Official statistics reveal that thousands of posts have already gone across Whitehall. In May the coalition ordered a freeze on hiring for all but the most crucial jobs across the public sector. There was a 22,000 drop in the number of permanent public sector workers in the three months starting in April this year. In the central civil service, some 6,410 permanent jobs disappeared and 1,040 – almost one in nine – of temporary posts have gone. All regions other than London were hit but north-east and north-west England saw a disproportionately high shrinkage in posts. The halt on public building programmes is apparent. Office for National Statistics figures show that construction workers were the worst affected with a 9.3% reduction in posts. The figures come after ministers abolished 192 quangos this week and merged 118 more in a move that will generate more than 10,000 redundancies. PricewaterhouseCoopers has estimated that a million people will lose their jobs as a result of the cuts over the next four years – half in the public sector and half in private sector contractors working for the state.