The plans for the civil service announced by the Conservative leadership candidate, Rishi Sunak, do not hold up to scrutiny, says FDA General Secretary Dave Penman. 

On Monday night Sunak’s campaigned unveiled his proposals to “shakeup”, what he described as, the “bloated post-COVID state”. These included reducing the headcount of back office civil servants, changing the basis of pay reward from longevity to performance, reducing the opportunities for staff to move between departments and sending more civil servants outside of London.

In response, Penman argued that Sunak’s proposals only highlight that “he doesn’t understand the basics of how the civil service operates. 

“With Brexit still a work in progress, huge backlogs in public service from the pandemic, a new war on mainland Europe, a cost of living crisis, and now a looming recession, the country needs a Prime Minister who can equip the civil service with the resources and skills it needs to meet the challenges ahead, not ill-thought-out rhetoric that doesn’t survive the first hour of scrutiny.” 

Speaking to Matt Chorley at Times Radio, Penman stated proposals from both leadership candidates are heavy on rhetoric and light on detail. They are written to give the impression of taking action “rather than having real, meaningful proposals.” 

Penman later told LBC News that “there is a reality when it comes to this rhetoric. People are doing actual jobs and delivering public services.” The government can choose to cut these jobs but they “can’t isolate themselves from the consequences of that.” 

Sunak’s proposal to link pay to performance, rather than longevity, also fails to hold up to scrutiny and once again demonstrates his failure to understand the basics, with Penman pointing out that “civil servants have not received pay rises for longevity for nearly two decades” and that the Treasury’s current pay policy is entirely linked to performance. 

The former Chancellor’s proposal to stop staff moving from department to department is not new. Penman pointed out that the cause of this churn in staff was identified by the government five years ago as a “consequence of a pay system that doesn’t reward depth of knowledge”. He continued that this issue persists “due to Treasury intransigence and a failure to fund a new pay system.” 

Of Sunak, Penman said “instead of delivering solutions for a 21st century public service, the former Chancellor is more concerned with pandering to the sections of his party the media that are obsessed with home working.”