Thank you for subscribing!

The Taxpayers' Alliance William Yarwood rails against Whitehall

There was a time when the British civil service was compared to a Rolls-Royce machine: smooth, discreet and ruthlessly efficient.

Today, almost no one can honestly say this is the case. These days, it looks more like a mammoth oil tanker drifting towards disaster, with taxpayers stuck paying for the fuel.

New TaxPayers’ Alliance research shows that the civil service has ballooned by a third in just a decade.

In 2016, there were 418,340 civil servants, and by March this year, that had risen to 557,825.

That is almost 140,000 extra officials, with Whitehall growing more than three times faster than the wider public sector.

This might be easier to stomach if Britain had suddenly acquired a more high-performing state because of this increase.

But taxpayers are not seeing faster decisions, better services or lower bills.

They are seeing delays, waste, failure and a government machine that always seems to need more money, more staff and more time.

The salary bill alone should make taxpayers wince. Civil service pay is now estimated to cost £22.5 billion, almost double what it was a decade ago, while median pay rose by 6 per cent last year, almost twice the rate of inflation, even as households across the country were still being squeezed by high taxes and rising costs.

While Whitehall becoming bigger is a key problem, underlying this is a growth that is making the civil service more top-heavy.

Since 2016, the number of civil servants in the top three grades has risen by 85 per cent, while the most junior grade has actually fallen by more than 23,000.

Communications roles are up by nearly two-thirds, and policy roles have more than doubled. But frontline operational delivery has shrunk as a share of the civil service.

In plain English, the state is hiring more people to think about doing things and then hold meetings to talk about those things, while fewer people are left actually doing them.

That is how you end up with more mandarins and more managers, but no obvious improvement for the public.

Grade inflation appears to be rife, with senior titles multiplying and too many officials moving upwards regardless of performance.

Failure should not be rewarded with promotion, and merely staying in the system should not be enough to climb the ladder.

The pay figures underline the point. There are now 4,015 civil servants earning at least £100,000, up from just 1,090 in 2016. One hundred and fifty civil servants are paid at least £175,000, more than the Prime Minister’s salary entitlement, while 50 are on more than £200,000.

Taxpayers might reasonably ask what sort of world-class delivery this army of six-figure officials is producing. The answer, too often, is a state that cannot control the borders, cannot get welfare spending under control, cannot answer correspondence promptly and cannot deliver major projects without costs spiralling.

And now Andy Burnham appears to think the answer is moving more of this bureaucracy north. No 10 North and similar gimmicks may sound like radical reform, but shifting officials from one postcode to another does not make government more efficient. A non-job does not become useful because it has moved to a Manchester postcode.

The North West already has 75,330 civil servants, the second-highest headcount of any region. Since 2016, the number of civil service roles there has increased by 23,640, or 45.7 per cent. The idea that Whitehall has not already spread far beyond Whitehall is simply not true.

Contrary to what the Prime Minister might think, the real question he should be asking is not where bureaucrats sit, but how many there are, what they do and whether taxpayers are getting value for money.

That is why ministers should adopt a simple rule: one up, two down. For every new civil service role created in the North of England, two senior civil service jobs in London should go. That would stop No 10 North becoming just another excuse for more non-jobs, while forcing a long-overdue reduction in mandarin middle management.

Britain does not need another decade of Whitehall expansion. It needs fewer senior layers, tougher performance management and a serious willingness to cut functions that government should not be doing in the first place.

Of course, this cannot be done by the civil service alone. It will take political will, ministerial courage and a willingness to make enemies inside the machine. Luckily, it does seem that most political parties are talking about civil service reform in one way or another. Reform has Danny Kruger working on a full overhaul, the Conservatives want headcount back to 2016 levels, and Labour has demanded productivity improvements. But taxpayers have heard warm words and empty promises before.

Whitehall has grown for ten years in a row, its wage bill has nearly doubled, and the number of senior posts has exploded. It is clear that the system cannot continue as it is, and politicians must bring it to heel.