Pat McFadden has vowed to bring about “radical” civil service changes including digitisation and stricter performance targets for officials to mirror private sector practices.
Under the plans expected to be announced this week, under-performing officials could be incentivised to leave their jobs and senior officials will have their pay linked to performance.
A new target will aim to have one in 10 civil servants working in a digital or data role within five years, bringing Whitehall into line with private sector benchmarks.
There are currently 25,000 digital and data civil servants, making up 5% of the civil service workforce. The Cabinet Office said it would be guided by the principle that no time should be spent on a task where digital alternatives or AI could do it better, quicker and to the same quality.
“It just cannot be right that in some parts of the state we’re still dealing with photocopiers or paper forms, when there are quicker, cheaper and better fixes,” McFadden said in a statement.
The plans form part of a wider efficiency drive, with ministers planning to cut about 10,000 civil service roles, although McFadden declined to publicly to commit to a specific figure on Sunday.
Alongside the exit processes, senior civil servants who were not meeting standards would be put on development plans, he said, with a view to firing them if there was no improvement within six months.
McFadden told the BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the government “will be radical about this”. “We believe in good public provision, that’s why we fought the election … It is part of what we believe in that the state can provide both security and opportunity for people,” he said.
“That will guide us in our actions, it’s upfront in our policies, so we will be radical about this, but it’s about getting bang for our buck in terms of the outcomes for the public, it isn’t an ideological approach to stripping back the state.”
The government’s efficiency drive has alarmed unions, which have criticised ministers for suggesting civil servants are happy with substandard results.
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Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, told Times Radio he was “disappointed” in McFadden’s plans and described them as “a set of proposals that look more about grabbing headlines rather than about a serious plan for reforming our public services”.
The civil servants’ trade union, the FDA, described the announcement as a “retreading of failed narratives”, while Prospect has said that civil servants have been “integral to helping the UK navigate the challenges we have faced in recent times”.
Labour and the Conservatives have clashed over their proposals for overhauling Whitehall. McFadden said on Sunday that the size of the civil service had ballooned under the Tories – though this was justified partly by Brexit and Covid-19 – and that Boris Johnson had failed to cut numbers despite setting a target.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, admitted his party had let the civil service become “too big” but said Labour’s plans were “weak and anaemic” compared with what the Tories had been planning before they lost the election.
