Slashing Whitehall waste is a pledge that brings to mind Augustine’s prayer for the Lord to make him virtuous – but not yet. It is something repeatedly promised by governments, but rarely delivered. Here we are again, days out from the final Budget before voters go to the polls in a general election, and Jeremy Hunt is announcing a crackdown on bureaucracy in the public sector. He intends to reduce the civil service headcount by 66,000, returning it to pre-pandemic levels.

Do we need a Department for Culture, Media and Sport?

Voters are likely to feel cynical. Britain’s public sector is riddled with entitlement and waste at levels described by the Chancellor as ‘immoral’. In January the chief of the National Audit Office warned the government is squandering £10 billion every year. Nearly six million people are now employed in the public sector. The total public sector pay bill was around £233 billion in the 2021/22 financial year, accounting for roughly a fifth of all government spending. Yet productivity in the public sector is still down on 2019. The more resources that are poured into our public sector, the narrower the marginal gains appear to be.

Rarely does the civil service move people on who aren’t up to the job or force them to take real responsibility for any mistakes. Too many of its staff are devoting too much time to issues not directly related to serving the public, and seem to think it perfectly acceptable to do so. An HR culture has taken hold, placing Whitehall at the forefront of some of the nation’s most progressive causes.

To give but a few examples: the most senior mandarin at the Ministry of Justice, who also holds the role of civil service ‘Gender Champion’, has written abuout ending the menopause ‘taboo’ in Whitehall and set up a ‘gender equality leadership group’. Pride month for the NHS, police, fire departments and councils cost £500,000 last year, according to the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Last year, it was revealed that the Competition and Markets Authority was encouraging staff to spend 10 per cent of their working week on activities that fostered ‘an inclusive culture and working environment’. Civil servants have been invited to take a ‘pronoun pledge’ and include a phonetic guide to pronouncing their own name in every written communication.

While Cabinet Office minister John Glen wants to ensure that the number of civil servants working from home is factored into annual reviews, office occupancy remains well below pre-pandemic levels. None the less, the PCS union, which represents public sector workers, has said it would like a four-day week to be implemented across the civil service, with no corresponding reduction in pay.

When people can’t see a doctor, schools are crumbling and taxpayers are being squeezed to a degree not seen since the late-1940s, this is patent madness. When people say, as recent polls have indicated, that they would rather the Chancellor’s ‘fiscal headroom’ was spent on public services than tax cuts, it’s doubtful they’re worried about a shortage of diversity and inclusion hires at the Cabinet Office.

A risk – if Mr Hunt does follow words with action – is that he will salami slice across the board rather than cut out whole functional areas. Serious discussions ought to be underway in the Treasury and No. 10 about whether there is any need for government involvement in early years childcare. Do we need an Arts Council, if it spends £150,000 on a London theatre to stage a show for an ‘all black audience’? Do we need a Department for Culture, Media and Sport? Is the billions we give to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero proportionate? We spend a billion pounds a year on the Office for Students and spent nearly £8 billion on the UK Health and Security Agency: has it been put to effective use?

Perhaps Hunt should look to another country, and its new leader, for inspiration. Javier Milei has, since December, reduced the number of government departments from 18 to nine and fired 30,000 public sector workers. It seems the Chancellor accepts major productivity gains can be made across our public services. Now he needs to borrow the playbook from the chainsaw-wielding Argentinian president.