The smaller the better
Sir: Auberon Waugh's articles are, I am sure, always enjoyed by readers of the Spectator, but may I ask him to pay a bit more attention to the facts? His piece on the Civil Service, 'Defeated by the Civil Service' (31 October), contained the following sentence: 'But we seldom hear of cuts in British Rail or Telecom and never, in my experience, of cuts in Civil Service administration.' This happened to appear on the very day Baroness Young, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister in charge of the Civil Service Department, announced the latest figures for manpower reductions in the Civil Service. These amount to 52,500 since the Government took office and mean that the Civil Service is now smaller than at any time for over 14 years. The total planned reductions — announced by the Prime Minister in May last year — amount to 102,000 by April 1984. We are well on schedule for that goal, which will mean the smallest Civil Service since the end of the war.
H. Jarmany
Chief Press Officer, Civil Service Department, Whitehall, London SW I
Previous page
