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Whitehall is facing a growing wages bill due to the expanding ranks of civil service middle managers, the spending watchdog has warned.
The National Audit Office said that despite staff numbers falling by one per cent since 2000, there has been a 10 per cent increase in real terms of staff costs, amounting to £16.4bn annually.
In a report published on Friday, the watchdog also reveals that the cost of bonuses for the best-paid has risen to £200m compared to virtually zero ten years ago.
It said half of the increased costs had been due to a two-thirds increase in the number of middle management grades 6 and 7 – an extra 14,000 posts.
The report estimated that 35 per cent of the real terms increase in staff costs is due to increases in salaries and performance-related pay.
And figures suggested that while pay is increasing at the top, the bottom 34 per cent remain on salaries of between £15,000 and £20,000.
The watchdog warned that the inability of Whitehall departments to control their staff costs could undermine the government's attempts to tackle the deficit.
Public accounts committee chair Margaret Hodge said: "It is just not acceptable for management layers and bureaucracy to build up in the civil service with nobody in government controlling what was happening.
"These weaknesses could hamper the government's ability to make the right choices, at a time when further cuts in staff numbers are looming."
Head of the National Audit Office, Amyas Morse, said work has begun to identify potential savings in cutting staffing costs, but there are a number of "areas of weakness".
He said: "If these areas of weakness are not dealt with, real risks to value for money remain."
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the government had already taken action to control civil service numbers.
"It is incredibly important that pay and benefits are kept under control so we can protect civil service jobs on the front line," he said.
"The average civil servant's pay is still well below the private sector and we need to ensure that we protect the lowest paid, and that is why we are doing all we can to cut costs at the centre and curbing senior pay."
Article Comments
Writing as a taxpayer I have to say, as we taxpayers have been saying for months, 'they still don't get it.' Local Government Officers, Civil Servants and Members of Parliament still do not understand that we want far fewer of them and that we are quite content to see many more of them costing us only state benefits instead of their vastly inflated salaries and expenses.
A reduction of approximately one third in the numbers in all three categories is required now and further reductions must be considered. An absolute, fixed and legally binding ceiling on numbers that can only be raised by Act of Parliament must be put in place for all three groups as a matter of urgency.
The taxpayers of this country must not end up receiving no services but paying a bloated, inefficient and lazy Civil Service and a nightmare Local Government administration machine, but if control is not exercised immediately that is the future likelihood. Already we taxpayers are seeing services cut when it would be infinitely preferable to cut severely government, and local govenment, jobs.
John M. Joyce
14th Mar 2011 at 4:27 am
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