'Bonfire of red tape' ends in 14 job cuts

Radical plans to slash 1bn of waste from the public sector were last night in doubt after officials admitted that the Executive did not have a job-cutting agenda, despite a pledge to spend less on bureaucrats and more on frontline services such as hospitals and schools.

Cutting the cost of bureaucracy has been at the top of the political agenda for the past year, since Chancellor Gordon Brown announced plans to axe up to 40,000 government posts across the UK in order to save 20bn by 2008.

The Executive must make savings of 500m by 2007 and 1bn by 2010, but last night it emerged that the number of permanent Executive staff dropped by only a fraction between October 2004 and March 2005 - from 4,497 to 4,483. Scotland on Sunday understands that unions have been told privately not to worry about job cuts.

Last year, Executive sources said that the then finance minister, Andy Kerr, would be "ruthless and tough" about cuts.

And an official briefing note stated: "Jobs will need to change and some jobs may need to go." But the emphasis appears to have changed dramatically, with an Executive spokesman claiming yesterday that its "efficient government" policy would tackle waste without cutting jobs.

The Executive also has plans for an Efficient Government Fund, which will cost 60m over the next two years.

The spokesman said: "It is important to emphasise that our efficient government initiative was never a jobs-cutting agenda, either within the Executive or in the wider public sector.

"The whole ethos... is to tackle waste and duplication within the public sector and deliver significant savings which can be ploughed back into frontline services.

"Some jobs will have to change and some jobs may have to go - but it is not driven by job cuts. The true measure of the success of ‘efficient government’ will be on the level of financial savings we deliver and, more importantly, the improved delivery of frontline public services."

When he unveiled his spending totals last year, the Chancellor promised cuts in back-office jobs to help fund "the longest sustained investment in public services for a generation".

He set out plans to increase departmental spending and boost defence, security, childcare, transport, housing and policing.

The Public and Commercial Services Union said that cutbacks on such a large scale would cause "carnage" and warned that it could not rule out industrial action.

There was widespread expectation that the job cuts would hit the Executive. Within its ranks the number of full-time staff has risen steadily from 3,417 in October 1999.

The number of people working for councils in Scotland is over 300,000 - or one in eight working Scots.

Shadow Scottish secretary Peter Duncan said: "This is less a bonfire of the bureaucrats and more like a minister rubbing two sticks together on a damp afternoon. It just goes to prove that we should not believe Labour spin and look at the substance instead.

"Labour has created a dependency culture. The public service in Scotland is stifling private enterprise. That’s why we need reforms that direct resources to the front line."

SNP finance spokesman Alasdair Morgan said: "Clearly any efficiency savings in government are to be welcomed and they are very necessary.

"I would hope that, with staff turnover in the civil service, efficiency savings could be achieved without compulsory redundancies.

"However, we have yet to see that the Executive are serious about their efficiency agenda. They have yet to deliver the evidence.

"They have underlying plans but there is not enough detail to scrutinise so we do not know whether it will work or not."