Conservatives
The party pledges to make the civil service more diverse and to give staff freedom to turn more public services into mutuals. It also plans to move “significant numbers” of civil servants out of London and the south-east. Meeting immigration targets may involve expanding border control systems and staff. There’s no costing on how much civil service time or staffing will be involved in Brexit, including not just the negotiations themselves, but the process of determining how UK laws will need to change “as powers return to the UK”. The Institute for Government thinktank believes both Tories and Labour have underestimated the size of the task in trying to achieve Brexit plus domestic government policy.
Labour
Labour would scrap the 1% cap on public sector pay rises, which has been in place since 2012. It says public sector workers deserve a pay rise after years of falling wages and estimates that ending the cap , which would cost about £4bn. Its renationalisation programme would involve a sizeable chunk of work for the civil service, as yet uncosted, and the public sector pay bill would rise as staff transferred back from sectors such as rail, water, energy and prisons. Pledges on infrastructure investment, health, education and industrial strategy would also require civil service resources. On Brexit, ending free movement of people would need staff to create and monitor new border control systems.
Liberal Democrats
The pledge to legalise cannabis and integrate health and social care would require more civil service staff, although the party has no specific pledges on civil service staffing. Like Labour, the Liberal Democrats manifesto promises to scrap the 1% cap on annual public sector pay rises. On Brexit, the party wants a “final say” on negotiations via a referendum on whether to accept the deal or remain in the EU. It also wants to keep the UK in the single market and customs union, which implies maintaining current levels of border controls and staffing.
Greens
There is a promise to ensure that NHS staff are “fairly paid” but there are no pay pledges for other public sector staff. Despite having no specific pledges on civil service staffing, commitments to integrate health and social care, roll back privatisation of the NHS and bring energy, water, railways, buses, the Royal Mail and care work back into public ownership would have huge implications for the size of the public sector workforce. On Brexit, the Greens want to protect freedom of movement, remain within the single market and have a referendum on whatever deal is negotiated for Britain’s departure from the EU.
