EVERYONE knows the Home Office is “f***ing useless”, from the snooty mandarins who run it to the Home Secretaries who are run by it.
Priti Patel, unforgivably both a woman and a Brexiteer, just happens to have said it to their faces.
This so-called Great Office of State is a legendary political graveyard, the swamp that sucked down Labour giants Charles Clarke and John Reid — who famously dubbed it “unfit for purpose”.
The careers of Tories Amber Rudd and Michael Howard were derailed by cock-ups which often looked more like sabotage. When Priti Patel took on the sensitive flowers who refuse to work weekends or a minute over their eight-hour shift, she found herself at war with the First Division Association, the last bolshie bastion of trade-union power.
These are the real “bullies” in the Government machine. Union leaders have since exploded over hints of a pay freeze for their well-paid, feather-bedded members, saving a desperately needed £23BILLION.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is struggling with colossal bills for Covid, Brexit, rocketing debt and catastrophic failures by the NHS, Sage and Public Health England, among others.
“We will be borrowing quite frankly enormous sums,” said Rishi yesterday . . . much of it to shore up the public sector, he might have added. Sunak is up against 5.5million unsackable and unaccountable public sector workers who are paid way above the commercial average, plus controversial gold-plated pensions few can afford in the 21st century.
Now, with national debt soaring above £2TRILLION, borrowing out of control and up to six million jobless next year, the issue is back on the agenda with a bang.
Why do we need 5.5million in the public sector in the first place? Sun readers, especially the self-employed, are paying a huge price for Covid.
Even with Government help, they have seen earnings slashed, pensions shot, and they face the spectre of the dole once furlough ends. Many have not worked for months, borrowing more than they can afford to keep afloat. As in the 2008 financial crisis, they are the “poor bloody infantry” on the front line of recession.
By stark contrast, workers on the public payroll are unscathed — and in some cases better off. They have been paid in full, with pensions and holidays protected. Nobody has been sacked.
Of course, many are working extremely hard, especially on the NHS front line. They have received a pay boost in return, with another in the pipeline, along with teachers and police.
Others are coasting, “working from home” or, in many cases, swinging the lead. Long before Covid, these paper-carriers were known as the “hidden unemployed”. They are in no rush to see lockdown lifted.
Times have changed since civil servants accepted lower wages in return for job security and gold-plated pensions, today costing taxpayers an eye-watering £40BILLION a year. These days they earn more in almost every comparable role than anyone else in the country.
Even before the pandemic struck, civil service pay had risen by average 4.8 per cent in the year to May — on top of a public sector “earnings premium” of around seven per cent. Wages outside actually FELL by 2.6 per cent.
Meanwhile, the average retired civil servant can expect a pension of £10,000 a year, funded by taxpayers. Peanuts, cry the unions. But for anyone else, an annuity like that would require a pension pot of £350,000. How many white van men and women can save that in a lifetime?
John O’Connell, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, says: “Workers in the private sector are paying for their public-sector counterparts to enjoy a retirement they can only dream of.
“What’s more, pension promises to public sector workers are unfunded and will continue to be paid out of general taxation.”
The increasing gulf between private and public sectors is a scandal ignored by successive governments. MPs could set an example by cancelling their bumper, inflation-busting £3,000 pay rise.
Tragically, Dominic Cummings was sidetracked by Covid before doing the job he was hired for and taking his axe to the bloated civil service “Blob”.
Who will have the guts, determination and authority to do that job now?
