Boris Johnson tells Cabinet to shrink the civil service to help ease cost of living crisis

BORIS Johnson told his Cabinet to shrink the Whitehall blob to help cut spending and ease the cost of living crisis.

The PM said saving cash, in part by slashing the bloated civil service, would axe expenditure.

During a Cabinet away day in Stoke-on-Trent, he said taking action to support people must be at the “forefront of all work”.

The PM said: “I wake up every day thinking about what we can do to help people through this period, just as we helped people through Covid.”

Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has already outlined plans to cut 65,000 jobs in the civil service by 2025.

The civil service has been dubbed the blob by the PM and his former aide Dominic Cummings.

Read more on the civil service

ROD LIDDLE

If the civil service had handled Covid we wouldn’t have had the jab

THE SUN SAYS

Boris needs to get Brits back in the office - starting with the civil service

Speaking to The Times earlier this year, he said: “What we should be saying to ourselves every day is are we making the lives of the British people better?

“And do we make them better by employing large numbers of civil servants?

“The answer is probably no.”