Decimation of Scots public sector as one in eight jobs face axe in some parts

Ministers have conceded that across the board they are looking at some 17,000 full-time jobs in Scotland’s public sector going under the cuts unveiled in last week’s spending review .

It is the first time the Scottish Government has revealed a figure on the anticipated reduction in the size of the headcount by 2026/27.

The number of people working in the country’s public sector has grown since the EU referendum in 2016 and the start of the pandemic in 2020. Staffing cutbacks are part of a package to close a potential £3.5 billion public spending gap.

“While this is not a specific target, to give a sense of potential scale this is in the order of 17,000 full-time equivalent posts over the period (around 4% of the current total),” a spokeswoman for Finance Secretary Kate Forbes told The Herald on Sunday.

But analysts and trade unions estimate the losses could be substantially higher in areas that are not protected from the cuts which are health and teaching.

Non-protected areas include the courts and fiscal service, and local government services such as social work and community justice, which are already under considerable pressure.

The Herald revealed yesterday that Scotland’s largest trade union Unison fears up to 40,000 jobs across the sector

– which currently employs 448,000 full-time workers – could be lost under the four-year spending review unveiled by Ms Forbes, who has also set aside £20 million for an independence referendum next year.

Unions are urging ministers to revise the jobs cull plans and have threatened mass strike action should the Government not back down.

‘Challenging’

ECONOMIST David Phillips, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, warned that outside the protected areas as many as one in eight public sector staff (up to 13%) could be lost. “It will be challenging reducing the headcount without impacting on service delivery and quality,” he told The Herald on Sunday.

“Cutting employment by 7% will be very, very challenging given that taken together, the NHS and teachers will make up close to half of that number.

“And cutting employment in the NHS will be tough given rising demands for health services, and there are pledges for more, not fewer, teachers. So if we assume there are no net changes in NHS and teacher employment, other devolved public employment might need to be cut by the equivalent of 13%.”

David Eiser, a senior fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute at Strathclyde University, estimated the total losses could be around 25,000.

“The Spending Review sets out an aspiration to ‘hold the total public sector pay bill (as opposed to pay levels) at around 2022/23 levels while returning the overall size of the public sector broadly to pre-Covid-19 levels’. This implies a reduction in devolved public sector full-time equivalents (FTEs) of about 25,000 relative to 2022/23 levels – equivalent to a reduction of about 5.5%.”

Mr Eiser said the Government aims to achieve the reductions in public sector employment through “natural wastage”, for instance not replacing staff who retire or move to alternative employment.

However, he added the plan did not mean that public sector employment will not grow in some priority areas – employment will continue to grow in areas such as in teaching, health and childcare. “Implicitly this does mean that some areas of public service may see proportionately larger declines in FTEs,” he said.

Trade unions have lined up to attack the Government’s plans with Unison yesterday warning of industrial action should the Government press ahead with the job cuts.

The FDA, which represents staff working for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), which is currently trying to process a pandemic backlog of 42,000 criminal cases across the courts and assess more than 5,000 Covid deaths cases for potential prosecution, was among those to blast the proposals.

Its national officer for Scotland, Allan Sampson, said: “There is no ‘fat’ to cut in COPFS. Staff are already working at maximum capacity, dealing with increased demand in terms of the complexity of cases and with the Covid court recovery programme.

“The size of the civil service is a matter for Government, but if staffing levels are to be reduced, there will be political decisions to be made about what will no longer be delivered to the public.”

‘Overwhelmed’

PUBLIC and Commercial Services Union general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “We need more civil service jobs, not less. The system is already overwhelmed and these cuts will be disastrous, particularly in the justice sector, given the extent of backlog in the courts in Scotland.

“The Scottish Government proceed with these cuts at their own risk. Our members are angry and fed up with being told their Tovernment can do nothing because of Westminster. They won’t take this lying down.”

GMB Scotland senior organiser Keir Greenaway said: “Local government workers and the vital services they deliver are firmly in the sights of Kate Forbes’s cuts agenda, and if left unchallenged the lowest paid will pay the highest price in the biggest cost-of-living crisis for 40 years.

“This is what years of failure at all levels of government looks like: a decade of ruinous austerity; the passing on of cuts to local budgets; and a meek acceptance of the consequences locally. It’s a far cry from the doorstep applause of virtue-signalling political leaders just two years ago.”

“It shows everyone there are no political superheroes and if you want wages that confront soaring inflation then you need to organise and fight for it. That’s exactly what GMB members are doing with their industrial action ballots that will run from next week.”

Scottish Conservative shadow finance and economy secretary Liz Smith said: “It was inevitable that jobs would be lost as a result of the £3.5bn black hole in public finances which has resulted from the SNP’s mismanagement of the economy.

“The SNP admits 17,000 jobs will go as the price of ministers’ ineptitude while unions and expert analysts think it will be worse than that. These people, many of whom will work in frontline services upon which we all rely– teaching assistants, social workers, emergency workers – deserve better than to be tossed aside due to the Scottish Government’s inability to balance the books.”

‘Key priorities’

A SCOTTISH Government spokesperson said: “The Resource Spending Review (RSR) sets out a number of actions to ensure sustainable services as Scotland recovers from Covid and resources shift towards key priorities such as tackling child poverty and addressing climate change.

“While it is essential the public sector is effectively equipped to meet current and future challenges, this requires an approach that balances investment with targeted workforce growth and the reform and redesign of services to deliver as much efficiency and value for money as possible. After years of growth in the public sector, due to Brexit and the pandemic, we need to reset, giving us space to realise our ambitions for better outcomes.

“The Scottish Government’s RSR aims broadly to return the total size of the devolved public sector workforce to around pre-Covid-19 levels by 2026/27, through effective vacancy and recruitment management, excluding local government given its separate responsibilities. While this is not a specific target, to give a sense of potential scale, this is in the order of 17,000 full-time equivalent posts over the period (around 4% of the current total). Our current commitment to no compulsory redundancies continues, and this will be reviewed as normal in future years’ public sector pay policies.”

Speaking at First Minister’s Questions in Holyrood on Wednesday, Nicola Sturgeon blamed decisions by Conservative ministers for the financial challenges facing Scotland.

“As a result of United Kingdom Government decisions, our budget this year has been cut by more than 5% in real terms, and growth in our budget over the next four years will be constrained to 2%, while inflation is close to 10%. Of course, thanks to the folly of Brexit, inflation is higher in the UK than it is in any other G7 country,” she said.

“I think that spending £20 million – 0.05%, or one half of one-tenth of 1%, of the entire Scottish Government budget – to give the people of this country the opportunity to choose a better future is, and will be, a really good investment.”