Boris has emailed all civil servants…

“… exceptional circumstances, required government to rise to the occasion, tooling up with thousands more public servants. As a result, our civil service has grown by over 20 per cent since 2016. But as we move on to new challenges – including tackling the aftershocks of the pandemic and growing the economy to address the cost of living – we no longer require the State to have the same colossal presence in people’s lives. And rolling back the State in turn means we will also need fewer civil servants.

I profoundly believe that the public service you provide is a great and noble calling, but we must also remember that every penny of it is paid for by the taxpayer. That money is not the government’s money, it’s the people’s money – hard-earned pounds that we share a moral duty to spend judiciously. So we must ensure the cost of government is no greater than absolutely necessary to deliver for the people we serve. And as many families and businesses now look at how to reduce their costs in a period of higher global inflation, it is right that we do the same.

That is why I have asked my Ministerial team and Permanent Secretaries to develop proposals to return the civil service to the size it was in 2016.

I know that this will cause concern and uncertainty and I am sorry for that…”