Trimming the runaway state

A slimmer government is not a fringe libertarian concern but a national priority

This article was first published in The Critic.

Danny Kruger’s announcement that a Reform government would save £100m by closing expensive government buildings and moving civil servants back to Whitehall ruffled feathers in SW1. Yet few would now seriously dispute that Britain needs a leaner, more disciplined state. For too long, Britain has tolerated a public sector whose administrative sprawl erodes both efficiency and accountability. The ambition to reverse that trend is real. The question is how hard the task will be. 

On the face of it, £100m is a minimal saving. The Government borrows far more daily, and it is roughly what the Treasury spends every hour. But this merely proves Kruger’s broader point. If, after a decade of talk about “bonfires of quangos” and “efficiency savings,” the plausible saving from another round of cuts is just £100m, it shows how little room for manoeuvre remains within the status quo. The modern British state is a vast and intricate organism, kept busy by hundreds of self-imposed statutory obligations and regulatory dependencies. Trimming it is not like pruning a hedge. It is more akin to attempting liposuction on a body whose vital organs have grown entangled with its fat.

Since 2016, the number of civil servants has risen by around 130,000. There are two points worth mentioning regarding the expansion. First: post-Brexit expansion was (at least initially) arguably justified by the repatriation of statutory responsibility for policy from Brussels to London (and to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast). Much of that work required genuine capacity-building within Whitehall and the devolved administrations.

Covid then accelerated the trend however: emergency programmes spawned permanent bureaucracies. The pandemic was followed by the machinery of Net Zero implementation, equality audits, diversity training and layers of compliance functions that seem to multiply without limit. The service has become focussed not on delivery but on documenting its own virtue.

Much of this expansion has been concentrated in a handful of departments. The Home Office and Ministry of Justice account for a large share of total growth, reflecting Brexit-related border preparations and pandemic-related welfare programmes. By contrast, other departments such as the Ministry of Defence and Department for Education have seen far more modest increases. Any serious attempt to slim the state should therefore begin where growth has been most policy-driven rather than core to public service delivery. 

The second point worth noting is that a significant part of Civil Service growth has been regulatory rather than operational. Compliance with statutory frameworks such as the Equality Act 2010, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) and Net Zero have led to the creation of new units for monitoring, data collection, and internal auditing.

It is also worth distinguishing the Civil Service itself from the wider ecosystem of “public servants” who operate in quasi-autonomous bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Ofcom and the Environment Agency. These organisations, though formally outside the Civil Service headcount, contribute to the same culture of proceduralism and expansion.

A 2013 government review of the PSED found that many public bodies reported increased administrative burdens and in some cases the diversion of resources from front-line services. Repealing or simplifying even part of these obligations could plausibly remove thousands of posts whose purpose is to evidence adherence to process rather than to deliver outcomes.

The danger lies not in the desire to reverse all of this, but in the illusion that it can be done quickly or cheaply. Both Reform and the Conservatives want to see civil service numbers return to at least pre-Brexit levels. This amounts to about 25-30 per cent of current numbers.

However, the experience of the United States offers a cautionary tale. When Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, one of his first acts was to authorise mass layoffs — forced and voluntary — across the federal bureaucracy. Exact numbers are elusive, but it amounted to roughly 300,000 positions, almost all attributed to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The New York Times estimates the figure at around 285,000,12 per cent of America’s 2.4 million civilian federal employees. 

The more striking figure was the number who left voluntarily. Roughly 200,000 federal workers resigned or retired early in anticipation, avoiding any redundancy packages. That attrition spared Washington huge severance costs and allowed the administration to present large headline reductions without mass compulsory dismissals. In practice, it was less a cull than an exodus. 

Reform will need a similar rate of voluntary departure if it is to achieve substantial cuts.

But pushing those who refuse to jump is much harder here than in the US. Britain’s legal framework makes large-scale compulsory redundancies extraordinarily difficult. Under the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, departments must engage in lengthy consultation before dismissals and pay compensation in accordance with the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS), which can amount to as much as 21 months’ salary for long-serving staff. Any attempt to bypass those obligations would invite judicial review and union resistance.

There is, however, some legal ambiguity around whether Crown servants enjoy the same statutory protection as ordinary employees. In McClaren v Home Office (1999), the courts affirmed that civil servants hold office “at the pleasure of the Crown” and can technically be dismissed without cause — though in practice, compensation remains payable under the CSCS. Any attempt by a government to rely on this doctrine to expedite redundancies would almost certainly trigger legal challenge and political backlash.

None of this is to say the effort should be abandoned. Bureaucratic bloat drains resources from the front line and saps the morale of the nation. Reform is right to argue that government should be smaller, nimbler and more accountable. But real efficiency will come from redesign, not mere subtraction.

The first step should be a clear outline of what the Civil Service actually does. Successive governments have promised audits of departmental functions, with little follow through. Many of the tasks that consume Civil Service time are self-imposed and do not fulfil public needs. A reforming administration could begin by consolidating overlaps and simplifying the reporting chains that have accreted over decades.

Second, digitisation must be more than a buzzword. Britain’s record on digital advancement is patchy: there have been many programmes with glossy branding but little real transformation. Departments such as HMRC and the DWP have poured billions into IT “modernisation” projects that often replace one aging platform with another rather than redesigning workflows. Estonia and Denmark have shown that digital transformation, once achieved, allows small bureaucracies to deliver leading public services. Britain’s problem is not lack of technology but lack of follow-through: “digitisation” too often means hiring project managers to supervise consultants rather than replacing obsolete systems.

Third, ministers should distinguish between cutting bureaucrats and tackling bureaucracy. The deeper reform Britain needs is philosophical: a return to the idea that the state exists to enable, not manage, society. Every form, inspection and compliance procedure should be justified by necessity. Every agency should have a sunset clause. Reducing the Civil Service, in this sense, is about reasserting the proper limits of government.

Reform’s £100m promise may seem merely symbolic. But symbolism matters. For too long, Westminster has spoken of efficiency while indulging the comforting fiction that bureaucracy is self-limiting. In reality, bureaucracies grow because no one has the incentive to stop them. To challenge that requires not slogans but courage and patience. 

There will be legal challenges, strikes and headlines about “mass sackings.” Some services will likely slow down before they speed up. But the alternative — endless expansion of government payrolls, funded by taxes that smother enterprise — is worse. A slimmer state is not a fringe libertarian concern but a national priority if Britain is to restore competitiveness and civic pride.