PCS has asked for an urgent meeting with defence secretary John Healey following his announcement this week of reforms to make the Ministry of Defence “leaner” and “more agile”.
Healey unveiled a series of reforms to strengthen accountability, and reduce duplication, process and procedure, in what he called the “biggest shake-up of UK defence for over 50 years”.
PCS said Healey’s speech at the Institute for Government on Tuesday, where he announced the reforms, “appeared to suggest that in his opinion several functions within the department were over-staffed and over-complicated”.
Fran Heathcote, PCS’s general secretary, said the union has “serious concerns that instead of building a sustainable, agile future for defence, the proposed changes are going to lead to significant job losses that will directly undermine the defence secretary’s vision of a flexible, self-learning organisation that delivers in our national interest”.
“While there’s no doubt the MoD needs to adapt to the fast-paced changes in threats to national security, it has been underfunded for years and the contribution of civil servants in delivering defence outputs has for too long been undervalued,” she said.
“With no notification or real engagement on the impact of these changes on staff, we can only assume the worst for those we represent and that the lessons of previous government failures have not been learned.”
Healey’s announcements included a new accountability structure where the perm sec is responsible for running a “leaner, more agile department of state with more policy muscle to lead arguments across Whitehall and with allies”, and civil servants being “elevated” into “policymakers with broad portfolios and powerful mandates”.
Heathcote has asked for a meeting with Healey “as a matter of urgency” to get assurances on “job security and real benefits” for officials.
An MoD spokesperson said: “We are undertaking the biggest UK defence reforms for more than 50 years, including building a defence civil service workforce which will be more skilled, agile and which better exploits technology.
“This means tackling bureaucracy and streamlining processes to increase productivity but there are no plans for redundancies.”
PCS and other civil service unions sought an urgent meeting in November with MoD permanent secretary David Williams after he said that he expects to see a headcount reduction in the region of 10% over the course of the current parliament. He noted that the headcount was 56,800 as of 1 October – implying that the MoD will have at least 5,000 fewer full-time equivalent staff by the end of the decade.
In January, veterans minister Al Carns said the MoD is expecting to reduce the number of staff to 55,430 full-time equivalent civilian staff by 1 April – a reduction of 1,370 compared to October.