Pat McFadden has promised to give an update on civil service pay by the beginning of next week.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the senior minister in the Cabinet Office said the government “will have more to say” on civil service pay before the summer recess, which begins on Tuesday, 30 July.
The pay remit process has been delayed this year due to the general election, which also saw Labour come into power. Last week, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, hinted that public servants could be in for an above-inflation pay rise, acknowledging that there is a “cost to not settling” pay cases at a level people can live with.
McFadden also said that he made clear in a meeting with civil service unions on Wednesday that “the days of government ministers waging culture wars on civil servants are over”.
“Instead we want a civil service that’s motivated, valued and helps the government deliver its priorities,” he said.
Asked whether the government is considering reintroducing collective pay bargaining for the civil service by several MPs, including exiled former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, McFadden said: “We do value the civil service and of course, we want all public services to be properly and fairly rewarded. And like any public expenditure, spend on pay has to be balanced against other priorities and fair to taxpayers as a whole.
“Departments do have flexibility on pay. They can direct pay towards the needs of their own workforces. We will have more to say, as I said, about civil service pay following the recess.”
McFadden also said that he hopes for “a fruitful dialogue” with civil service unions about pay and other issues.
Civil service unions have long-called for a return to national pay bargaining for the delegated grades in the civil service. Under the current pay remit system, separate negotiations take place across more than 200 pay bargaining units.
In the new government’s first session of Cabinet Office questions in the House of Commons, ministers answered questions on a range of subjects, including outsourced government services, office working and whistleblowing.
Asked whether the new government plans to increase the number of facilities management services that are insourced within departments and agencies, Ellie Reeves said the administration will “call time on the previous government’s ideological approach to outsourcing and ensure decisions are based upon robust assessments of value for money, service quality, social value, and crucially, delivering the best outcomes”.
Labour’s manifesto committed to bringing about the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation”. Civil service union PCS has asked the government to kick this off by bringing an ISS contract for security guards and cleaners who work at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in-house.
Cabinet Office ministers swerved a question on working-from-home from Richard Holden, the former chair of the Conservative Party.
Holden, referencing the Sunak government’s introduction of the 60% in-office rule in November, asked what the government would do to ensure that “all of our civil service workforce is there on the frontline, working closely together to ensure that national resilience is embedded across our pubic sector”.
Cabinet Office minister Abena Oppong-Asare responded: “It's important that as a government, we work strongly together across the UK, and as the prime minister has mentioned already within day one he’ll be working with government counterparts, and has announced a council of nations and regions. And that will include working across all civil servant departments to make sure that we learn from the lessons of the past.”
In Labour’s most recent comment on WFH, made during the election period, now ex-MP Jonathan Ashworth said that it was “sensible that civil servants are in the office and at their desks” and that he was confident that the “impartial civil service” would want to “turn their mind to that agenda as well”.
In April, Rachel Reeves, said she wanted to see “more people in the office, more of the time”, but added that decisions should be “for individual managers and their members of staff”.
On whistleblowing, ministers were asked by Liberal Democrats MP Wera Hobhouse if they would consider creating a new office of whistleblowers to create new legal rights and promote greater public awareness of the rights of whistleblowers.
In response, Georgia Gould said whistleblowing is “absolutely critical” and “incredibly high” on the government’s agenda.
The new Cabinet Office ministers also received questions from their predecessors from the most recent Conservative government, John Glen and Oliver Dowden.
Dowden, now shadowing McFadden, used the opportunity to praise civil servants while asking a question on biological security strategy. He said: “I know he'll be supported by a brilliant team of civil servants who are truly dedicated to public service.”
Responding, McFadden said: “The civil service and the team in the Cabinet Office have supported me and my colleagues in the best possible way over the past few weeks”.