The number of civil servants leaving their profession has risen by 9% over the last year, new figures reveal amid growing concern over morale following a string of high-profile resignations and sackings across Whitehall. The statistics have been released as Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, said officials are now “carrying the can for the failure of ministers” following Boris Johnson’s decision to remove the Department for Education’s permanent secretary, Jonathan Slater, on Wednesday. Slater’s sacking came the day after the resignation of Sally Collier, chief executive of Ofqual, the exam regulator at the centre of the A-level results scandal. Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, has survived. The changes come after Johnson’s top aide Dominic Cummings, an avowed Whitehall reformer, said “a hard rain” was going to fall on the civil service.
According to Cabinet Office statistics, 34,070 people left the civil service in 2019-20 up from 31,240 the previous year, while less than 30,000 left the service in 2017-2018. Dave Penman, head of the FDA union which represents the UK’s most senior public servants, said the new figures may be a reflection of waning morale since Johnson’s government took over last July. “At a time when the civil service is growing, it should start to raise concern that not only has the number of those leaving increased over the last three years, but that it grew by 9% last year. “There can of course be many reasons for this, but as we have repeatedly warned, if ministers – and indeed the prime minister – continue to undermine, brief against and discard committed public servants for political expediency, it will come as no surprise if increasingly, those that the country relies on to deliver vital public services choose to go elsewhere.” He added: “The toxic culture being created by this government, where civil servants are routinely trashed in the press by anonymous briefings from inside government and senior leaders discarded for political expediency, inevitably destroys trust and goodwill over time. The [new] statistics … may signal for the first time that, as a result, civil servants are increasingly choosing to work elsewhere.” The most common reason for leaving this year was resignation, accounting for nearly half (15,810) of all leavers, the statistics released on Wednesday said. The next most common reason was retirement, while 2,570 people were dismissed from the service. Slater’s exit follows several high-profile departures of senior civil servants from government. The cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, will step down in the coming weeks, as will the Foreign Office permanent secretary Sir Simon McDonald. The highest ranking civil servant in the ministry of justice, Sir Richard Heaton, announced last month that he would not seek reappointment at the end of his five-year term this summer.
Those moves come after the resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam from the Home Office in February. He is taking the home secretary, Priti Patel, to an employment tribunal under whistleblowing legislation, claiming he was victimised for trying to stop her from bullying staff. Patel denies the allegations. Lord Kerslake, who left government in 2014 and has since advised Labour, said it was a “disgrace” Slater had been sacked while Williamson has stayed in place. “I know Jonathan Slater well. He is an extraordinarily experienced and capable civil servant. And I believe there was nothing wrong with the quality of his advice, there’s everything wrong with the quality of the minister receiving it,” he told Civil Service World.
He said civil servants were feeling “undervalued and insecure” and that “they don’t think the relationship is working between civil servants and ministers”. “This is really not good stuff. I think we’re going to see a diminishing trust between the civil service and ministers which is crucial and an unwillingness to give the honest advice that’s needed,” he said. Johnson faced criticism this week for suggesting that a “mutant algorithm” was to blame for chaos over A-level and GCSE grade estimates in recent weeks. Speaking to year 11 pupils at Castle Rock high school in Leicestershire on Wednesday, the prime minister acknowledged that the process must have been “stressful” for those involved. Helen Hayes, the shadow cabinet minister, said there had been a pattern of civil servants time and again taking the fall for ministers. “We certainly need more transparency and an investigation would be the right way to go about establishing whether there were any issues in both of these departments [DfE and Ofqual],” she told Radio 4’s Today programme. A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The latest statistics show the civil service headcount is currently almost 11,000 higher than last year.”