UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told ministers to cut about 90,000 government jobs to try to save £3.5 billion ($4.3bn) a year to tackle the rising costs of living for Britons.
The cuts amount to a fifth of civil servants and would reduce staffing to the levels of 2016 before a Brexit and Covid-19-related surge in recruitment.
Unions representing government staff warned that the cuts could have an impact on processing passports and running an efficient borders service.
“We have got to cut the cost of government to reduce the cost of living,” Mr Johnson told the Daily Mail newspaper. He reportedly told his cabinet of the plans on Thursday.
Plans for the cuts emerged following clashes between the minister for efficiency, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and unions about civil servants returning to the office after the Covid-19 lockdown. Many still work from home.
Mr Rees-Mogg said there was already duplication in departments and claimed the introduction of new technology could bring further efficiency.
He described the £3.5bn figure as a “realistic but relatively unambitious figure” but declined to be drawn on how the savings would be spent.
“Overall the civil service needs fewer people and that’s something that will be done by ever department,” he told the BBC.
The current headcount stands at 475,000 and Mr Johnson has reportedly asked for the cuts to take place over two years, allied to a recruitment freeze.
Mr Johnson’s government has come under intense pressure to help families with rising prices, particularly for food and energy.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA civil service union, said the increase in jobs was necessary to “deal with the consequences of two unprecedented events — Brexit and the Covid pandemic”.
“To govern is to choose and ultimately this government can decide to cut the civil service back to 2016 levels, but it will also then have to choose what the reduced civil service will no longer have the capacity to do. Will they affect passports, borders or health?” he said.
Abdul Jabar Qahraman was meeting supporters in his campaign office in the southern Afghan province of Helmand when a bomb hidden under a sofa exploded on Wednesday.
The blast in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah killed the Afghan election candidate and at least another three people, Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak told reporters. Another three were wounded, while three suspects were detained, he said.
The Taliban – which controls much of Helmand and has vowed to disrupt the October 20 parliamentary elections – claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mr Qahraman was at least the 10th candidate killed so far during the campaign season, and the second from Lashkar Gah this month. Another candidate, Saleh Mohammad Asikzai, was among eight people killed in a suicide attack last week. Most of the slain candidates were murdered in targeted assassinations, including Avtar Singh Khalsa, the first Afghan Sikh to run for the lower house of the parliament.
The same week the Taliban warned candidates to withdraw from the elections. On Wednesday the group issued fresh warnings, calling on educational workers to stop schools from being used as polling centres.
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It's Monty Python's Crashing Rocket Circus
To the theme tune of the famous zany British comedy TV show, SpaceX has shown exactly what can go wrong when you try to land a rocket.
The two minute video posted on YouTube is a compilation of crashes and explosion as the company, created by billionaire Elon Musk, refined the technique of reusable space flight.
SpaceX is able to land its rockets on land once they have completed the first stage of their mission, and is able to resuse them multiple times - a first for space flight.
But as the video, How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster, demonstrates, it was a case if you fail, try and try again.
How does ToTok work?
The calling app is available to download on Google Play and Apple App Store
To successfully install ToTok, users are asked to enter their phone number and then create a nickname.
The app then gives users the option add their existing phone contacts, allowing them to immediately contact people also using the application by video or voice call or via message.
Users can also invite other contacts to download ToTok to allow them to make contact through the app.
