Morale in the civil service is being hit by chronic low pay, and Whitehall is increasingly unable to keep staff because salaries have declined in real terms for a decade, the public accounts committee has warned.
The cross-party watchdog, chaired by the Labour MP Meg Hillier, said there were “chronic pay issues” in Whitehall. Civil service pay “at almost all levels has seen a long-term decline, with median pay decreasing in real terms for most staff since 2013”, it said.
The MPs said the effect of this decline in pay was a reduced level of staff satisfaction and damage to recruitment, especially when seeking to appoint specialists who could earn more in the private sector.
The committee found that unattractive pay was the typical reason when recruitment campaigns at the civil service resulted in no appointable candidates.
The MPs found that recruitment was also too slow, taking 99 days on average to hire new staff, and a further 171 days for candidates needing the highest level of security clearance.
The government has been told its plan for a smaller, more productive civil service is ambitious but vague on how success will be judged.
Hillier said: “Without the dedicated efforts and specialist skills of our nation’s civil servants, the machinery of any government grinds to a halt.
“It is welcome to see government pointing in an ambitious direction with a plan for a smaller, better-paid and more highly skilled civil service, but these outcomes will not materialise without more specific aims.
“For too long Whitehall has found itself in a losing recruitment battle with the private sector, without the right data, curiosity, or willingness to act to tackle the problem.”
She added: “The challenges this country faces are immense – an ageing population, climate change and a more volatile and hostile world, to name a few. Whitehall needs to plan to ensure it has the right skills and rewards to deliver.”
The report said the government’s aims to improve recruitment and slim down the civil service with a smaller, better paid workforce were “ambitious but … vague”.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “It’s important that civil service pay awards are both fair and affordable for the taxpayer.
“The 2023/24 pay award for non-senior grades represents the biggest pay increase in over 20 years, alongside a one-off payment of £1,500 – recognising the hard work and vital importance of civil servants – and public sector workers benefit from some of the most generous pension schemes available.
“This year’s pay remit guidance will be published in due course and we will continue dialogue with unions.”
Separately, a report by the National Audit Office, parliament’s spending watchdog, found there were “significant weaknesses” in the NHS’s plan for the future of its workforce.
The NAO said leaders had relied on “top end” assumptions about how many medical and nursing undergraduates there would be by 2031. NHS Providers, which represents health trusts in England, said the findings were “deeply concerning”.
The long-term workforce plan outlines how NHS England expects to recruit more than 300,000 extra nurses, doctors and other health workers over 15 years.
When it was published in June 2023, the plan estimated the 1.4 million NHS workforce of full-time equivalent staff would have to grow to between 2.2 million and 2.3 million by 2036-37.
However, the NAO said some of the assumptions used “may be optimistic”, including reliance on historical trends and the idea that the number of medical undergraduates will double – and nursing undergraduates will almost double – between 2022 and 2031. The report said this was “at the top end of the maximum expansion NHS England thought theoretically possible”.
It said NHS England failed to factor in the potential need for more higher education facilities, technologies and clinical academics.
The workforce plan also assumes overseas graduates will continue to “fill gaps” until the supply of domestic staff increases and that no international recruitment would take place from the mid-2030s. The NAO said: “This is not a reasonable modelling assumption.”
A health department spokesperson said the workforce plan was “the most ambitious transformation to the way we staff the health service in its history”.
“We remain on track to deliver the plan and protect the long-term future of the NHS, including by doubling the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 by 2031, and there are already record numbers of staff in the NHS.
“The modelling used by NHS England is founded on robust data, evidence and analysis, and will be refreshed every two years or in line with major fiscal events.”
