MANY people will be listening anxiously to Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement. We’ve already seen the winter fuel payment cut for 10 million pensioners, the two-child benefit limit retained as child poverty rises, student tuition fees hiked and just last week £5 billion cuts to benefits for disabled people.
 
Over the weekend, there were briefings of huge cuts in the budgets of some government departments, and Rachel Reeves told the BBC that 10,000 Civil Service jobs might go by 2029.
 
After years of damaging austerity, any further cuts will have consequences, not just for public-sector workers, but for the people that rely on the services our members provide.
 
Again we’ve heard the tired old false divide between the “back office” and “front line” being wheeled out. PCS represents both back office and front-line workers. And as any front-line worker will tell you, they could not do their job effectively without dedicated back office staff — the divide is a false one.
 
Cuts to Civil Service departments would have a negative impact on the state’s ability to keep the country running, deliver services and meet the policy objectives the government has set for itself. You can’t cut your way to growth..
 
There are massive backlogs in numerous government departments. You hear it every day from the public: complaining when they wait for hours on the telephone to sort out their tax payments, jobseekers rushed through the system in just 10 minutes, victims of crime waiting until 2027 to have their cases heard in the courts.
 
And then there is the well-documented backlog in the asylum system, amassed when the last Tory government was wasting hundreds of millions of pounds pushing its absurd and obscene Rwanda scheme. More civil servants processing claims would help save on the massive additional hotel costs the government is funding, while vulnerable people wait months or even years in limbo.
 
And that’s just a few examples from the Civil Service: the backlogs in the NHS, the financial crisis in universities and the teacher recruitment shortages are the consequences of 15 years of underfunding in our public services.
 
Any cuts announced by the new Chancellor will exacerbate these problems. As the last government proved, you cannot cut your way to growth.
 
Our members are proud to work for the Civil Service. They take pride in helping run the country, easing people’s way through daily life. And our members deserve fair pay and to be treated with respect.
 
After years of pay freezes, pay caps and below-inflation settlements, there is an urgent need to fund better pay for public servants — which is why the TUC voted unanimously for a campaign for pay restoration at Congress last year.
 
Our members are watching their energy bills rise again, water bills soar by up to 47 per cent, council tax going up, rents rocket upwards, and rail and bus fares increase in much of the country. The Bank of the England has forecast that inflation will hit 3.7 per cent later this year — so pay settlements need to reflect the pressures on households.
 
The government’s cuts to disability benefits will also hit our members. Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are paid to disabled people to cope with their additional living costs. For many disabled people it is the receipt of PIP that enables them to work — taking that away risks excluding more disabled people from the workplace, the opposite of what the government says it wants.
 
Many of members working as civil servants or on outsourced contracts are having to claim universal credit to top up their low pay. Social security benefits will increase by just 1.7 per cent in April – meaning a real-terms cut for many of the poorest people, both the low paid and those out of work.
 
Our members want to work in more efficient workplaces. As a union we welcome modernisation and new training and development opportunities — but not when this is code for cuts.
 
If government want to discuss efficiency, let’s talk about ending the use of expensive contractors who pay low wages but cream off large profits. 

Let’s talk about cutting down on overpaid external consultants whose only function seems to be to give ministers less informed insight than what our members who actually do the jobs can provide.
 
Let’s talk too about their manifesto commitment to the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation, and let’s talk about ending the broken and inefficient pay system where over 200 Civil Service employers discuss the same pay pot in favour of genuine national collective bargaining.
 
We expect a Labour government to invest in our public services, not continue with failed austerity.
 
Fran Heathcote is PCS general secretary.