George Osborne asks teachers, diplomats and millions of other public sector workers to help him cut spending by £20bn

Mr Osborne is writing to staff to ask them to fill in an online survey about their money-saving ideas

The Daily Telegraph has reported that George Osborne is writing to public sector workers to ask them to fill in an online survey about their money-saving ideas (Rex)

Teachers, diplomats and millions of other public sector workers are to be asked by Chancellor George Osborne to come up with ways to help cut Government spending by £20bn.

Mr Osborne is writing to staff to ask them to fill in an online survey about their money-saving ideas, The Daily Telegraph reported.

In the letter, he says: “You know better than most where we can take the next steps. You know first-hand where things are working well on the frontline of public services, but also where the waste is and where we can provide better services for less money.

“You know where we can go further to reform our public services and where we can devolve more power so that local people have more control and local leaders are more accountable.”

A similar process in 2010 resulted in ideas that helped save money, such as stopping giving people a plastic card with their national insurance number and increasing electronic access to the Criminal Records Bureau.

Mr Osborne says in the letter that the ideas had “saved millions of pounds”.

The deadline for ideas is Friday, 4 September.

Matchmaker Swan Vesta famously asked for money-saving ideas from its workforce. It was able to save thousands of pounds after adopting a worker’s suggestion that sandpaper was only needed on one side of its matchboxes rather than the traditional two.