Government plan to cut civil servants’ redundancy pay ‘add insult to injury’, says union

Ministers want ‘job cuts on the cheap’, says PCS union – as Rishi Sunak attacks ‘bloated’ state

Efficiency minister Jacob Rees-Mogg wants to shrink civil service by a fifth (PA)

The Conservative government has sparked a fresh row with plans to cut civil servants’ redundancy pay while aiming to axe 91,000 Whitehall jobs.

It comes as Tory leadership contender Rishi Sunak has committed to cutting civil service jobs as part of a “shake up” of the “bloated” state that would require senior civil servants to spend a year working outside of Whitehall.

The FDA union – which represents senior civil servants – described Sunak’s proposal as “ill-thought out rhetoric that doesn’t survive the first hour of scrutiny”.