Rachel Reeves has delivered her Spring Statement, which includes cutting Whitehall running costs by 15% by 2030, slashing welfare spending to save £4.8bn, and a £2.2bn increase to defence spending. The Chancellor also confirmed that the Office for Budget Responsibility has revised down the UK’s growth forecast for this year from 2% to 1%. In an unexpected boost for the economy, inflation fell to 2.8% in February. The White House says Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a naval ceasefire in the Black Sea following peace talks in Saudi Arabia, though Moscow has since said the agreement would only come into force if certain sanctions are lifted. Putin has been “defeated” in the Black Sea, says Tom Sharpe in The Daily Telegraph. “Of course he wants a ceasefire there.” Amazon Studios has appointed two veteran Hollywood executives to produce the next James Bond film: Amy Pascal, who launched Sony’s Spider-Man franchise, and David Heyman, the British producer behind the Harry Potter and Paddington films.

Hacking away at the Whitehall jungle

Keir Starmer is having his “chainsaw moment”, says Alice Thomson in The Times. He’s not the first prime minister to take on the public sector: Margaret Thatcher “wielded her handbag”; Tony Blair talked of the “scars on my back”. But the civil service has expanded at an astonishing rate. The overall head count has grown by a third, to 535,000, since 2016; last year the number of civil servants earning more than £100,000 rose by a whopping 42%. We were initially told this swelling bureaucracy was needed to help deal with Brexit, and then with Covid. But the numbers keep rising and productivity keeps declining. In 2023 the then chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced a cap on civil servant numbers “only to see the payroll increase”.

Most of Starmer’s ministers have been predictably resistant to cuts, with many pursuing the so-called “bleeding stump” strategy of issuing dark warnings about the much-loved services they’ll have to axe. “Don’t touch this department,” is the message, “or you’ll be sorry.” It’s an astonishing attitude at a time when, thanks to the government’s hikes in employer national insurance and the minimum wage, almost a third of private companies are laying off staff. Starmer should consult the Tory peer Francis Maude. As Cabinet Office minister during the coalition years, Maude helped save a whopping £52bn: he cut the civil service by 21%, centralised procurement, reduced duplication and streamlined digital services. People were “horrified” at first, he says, but by the end of the process morale had actually gone up: “The great civil servants, of which there are many, felt they were part of an effective, efficient machine again.” He’s absolutely right. Hacking away at the “Whitehall jungle” is back-breaking work – but it’s worth it.