Ex-minister Jake Berry mocks striking civil servants over home-working

‘I haven’t seen this many civil servants since the pandemic’: Ex-minister Jake Berry mocks mandarins for picketing outside government departments despite resisting efforts to get them to return to their offices to work

  • Taunting came as around 100,000 PCS members went on strike across the UK
  • Pickets outside departments in Westminster, including Treasury, Transport

A former Tory minister mocked striking civil servants today for turning up to picket government offices many are resisting returning to work in full-time.

Jake Berry, a former Conservative Party chairman joked that he hadn’t seen so many mandarins in Whitehall ‘since the start of the pandemic’.

His taunting came as around 100,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union went on strike, including Border Agency staff at ports and airports.

There were large pickets outside departments in Westminster, including the Treasury and the Departments for Transport and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Mr Berry, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire, who was minister for the northern powerhouse under Boris Johnson, tweeted:  ‘I haven’t seen this many civil servants in Westminster since the start of the pandemic. 

‘Just a shame they’ve only come in to stand on a picket line. Back to  #workingfromhome tomorrow.’

Ministers have been making repeated attempts to increase the presence of civil servants at their desks since the last lockdown ended.  

Jake Berry, a former Conservative Party chairman joked that he hadn’t seen so many mandarins in Whitehall ‘since the start of the pandemic’.

His taunting came as around 100,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union went on strike, including Border Agency staff at ports and airports. Pictured in his tweet is a picket outside the Department for Business, Energy and  Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Members of the Public and Commercial Service (PCS) picket outside the Department for Transport

Civil servants, train and bus drivers and university staff also stopped work on the biggest single day of strikes in a decade.

Picket lines were mounted outside railway stations, schools, government departments and universities across the country, with unions saying they are receiving strong support from the public.

The head of the PCS today said civil servants are using food banks and will stage more walkouts unless the Government’s 2 per cent offer to them is improved.

Speaking on a picket line outside HM Treasury on Wednesday morning, Mark Serwotka said: ‘PCS members are currently using food banks, they are claiming in-work benefits, tens of thousands of them are on the national minimum wage. That’s a scandal.

‘We are balloting a further 35,000 members including big departments like HMRC. All the indications in those ballots is they are going twice as well as they were last time.

Civil servants on a Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) picket line outside HM Treasury in London today

 

More PCS members were picketing outside the Home Office and the Department for Transport

‘We have just announced further long-term strikes at the borders and the British Museum, and more of those will follow. If the Government wants to avert that disruption, put money on the table and let’s start talking.

‘For us they have said they are not prepared to consider a one-off payment because they consider 2022 pay as closed.

‘Of course the crisis is now, people’s energy bills are landing now, people are skipping meals already.’

There were more than 27,000 desks across the main Government buildings before Covid struck.

But there are now fewer than 22,000, a fall of more than 5,000 in less than three years, an audit by The Daily Mail discovered last month.

The reductions came as departments closed down offices to save money or to limit contact during the pandemic.

Yet many of the Whitehall ministries’ headquarters are still less than two-thirds full even as their size has shrunk and the workforce has grown, and long after social-distancing restrictions were lifted.

It means thousands of civil servants are allowed to continue working from home several days a week, despite public complaints about backlogs and poor service, with ‘hybrid’ policies introduced during lockdown now made permanent.

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