Hundreds of civil service jobs to be lower and recruitment freeze at Ministry of Defence to fund pay rises

The Ministry of Defence plans to chop as much as 3,000 civil service jobs and impose a short lived recruitment freeze to assist fund a pay rise for the armed forces, Sky News understands.

James Heappey, the armed forces minister, revealed the short-term pause on recruiting civil servants to a bunch of journalists on Friday as he fleshed out particulars of the pay settlement.

Defence sources individually informed Sky News a couple of plan to cut back the scale of the MoD’s workforce finances by 5%, which features a goal to lose 2,000-3,000 posts.

Official statistics put the overall variety of civilian personnel in defence at simply over 60,000.

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The authorities this week revealed that the army would obtain a 5% core pay rise in addition to a £1,000 extra fee as a part of a wider announcement on public sector pay.

But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated that particular person departments must discover the cash from inside their budgets to cowl the rise.

Asked how the MoD deliberate to afford the pay rise, Mr Heappey stated: “Well, there’s a combination of things that the department has done to fund this.

“We have frozen civil service recruitment. We’ve made some changes to the way in which that we’re balancing our budgets this yr to fund it.

“And there’s some other things that of course, we’ve had to look at as being less important than making sure that our people are looked after, whilst they and their families are going through a cost of living crisis.”

“We’ve managed to make it work so that our people can be paid, and we can do everything that we need to do alongside it,” he stated.

It is known that the recruitment freeze would solely final for a number of weeks. It will then be lifted for “controlled recruitment afterwards”, a defence supply stated.

The minister stated not one of the cost-saving measures would affect on operations, help to Ukraine or plans to purchase new tools for the military, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

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The 5% pay settlement for defence – on the floor – sounded much less beneficiant that pay rises for different public sector employees, together with lecturers and the police.

However, Mr Heappey defined that by together with the extra £1,000 uplift it translated right into a wage enhance of 9.7% for probably the most junior troopers, sailors and aviators.

For extra senior ranks, it equated to a 5.5% enhance.

He additionally listed different advantages provided to service personnel together with subsidised meals and housing – although army personnel have complained bitterly in regards to the high quality of each.

“So actually that 9.7% core pay rise for our most junior troops alongside the things we’ve done to ease their cost of living pressures means they’re actually one of the better rewarded in these public pay settlements,” the armed forces minister stated.

He was requested a couple of report by Sky News of service personnel resorting to meals banks due to value of dwelling pressures.

Mr Heappey stated he was solely conscious of 1 particular person at an RAF base who was utilizing meals banks.

“My message to anybody else around the force – because we really don’t think that this is widespread – … if there are people out there, there is a chain of command with welfare officers within and they are there to help.”