WIREDGOV

Today's (6 Sept) publication of the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts into, The Delays in Administering the 2005 Single Payment Scheme in England, led to PCS echoing the committee's finding that civil service job cuts were a major factor in the delays surrounding the scheme.

The union which represents staff working at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) supports the committee's finding that the agency axed too many experienced staff at the same time as trying to introduce the single payment scheme. During 2005-06 the agency cut 1,000 jobs as it sought to meet its Gershon target of 1,800 job losses, this led to the RPA spending £14.3 million on temporary agency staff to fill the gaps.

The union maintained that arbitrary targets for job cuts based on the assumption that new IT systems would always allow them to be achieved had led to service delivery failure in RPA at a higher cost to the taxpayer.

In the light of the report the union called on the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to halt plans to centralise work in animal health and to stop further job cuts.

The union also called on the government to learn the lessons of the RPA and to reassess its job cuts programme which has also led to backlogs and delays in Jobcentres and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

Commenting, Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said: "Vital knowledge and experience was lost as jobs were cut in a race to meet so called government efficiency targets. The result was a massive bill for temporary staff, misery for farmers and ever increasing workloads for the remaining staff who worked round the clock to tackle the backlogs.

"The experience of the RPA illustrates the disastrous consequences of relying on new vastly complex IT systems in the hope that jobs can be cut with no impact on service delivery. The government need to learn the lessons of this report and fundamentally reassess its crude job cuts agenda across the whole civil service."