Nobody can know for sure what will happen next, but few people have a better grip on the impact of Brexit on the civil service than Jill Rutter, a Brexit specialist at the independent Institute for Government think tank.
Prospect were delighted to host Jill at our Public Service Pay seminar in November and she had a simple message for Prospect members in the civil service: “It is an incredibly unstable time”.
After giving a comprehensive look at the huge challenge the government faces in getting its deal through parliament, and then putting in place the subsequent legislation needed to make the deal a legal reality, Jill turned to the role of the civil service itself in Brexit preparedness.
The sheer scale of the task she presented was daunting, with the government needing to put in place 55 new processes and, more worryingly, build and test 25 brand new IT systems before the UK is due to leave in March.
This not a matter of money, with the Treasury committing billions for Brexit work, but simply a matter of time and logistics, which is placing a huge strain on civil servants.
Jill pointed in particular to the ‘handbrake turn’ in staffing numbers at DEFRA where the austerity induced cuts have been replaced by a desperate drive to recruit the skilled staff they will need to handle Brexit.
An even starker example is the new Trade Remedies Authority, who are currently recruiting staff, but may not have any work to do until 2023 or even later. As Jill pointed out, this huge expansion of civil service numbers hardly fits with the small state agenda of many leading advocates of Brexit.
End of austerity?
But the impact of Brexit is often felt indirectly as well as directly. Jill argued that the forthcoming spending review in 2019 was a crucial test of whether the government were serious about the end of austerity.
On current plans, she said, while the NHS may have had a cash injection, more cuts to other departments were baked in. This has been combined by the loss of staff from core functions in order to undertake Brexit work, with only some roles being backfilled by departments.
An interesting side-effect is that the churn caused by Brexit has ‘unfrozen’ the Whitehall jobs market with some people being able to secure promotions. However, it has caused uncertainty in other areas especially due to the use of fixed-term contracts.
Finally, Jill highlighted perhaps the most unsavoury side-effect of Brexit; the widespread demonization of civil servants and attacks on the independence and impartiality of the service from government ministers.
Jill said we should brace ourselves for this to get even worse, first with the updated Brexit economic forecasts set to be published, and then again after Brexit when politicians may seek to blame civil servants for mishandling the negotiations.
The role of trade unions in defending our staff from these attacks is going to be more important from ever in the coming months and years.
Jill did at least offer one glimmer of reassurance: the public have never had a more favourable view of civil servants compared to politicians. Given the current chaos in Westminster, it is not hard to see why.