More than 10,000 civil servant jobs could be axed as ministers scramble to try to make savings demanded by Rachel Reeves.

Headcount has grown in Whitehall for eight years in a row, with huge numbers of officials taken on to deal with Brexit and Covid, and it currently stands at around 513,000.

The Tories planned to scrap 66,000 jobs and the Labour government is believed to have also come to the conclusion that the civil service is too big.

Job cuts are now inevitable, it was reported last night, after the Chancellor ordered departments to find 5 per cent ‘efficiency savings’ in the spending review launched this week.

A hiring freeze is being considered alongside voluntary redundancies while the Cabinet Office could be broken up, according to the Guardian.

One government official told the Financial Times: ‘There’s a general feeling that we can’t keep growing.

‘The number of civil servants in the past few years has gone up and up – departments are going to have to find a way of dealing with spending cuts.’

Headcount has grown in Whitehall for eight years in a row, with huge numbers of officials taken on to deal with Brexit and Covid, and it currently stands at around 513,000 (Stock image) 

It comes just days after Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden refused to be drawn on the prospect of job cuts, and Sir Keir Starmer declared that ‘too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’.

The Prime Minister was forced to insist that he was blaming ‘bureaucratic impediments’ rather than people after a backlash led by trade union bosses who called his comments ‘frankly insulting’.

Ministers are also on a collision course with unions over a proposed pay rise of 2.8 per cent for teachers, medics and civil servants.

Last night a Government spokesman said: ‘We are committed to making the civil service more efficient and effective, with bold measures to improve skills and harness new technologies.’