The British Airways Method of Cutting the Civil Service

When British Airways was being prepared for privatization, it had a staff of 59,000 personnel. Financial analysts said it could be made profitable if that could be reduced to 39,000. This was achieved without a single forced redundancy. The policy was to offer staff tens of thousands of pounds to take voluntary early retirement, and not to replace staff who retired as normal. The policy worked, and the privatized BA became profitable and, for a time, ‘The World’s Favourite Airline.’

A similar model could be used with the overstaffed UK Civil Service. As Elon Musk prepares to cut back the numbers of federal bureaucrats in the US, we might draw inspiration from his attitude and embark on a similar policy on this side of the Atlantic.

A micropolitical solution would involve avoiding outright sackings or forced redundancies, and instead make the terms of severance sufficiently attractive that large numbers will take them, or at least be mollified by the manner of their departure. This follows the British Airways model.

One possibility might be to put many of them on a two-year severance, giving them the choice of continuing to be paid each month for two years as they leave, or taking a lump sum at the outset instead. They could find other employment during those two years.

A start might be made with those who claim to be working from home. They would be paid for two years for not working at all. The next candidates might be those employed on diversity awareness training and decolonization of the service. Those being paid to do full-time trade union work could be included among the first batch. The point would be to start with those whose departure would make little of no observable difference to the service’s output.

But the personnel cuts must go deeper. There are whole ministries that contribute little or nothing to the economy or to societal wellbeing. We might question how far the government should be involved in culture, media and sport, and how many ministries there are that seem vastly overstaffed for any positive impact they make.

While this will cost money in the short term, it is money that is already being spent on keeping them in their positions. It would be, in effect, like a capital investment, paying money now in order to have lower operating costs and achieve greater efficiency in the future.

Previous talk of cutting the number of bureaucrats has come up against Public Choice Theory and Parkinson’s Law. This alternative approach could sidestep those roadblocks and give us a leaner and more efficient Civil Service.