Douglas Carswell's Blog

Has the civil service got smaller?

The civil service is, it is sometimes suggested, a lean machine. 

Stripped of waste.  Reduced in headcount.  It is nothing like the bloated, blundering machine we used to imply it to be.  When in opposition, you understand.

But is the civil service really any smaller? 

Yes, it is actually.  But in a Sir Humphrey kind of way. 

Looking at the pale green bars on the chart, the civil service has without question got small over the past two decades.  The number of civil servants has fallen from 590,000 in 1991 to 490,000 in 2011. 

But as the graph shows, over the past twenty years the number of people employed by central government - but not technically called civil servants - has increased rather sharply (see dark green bars). The number of people working for central government has increased from 2.33 million in 1991 to 2.76 million in 2011.

All rather yes, minister, you might say. 

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