UNITED KINGDOM
UK Public Servants have reacted with fury over a plan by Prime Ministerial contender Jeremy Hunt (pictured) to cancel all holidays unless no-deal Brexit preparations are up to scratch.
“All Government Departments will be expected to act on the basis that we are leaving without a deal on 31 October,” Mr Hunt told an audience at the Policy Exchange think tank.
“All August leave will be cancelled unless I have a signed letter from the relevant Permanent Secretary saying that all preparations in his or her Department are on time and on track.”
General Secretary of the FDA union, Dave Penman, whose members include workers in the top ranks of the Public Service, said the macho rhetoric might go down well with the Conservative electorate, but it was so divorced from reality as to undermine Mr Hunt’s credibility as a potential Prime Minister.
“The idea that you’d cancel the annual leave of 400,000 Civil Servants in August — 95 per cent of whom are not involved in Brexit preparations — having given Permanent Secretaries a couple of weeks’ notice of this artificial deadline, is simply ludicrous,” Mr Penman said.
“Once again, we’re seeing the blame for Brexit and all its consequences shifted on to the Civil Service.”
The Prospect union, which represents managers and specialists in the Public Service, branded the move “hypocrisy” at a time when MPs themselves were set to head off for their summer recess.
Deputy General Secretary of Prospect, Garry Graham said no peacetime Government had ever been as reliant on its Public Service as this one.
“This call for Civil Service leave to be cancelled in August smacks of panic and hypocrisy,” Mr Graham said.
“Politicians would be better placed putting their own house in order and finding a political solution to what is a political issue.”
The PCS union, whose members include tens of thousands of frontline PS staff, described the plan as “utterly ludicrous”.
London, 2 July 2019
