Working From Home: Public Sector Productivity Debate
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
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Working From Home: Public Sector Productivity
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. The Government inherited a situation where public service productivity remained 6.4 % below pre-pandemic levels, and the ballooning size of the Civil Service—as he described it—under the previous Government may have contributed to that. I do not know the answer to that, but the Chancellor has been very clear that the Government will establish a programme of public sector reform to drive much greater productivity, improving the quality of public services and the value for money that we receive.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government have inherited a rather shrunken Whitehall estate from their Conservative predecessors, where hot-desking had become the norm in a number of departments. Are the Government confident that, if all civil servants turned up five days a week, there would be enough desks for them to sit at?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
No, there would not. One of the benefits of working from home is a much more efficient use of office space. It has a beneficial impact on capital in terms of releasing office space for more productive use, and that is currently what is under way.