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WHITEHALL BLOB VOWS: WE’LL WORK FROM HOME FOR EVER

Boris declares war on civil servants refusing to head back to office as...

By Anna Mikhailova and Glen Owen

BORIS JOHNSON was last night on a war footing with the Whitehall ‘blob’ over the reluctance of civil servants to return to their desks.

The Prime Minister is pushing for an end to the working-from-home culture – putting him on a collision course with senior officials, who are planning to keep a large number of their staff working from home permanently, The Mail on Sunday has learned. Government sources have told this newspaper that the plan is for a 60:40 split between home and office working – with most based at home.

One insider said: ‘There are a number of civil servants who have bought nice houses in the country during lockdown and are betting that they will never, ever be forced into the office.’ But Mr Johnson’s

Cabinet Office ‘enforcer’ Steve Barclay has written to Permanent Secretaries – the most senior officials in each department – telling them that the end of ‘Plan B’ Covid regulations now means ‘every desk should be filled’.

He also ordered them to provide figures on the number of staff who have returned to Whitehall by the end of next

week, so he can report back to the Prime Minister.

Mr Barclay said: ‘It is important that Government departments lead the way in getting people back to the office, helping our economy get back up to full speed. The swift return of public servants to their workplaces will begin with immediate effect. While the Civil Service has met the challenges of the past two years admirably, we must all now learn to live with Covid.’

From early next month, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will make it mandatory for all staff to be in the office – but only three days a week.

Another major Whitehall department is making only two days a week compulsory, while a third will allow staff to work a week and a half in the office followed by two weeks from home. It is understood some departments are justifying their decision to allow large numbers to work from home because they do not have desk space to fit everyone at the same time.

The pressure to get civil servants back to the office comes as Mr Johnson hopes to ride out moves by his own MPs to remove him from office over the ‘Partygate’ row, and draw voters’ attention to the UK’s success in dealing with the Omicron surge in Covid cases.

MPs and business leaders last night hit out at Whitehall’s reluctance to get back to their desks while the rest of the country has to return to commuting.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader, said: ‘The signal this sends to the rest of the country is “do as we say, not as we do”. The Civil Service is in a mess because first they had “flexitime”, then they had lockdown, and now they all think they can work from home and ride their Peloton exercise bikes. I don’t mind flexitime to a degree, but this is flexi-holiday.

‘They say they do not have enough desks? Well put a bloody desk in! Get a damn grip. You need to be in the office. There’s lots to do, there’s lots of urgency, get on with it. There is no leadership in the Civil Service.

‘There used to be big beasts. Now they seem so intent on meeting [diversity] targets that they seem to promote people on the basis of what they look like, what gender they are.

‘There are some very good people in the Civil Service and they are frustrated because they never get picked, because they don’t tick all the boxes. It has become a cosy club for nonentities.’

Luke Johnson, the entrepreneur and former Pizza Express chairman, said Whitehall’s culture of working from home had been ‘a catastrophe’.

He said: ‘How do you motivate, encourage and train people if everyone is remote? Zoom is no substitute. It’s delusional to think it is as good.

‘If it’s other people’s money, as it always is in the public sector, do they care enough?’

Cabinet Ministers are set to lock horns with their senior officials over the reluctance to return to office working. It is understood that Home Secretary Priti Patel would prefer a 90:10 office-tohome ratio.

As well as Cabinet Office Minister Mr Barclay, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace

‘Get a damn grip – you need to be in the office’

are also understood to be ‘in campaigning mode’ to end the working from home (WFH) culture.

Some officials have bought houses in Cornwall and the Cotswolds ‘gambling’ they won’t ever have to return to the office, an insider said.

In October, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Cabinet Ministers had argued that civil servants

working from home and unable to read vital security documents had left Britons at the mercy of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A Government source said: ‘It’s important civil servants get back to the office. There is business of government that needs to be done – and that needs to be done from the office.

‘The productivity rates of working-from-home civil servants are appalling.’

Alex Chisholm, the Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, wrote to trade unions on Friday to tell them that ‘Ministers are expecting the return to workplaces in the Civil Service to be operationalised over the next week’.

He also called for ‘collaboration’ to ‘ensure colleagues across the Civil Service are supported and remain safe as we move forward’.

SOME Tory MPs need to have their heads examined. Who and what do they think they are helping by feeding the BBC’s biased anti-Boris coverage of politics?

Every whisper of rebellion, every rumoured letter calling for the Premier to go, every fatuous claim about bullying by the whips, only damages the Government which was given such a thumping majority by the electorate in 2019, and which has handled the Covid crisis better than most in the world.

Just as we begin to emerge at last into a restoration of freedoms and a bonfire of petty restrictions, a gaggle of silly, vain, minor politicians chooses to give aid and comfort to one of the most useless Oppositions in modern history. The public, not the whips, will be the ones who punish them for this.

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