Expect redundancies, MoJ director tells staff

About £2bn will be sliced off the Ministry of Justice's £9bn budget over the next two years, some of which through redundancies, according to a letter leaked to the Public and Commercial Services Union.

In the letter, sent to senior staff earlier today and seen by Solicitors Journal, MoJ director general for finance Ann Beasley said the ministry was working towards achieving a 25 per cent cost reduction.

While unable to provide details of the cuts, Beasley warned of inevitable redundancies.

'Efficiencies alone will not be enough', she said. 'It will mean that we have to look at every opportunity to work differently and better. It will also mean there will have to be less of us'.

The letter says that more than £4bn of the department's current budget is spent on staff costs. 'We cannot streamline the organisation to work effectively and efficiently without considering staff numbers,' Beasley continued.

How the cuts will be achieved is still to be worked out but Beasley said 'many savings will have to be made quickly within the first 12-24 months'.

The 'Corporate Finance' and 'Strategy and Change' teams will be working through the rest of the summer to 'develop more detailed proposals to firm up our bid [for the Spending Review 2010]', she said.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka commented: 'This is the first indication of the true scale of the cuts being imposed upon departments by this coalition government, and it paints a devastating picture.

'It is clear that the civil service will simply not be able to cope. We will take every opportunity to remind the government and the public that there is an alternative and these politically-motivated cuts are entirely avoidable.'

The union fears that about 15,000 of the MoJ's 80,000 staff could be at risk of losing their jobs, potentially bringing courts to a standstill.

Like all government departments the MoJ has been asked to consider budget cuts of between 25 and 40 per cent.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson confirmed the Ministry of Justice has submitted proposals for savings to the Treasury.

'Like other departments we were asked to plan for savings of 25 per cent and 40 per cent as part of the Coalition Government's Deficit Reduction Plan,' he said.

'We are discussing options with the Treasury and will not provide a running commentary on the process. No decisions have been made. The outcome of the Spending Review will be announced on 20 October.'

The Supreme Court, which is part of the MoJ, was also invited to make cuts. Talking to the press last month, chief executive Jenny Rowe said the court had set out a range of scenarios. 'A 40 percent budget reduction would jeopardise essential case work,' she said.