Confidence will be lost in the criminal justice system if the Ministry of Justice is forced to cut its running costs by 15%, a trade union representing senior civil servants has warned ahead of the chancellor's spring statement tomorrow.
Rachel Reeves confirmed over the weekend that government departments will have to cut their running costs by 15% by the end of this parliament, which could see up to 10,000 civil service jobs go. However, the FDA told the Gazette that the headline savings announced by the chancellor will have significant ramifications for the Ministry of Justice, an 'unprotected' department.
Robert Eagleton, the FDA’s national officer for the MoJ, said: ‘The justice system faces major challenges. Prisons are bursting at the seams, there’s a backlog of over 70,000 court cases, and shoplifting is at record levels. The government has made tackling all three a political priority.
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‘How this can be achieved, while reducing the resources available, is anyone’s guess. There simply isn’t a tranche of easy efficiencies to be made. Any cuts will likely make it harder for the government to realise its mission of raising confidence in the criminal justice system.’
The Institute for Fiscal Studies revealed just how low a spending priority the ministry has been over the past quarter of a century in a report published last month. While justice spending has increased in recent years, the report said recent cash injections come on the back of, and in most cases do not offset, severe budget cuts in the 2010s. On average the MoJ fared worse than other government departments, with smaller budget increases during the first decade followed by larger cuts during the second.
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