SERVICES will be decimated under Rachel Reeves’s plans to cut 15 per cent of the Civil Service’s running costs, unions warned today.

She confirmed the cuts in a TV appearance this morning, but the Chancellor denied that Labour is heading towards austerity amid backbench fury ahead of her spring statement on Wednesday.

Her announcement follows £5 billion cuts to social security and a decision to slash the aid budget to fund increased military spending.

The cuts from “the back office functions, the administrative and bureaucracy functions” will save £2.2bn a year by 2029-30, she said.

The Cabinet Office will tell departments to cut their administrative budgets by 15 per cent in an act described as “pure vandalism” by left campaign group Momentum.

Civil Service union PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “After 15 years of underfunding, any cuts will have an impact on front-line services.

“You hear that every day from the public, that they wait too long on the phone when they try to make tax payments, jobseekers rushed through the system in just 10 minutes because there aren’t enough staff to see them, victims of crime waiting until 2027 to have their cases heard in the courts, as well as the backlog in the asylum system, which results in additional hotel costs.

“The impact of making cuts will not only disadvantage our members but the public we serve and the services they rely on.

“We’ve heard this before under [2007-2010 prime minister] Gordon Brown, when cuts were made to backroom staff and the consequences of that was chaos.

“If the last government taught us anything, it’s that you can’t cut your way to growth.

“We’re happy to engage with the government over many issues, but if they don’t talk to us about what is an arbitrary figure for cuts plucked out of the air in order to make it sound like an efficiency, they will meet with a lot of opposition — not just from unions but from the public who will be affected by cuts in the services they receive.”

Prospect union warned that there is no simple distinction between the back office and the front line.

General secretary Mike Clancy said: “The Chancellor has talked about undertaking a zero-based review of spending; this must include a realistic assessment of what the Civil Service doesn’t do in future as a result of these cuts.

“Public servants in back office and front-line roles will both be critical to delivering on the government’s missions, and the government must recognise that many civil servants are working in front-line roles.”

The TUC wants the government to follow through on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s commitment that “those with broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden” and to hold firm on fixing public services and investing in growth.  

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “A successful economy needs high-quality public services. That’s because businesses and working families depend on things like good health, high-quality education and affordable childcare. 

“But the Tories left our public services in disarray. After more than a decade of cuts, services across the public sector are short-staffed, cash-strapped and overwhelmed. Funding them properly is essential to bringing Britain out of decline.”

A spokeswoman for Momentum said:  “After 15 years of austerity, proposing swingeing cuts to the Civil Service is pure vandalism.

“These proposals will further gut the UK’s state capacity to deliver policies that will benefit the population and will affect the worst off, who depend most on public services. They must be opposed.”

The Chancellor has repeatedly insisted that she will not budge from her self-imposed “fiscal rules,” which rule out borrowing to fund day-to-day spending.

Ms Reeves was dealt a fresh blow on Friday as monthly figures showed that government borrowing had soared past forecasts in February to £10.7bn, £4.2 billion more than had been forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Looking ahead to the spring statement, Ms Reeves said that “the world has changed. We can all see that before our eyes and governments are not inactive in that — we’ll respond to the change and continue to meet our fiscal rules.”

The Chancellor insisted that the government’s actions were a far cry from those of their Conservative predecessors, pointing to money poured into capital spending and the NHS.

She argued that the size of government “increased massively” during the pandemic, with the benefits bill going through the roof and leaving people locked out of work.