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'Half of civil servants deserve the sack', ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones tells MPs

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:36 PM on 15th January 2009

A former senior Government minister has told a committee of MPs that the civil service could be halved and still provide value of money to taxpayers. Ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones said he was 'amazed' how many civil servants 'deserved the sack'.

'Frankly the job could be done with half as many, it could be more productive, more efficient, it could deliver a lot more value for money for the taxpayer,' Lord Jones told the public administration committee.  'I was amazed, quite frankly, at how many people deserved the sack and yet that was the one threat that they never ever worked under, because it doesn't exist.'

However he insisted having specialists within the civil service was an excellent idea, saying that many employees were 'honest, stuffed full of decent people who work hard'.

In another attack, the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, said when he was a junior minister it was 'one of the most dehumanising and depersonalising experiences' anyone could have, it was reported by the BBC. The colourful Lord Jones spent a year as a minister as part of Gordon Brown's original 'government of all the talents' before he stepped down during October's reshuffle.

It's not the first time Lord Jones has challenged the Government. Earlier this month he branded Mr Brown's flagship VAT cut ' pointless', 'fatuous' and doomed to failure from the start. He said it had always been obvious that the VAT cut would not boost the economy.