Cabinet Office survived coalition cutbacks, ONS finds

The Cabinet Office quietly increased its staff numbers while almost all other government departments shrank over the course of the last parliament, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

The latest figures on public employment, published by the ONS on 17 June, show that the the number of civil servants rose by 740, to 406,140 full-time-equivalent staff, over the last quarter. But this small rise can be put in the context of a 15 per cent reduction in the number of government staff since the third quarter of 2010, in line with commitments to saving money.

However, a breakdown of staff numbers over the course of the last parliament by the Institute for Government think tank reveals that the job losses did not affect all departments to an equal extent.