The Prospect specialists’ union has called on the government to stop using the civil service “as a means to generate cheap headlines”.

The call followed chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s speech to Conservative party conference last month in which he threatened to get staffing back to pre-pandemic levels.

Prospect general secretary Mike Clancy told Hunt his announcement of an immediate cap on recruitment and a target to reduce staffing numbers by 66,000 — around 15% of the workforce — came as the service is “already at breaking point”.

And the PCS civil service union said that: “The message is clear. ‘Thanks for saving lives and keeping the economy afloat; but now the pandemic is over, we think there’s political capital in sacking tens of thousands of you’.”

The FDA senior civil service union general secretary Dave Penman said the announcement was “straight out of the Jacob Rees-Mogg playbook”.

He added: “Many public services are still on their knees post-Covid, we have had a cost-of-living crisis, a war on mainland Europe and record levels of illegal immigration.

“What we need is a government with a clear agenda on what it wants to deliver, and a realistic assessment of the resources it needs to achieve that.”