Civil servants have to get back to the office, says former senior Johnson aide
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One of Boris Johnson’s former top aides has called for civil servants to get back to the office among warnings that “Whitehall is dead”.
Lord Eddie Lister said that government departments in Whitehall had “corridors of empty rooms” and that young civil servants would not be able to learn on the job like this.
Boris Johnson is set to lift the work from home advice on 19 July, however Number 10 said they would take a hands-off approach and leave employers to manage this.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak was more bullish on Friday, calling for office workers to return in droves in a bid to stimulate economic activity in central business districts.
Lister, who left Number 10 earlier this year, told the Sunday Telegraph that civil servants should also be urged to get back into the office as the current situation is “not sustainable”.
He said that there had been very little work done by government departments to get workers back into the office.
“When I was in Downing Street, I often had to go and see ministers and I’d walk through corridors of empty rooms”, he said.
“That was the right thing to do at that time, but we’re past that time. People have got to get back.
“There is a problem in government that people are crammed in and obviously they’ve got to be spread out more. That can be done by working from home some of the time.”
Sunak said on Friday that working remotely and mostly through Zoom had been “not great” for those at the early stages of their careers.
“I think for young people, especially, that ability to be in your office, be in your workplace and learn from others more directly, is something that’s really important and I look forward to us slowly getting back to that,” he said.