According to reports this morning in The Independent, Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, hopes the civil service can learn from the private sector, in how to reduce the number of jobs by thousands, without losing key functions.
Downing Street has not yet released a list of the business people who will be consulted.
The Independent reports that when giving evidence to the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, O’Donnell said: "I have asked key members of the private sector who have done this successfully to come and talk to the set of permanent secretaries to give them advice.
"My responsibility is to ensure this [the redundancy programme] is done in a way that makes the civil service stronger. So we have done this in a way that is perceived to have been fair, that we have ended up keeping the skills we need and done it in a value-for-money way for the taxpayer."
