Readers respond to government proposals to cut thousands of civil service jobs

As a former civil servant, the Labour Together thinktank’s “project chainsaw” sounds depressingly familiar to me (Plan to cut thousands of civil service jobs in radical government shake-up, 11 March). Headcount reductions were very much in vogue in the Thatcher era, when she is said to have remarked that there were too many doctors working in the Department of Health.

Critics thought that her “efficiency cuts” would be better characterised as inefficiency cuts, placing more burden on overstretched staff.