CBI urges offshore civil service jobs to save costs

LONDON (Reuters) - The government should think about shifting some of the functions performed by the civil service offshore, says the Confederation of British Industry.

Scores of high-profile firms, including British Airways and HSBC, have shifted thousands of customer service and IT support jobs out of the UK to countries like India, where wage costs are a fraction of those in Britain.

And in a submission ahead of the government's Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), due later this year, the CBI said much of the work of public servants in IT, human resources and finance could also be carried out more cheaply abroad.

"There is no reason for back office functions to be replicated by many civil servants sitting in expensive office blocks or sitting in the UK at all," the CBI said in its report.

Nearly a fifth of the country's workforce, or just under 6 million people, are employed in the public sector, more than a million of whom work in public administration.

The CBI reckons most of the work they do could be streamlined and calculates that more than 500 million pounds could be saved over two years by combining or outsourcing it.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has already pledged to generate cash savings of 21 billion pounds a year by increasing efficiency within government departments and has announced a 5 percent cut in administration budgets in the CSR period.

The Treasury says the cash savings will be re-invested in frontline services such as health and education.

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