At present, almost 44,000 civil servants are working in Scotland: 27,000 for UK Government departments and around 17,000 for the Scottish Government. It is not clear what will happen to these civil servants in the event of independence.
The Scottish Government’s White Paper states that it will ‘work with the Westminster Government to preserve continuity of employment for all staff, either by transfer to the Scottish Government or through continued employment by the Westminster Government’. An independent Scotland would also need to develop new functions not currently present in Scotland. Institute for Government research published today helps shed light on these issues and the scale of adjustment required for both the Scottish Government and Whitehall. As the Scottish people prepare to go to the polls on September 18th, much attention has been focused on how easily Scotland could ‘divorce’ from the rest of the UK, and how assets such as the pound and the national debt would be shared. One of the most important assets that will have to be divided is the Home Civil Service. The majority of UK Government departments have some of their staff based in Scotland, many of whom carry out functions on behalf of the rest of the UK. Conversely, some UK departments have few or no staff in Scotland but perform roles that an independent Scotland would have to take on, requiring new capacity to be built up north of the border. Location of departmental workforce (Headcount) (Departmental group – including agency staff) (Q1 2013)
- Topic
- Devolution Civil service
- Keywords
- Civil servants Scottish independence
- United Kingdom
- Scotland
- Administration
- Cameron-Clegg coalition government
- Devolved administration
- Scottish government
- Publisher
- Institute for Government