Slashing 91,000 civil service jobs is "perfectly reasonable" after Brexit and the pandemic, Jacob Rees-Mogg has insisted.

       The minister for Brexit opportunities and efficiency noted the civil service had "taken on extra people for specific tasks... but now we're trying to get back to normal".

       In an interview with Sky News, Mr Rees-Mogg revealed the cuts would come from arms-length bodies, including quangos, and cracking down on "duplication".

       "There are many savings that come from that. Therefore you have to make sure people are being used as efficiently as possible," he said.

       Asked if it marked a return to austerity, he responded: "I don’t think it is, because what is being done is getting back to the efficiency levels we had in 2016. That’s a perfectly reasonable and sensible objective. The only bit that is ideological is we should spend taxpayers’ money properly, not wastefully."

       Separately, Mr Rees-Mogg said Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, was being "reasonable" in his party's plans to block the election of a speaker at the Northern Ireland Assembly today.

       ？？Follow the latest updates below.

       And so the great drama of our exit from the EU may yet have one final act, writes Lord David Frost. Northern Ireland is about to return to centre stage. Maro？ Sef？ovi？, the EU negotiator, told Liz Truss yesterday that there could be no change to the Protocol.

       David Frost: The Government has a duty to Northern Ireland

       More than 500,000 adults are currently waiting to receive social care in England, new data show.

       This constitutes a major increase on last year's estimate of 294,000, according to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass).

       Sarah McClinton, the Adass president, told the BBC the wait was having a "devastating impact" on the lives of those affected.

       David Fothergill, chairman of the Local Government Association's community wellbeing board, told the PA news agency: "While it is positive the Government has set out longer term reforms to adult social care, there is an urgent need to address immediate pressures facing social care in the here and now, including on capacity, recruitment and retention, care worker pay and on unmet and under-met need."

       Rishi Sunak has blamed a "complicated" IT system for not raising welfare benefits to shield the most vulnerable from the cost-of-living crisis.

       The Treasury this week downplayed a suggestion made by Boris Johnson that further help would be made available within days and some Tory MPs have privately argued it may be needed before the summer.

       Asked about further benefits support, Mr Sunak replied: "The operation of our welfare system is technically complicated. It is not necessarily possible to [increase benefits] for everybody.

       "Many of the systems are built so it can only be done once a year, and the decision was taken quite a while ago."

       The Chancellor said his answer "sounds like an excuse" but insisted he had been "constrained somewhat by the operation of the welfare system".

       Rishi Sunak: I can't raise benefits because of 'complicated' IT flaws

       Jacob Rees-Mogg has claimed the EU is trying to punish the UK for its decision to leave the bloc.

       In an interview with Mr Rees-Mogg, he said Michael Ellis, the Paymaster General, is making clear that "we are, if not at the end of the road, very close to it".

       "I think it (the EU) wants to make the UK feel bad about having left the European Union and that underpins its whole policy and it doesn't really mind about the consequences of that," he said.

       "And we just have to get on with life and recognise that we have left. We have to make our own way. We are an independent country, and what the EU wants and thinks is secondary."

       The security advice on Lord Lebedev’s peerage has been withheld by the Government, as ministers have been accused of a "cover-up".

       The detailed advice was not published by the Cabinet Office in order to "protect national security", Michael Ellis, the Paymaster General, said in a statement.

       Parliament approved a motion earlier this year which would force the Government to release the documents about how Boris Johnson was involved in the appointment of the Russian-born businessman.

       Instead, the Cabinet Office published a nine-page document which contained the blank form that Lord Lebedev was required to fill in, as well as a note congratulating him on the news.

       ？Mason Boycott-Owen has the full story

       The Government cares more about "picking fights" with Brussels than trying to resolve the issues around the Northern Ireland Protocol, the shadow Scotland secretary claimed this morning.

       Labour's Ian Murray also warned the cost-of-living crisis in Northern Ireland would be significantly worsened by a "trade war" with the European Union.

       "Everyone did see this coming because they said it was an oven ready deal and we said if you put a border in the Irish Sea there'll inevitably be problems," he told Sky. "To rip up something that they signed only a couple of years ago or to threaten to rip it up is not really resolving the problem."

       Mr Murray said the EU had "offered various solutions already" and a compromise had to happen through negotiation.

       "It takes two parties to come together to negotiate what should be a relatively simple negotiation because both parties are in roughly the same place in both wanting trade to happen.

       "Let's get the European Union and the UK Government together, but it seems to me that this current Government is more interested in picking fights with the EU than trying to resolve it, and the only people that suffer here are the people of Northern Ireland."

       Shamed former Conservative MP Neil Parish is threatening to stand against the Tories as an independent candidate in the forthcoming Tiverton and Honiton by-election to save his political career.

       Mr Parish told The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast he had been pledged the necessary financial backing to stand in a move that would risk splitting the Conservative vote and letting in the Liberal Democrats.

       Speaking on his final day as an MP this week, Mr Parish also disclosed that he had written to Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 committee chairman, to urge Conservative colleagues to be nicer to each other.

       His political career is in ruins after he admitted he had viewed pornography on his mobile phone in the House of Commons following complaints from two female Conservative MPs, and resigned a seat he has held since 2010.

       Listen to this week's episode of Chopper's Politics here

       Lord Frost has urged Boris Johnson must show the same leadership over Northern Ireland as he has on Ukraine by ripping up the Northern Ireland Protocol, Nick Gutteridge and Joe Barnes report.

       The former Brexit minister, the architect of the 2019 withdrawal deal, said efforts to broker an agreement had "reached the end of the road". He urged the Prime Minister to act now to save the Union even if that meant "confrontation" with the EU.

       Writing for The Telegraph, he said Sinn Fein's victory in last week's Stormont elections and the refusal of the DUP to enter a power-sharing agreement had "forced the Government's hand".

       "The Government has no option now other than to act unilaterally to disapply part or all of the Protocol. The Belfast Good Friday Agreement, which the Protocol is supposed to protect, is on life support," he wrote.

       Full story: Get tough on the Protocol, Lord Frost urges PM

       There was a back to school feel in the sunny Downing Street garden on Tuesday night as Tory MPs gathered for a tete-a-tete with colleagues and "the boss".

       Boris Johnson had just seen his legislative agenda, packed with "red meat" for the backbenches, read out by the Prince of Wales at the state opening of Parliament. But as the Prime Minister attempted to address his MPs, newly reunited after Sir Keir Starmer’s "beergate" police investigation woes, there was persistent heckling from one present.

       Time after time, he was interrupted by a barking Dilyn, the Johnsons’ over-eager Jack Russell. So much so that the Prime Minister joked: "Take this dog to a place of execution."

       If the gag drew laughs from the crowd, more serious topics were discussed as Mr Johnson chatted to colleagues in smaller groups about the cost-of-living crunch.

       Ben Riley-Smith looks at the dilemmas facing the PM

       "You’ll have to get the Chancellor on" to answer that, Jacob Rees-Mogg said this morning.

       He told BBC Breakfast: "My job is to find the savings, it’s up to the Chancellor how he spends them. I believe in taxpayers’ money being spent efficiently, don’t you?

       "This is a fundamental duty of government that there is no money other than that which comes from hard-pressed taxpayers."

       Asked what he wanted to do "less of" on the Today programme, Jacob Rees-Mogg said the civil service cutbacks would not be "a question of doing less of, it's doing things more efficiently".

       Mr Rees-Mogg said Covid and Brexit are "now fading and therefore we can get back to the numbers we previously had. We can also automate and use technology more, so you can have processes more efficiently carried out."

       He said "each department" would be asked to come up with their own suggestions about where redundancies and savings could be mad, adding the Home Office "may decide" the Passport Office does not need staffing cuts but other areas do.

       On whether this would include the Department for International Trade, he said: "They've rolled over the treaties, so that part of their work has been successfully completed. There is always work to be done. The issue is are you doing it efficiently, and do you have the right people?

       "Overall the civil service needs fewer people and that will be something that is down to every department. I don't believe you will find any department that is working at 100 per cent efficiency... The Passport Office needs to be more efficient, that is probably having better technological solutions and a degree of better planning for the flows. We need fewer people across the civil servants."

       The general secretary of a trade union has poured scorn on the Government's announcement tens of thousands of Whitehall staff are to be axed as he said there was "no sign" of a serious plan.

       Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, accused ministers of plucking a point in time "out of thin air" despite the impacts of coronavirus and Britain's exit from the European union.

       "Unless we can undo Brexit and undo the pandemic, it’s unclear what the government means," Mr Penman told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "A serious government can decide what size it wants for the civil service but also has to say what it wants to stop doing if it’s going to have cuts of this magnitude.

       On the idea the same work would be done more efficiently by fewer people, Mr Penman noted existing delays at the passport office and "all the issues around Brexit and customs", adding: "If the Government is going to be serious about this, we have to do all these things, which is what the extra staffing was for.

       "In 2016 the civil service was at its lowest level since the Second World War. It had already delivered huge efficiencies at that point, so thinking you can just squeeze those savings again is just unrealistic."

       Boris Johnson's pledge to cut 91,000 civil service jobs may sound "eye-catching" - but Jacob Rees-Mogg said it is "just getting back to the civil service that we had in 2016".

       "We’ve taken on extra people for specific tasks – so dealing with the aftermath of Brexit and dealing with Covid so there’s been a reason for the increase, but now we’re trying to get back to normal," the Brexit opportunities minister told Sky News.

       "Up to 38,000 people a year leave the civil service [every year], so the simplest way to do it is to have a freeze on recruitment, which we’ve done in the Cabinet Office. We need to have with the reductions a very effective learning and development programme, so that civil servants whose roles may not be the optimal use of their time can be trained so they can fulfil other roles within the civil service."

       Asked where the cuts will come from, he said: "Arms-length bodies - this includes the quangos. What I’ve seen within the Cabinet Office where I work, and bear in mind each Secretary of State will be responsible for his own department, is that there is duplication within the Government.

       "You have a communications department and you have in another department some people doing communications. So it’s trying to ensure that you use the resource that you’ve got rather than duplicating it bit by bit. Therefore there are many savings that come from that."

       Slashing 91,000 civil service jobs is "perfectly reasonable" after Brexit and the pandemic, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency, insisted.

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