‘Every individual counts,’ Gordon is fond of telling public sector staff. How right he is, too. But our master-in-waiting could be referring to his target to reduce Whitehall staff by 84,000 under Sir Peter Gershon’s eponymous 2004 ‘efficiency’ review.

Gordy is poised to announce Whitehall’s progress against the Gershon targets in his Pre-Budget Report this week. Recessville also understands that he’ll declare strict new money-saving targets for all departments for the period beyond the Gershon review.

But regardless of the headline-grabbing rhetoric, civil servants have long warned that departments are, in reality, struggling to meet the Treasury-imposed efficiencies. And this despite ministers having used the oh-so-innovative accounting method of transferring thousands of Whitehall staff (and their labour costs) from core departments to government agencies and arm’s length organisations - which do not count as ‘Whitehall’ staff and, therefore, reduce the overall employment figure for central government. A crude but effective trick in the Treasury’s magical repertoire.

Loyal ministers (henceforth, Robobots) have shamelessly endorsed this political sleight of hand – the scam was rumbled, belatedly, by embarrassed Village hacks months after the targets had been announced - in order avoid the embarrassment of missing yet another grossly over-spun target.

But as the PBR crunch point nears, some Robobots may have gone too far.

To great fanfare Lord Hunt, health and safety minister at the Department for Trade and Industry, recently and rather eagerly revealed that under the DTI’s efficiency obligations, he was transferring an entire unit – the Engineering Inspectorate – to the Health and Safety Executive agency.

Gordon will be pleased, we thought. No doubt Hunt did, too.

But dig a little deeper and we discover that the inspectorate consists of just four personnel to be transferred out of Victoria Street: one administrator (white collar civil servant - needless bloodsucker!) and three site inspectors (hmm - what to do with genuinely important people, Gordon?). The ‘whopping’ EI’s remaining four staff will be redeployed within the DTI, a spokeswoman confirmed to Simian-type sources (long after an elated Hunt had gone home to celebrate his wheeze).

Four people and all that media fuss? It seems that when it comes to these important staffing targets, panicking Whitehall departments have cottoned on to the Treasury’s message that every individual does, indeed, count.

Cynical Simian