Boris Johnson has again called for a return to the office in the wake of the Covid pandemic, saying working from home is not working.
The Prime Minister said staff are “more productive, energetic and full of ideas” when they are in the workplace with their colleagues.
“My experience of working from home is that you spend a very long time making another cup of coffee and then getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, chopping off a small piece of cheese, and then walking back very slowly to yours laptop and then forget what you’re doing,” he told the Daily Mail.
In contrast, he said bringing employees who continue to work from home back to the office would increase productivity.
“It will get our inner cities moving on weekdays and it will be good for local transport. And many companies that have had a difficult time will benefit,” he said.
“We have to get into the habit of going to the office again. There will be many people who will disagree with me, but I believe people are more productive, energetic and imaginative when they are surrounded by other people.”
With many officers reportedly still working from home, Mr Johnson has previously railed against the “post-Covid-Manana culture” in the public service.
Ministers have publicly blamed large-scale homework for the backlogs at the passport authority and the DVLA.
It was previously revealed that Mr Johnson had ordered ministers to cut 90,000 public sector jobs and potentially save £3.5billion a year as the Government seeks measures to ease the cost of living crisis.
Unions have warned they could go on strike, but the Prime Minister defended the move, telling the Mail: “We need to cut government costs to bring down the cost of living.
“Every pound the government withholds from taxpayers is money to spend on their own priorities and their own lives.”
Mr Johnson also said he was ready for a fight with “left-wing lawyers” trying to challenge the government’s controversial plan to outsource processing of asylum applications to Rwanda.
He said the first 50 “illegal entrants to this country” have already been told they will be sent to the African nation within two weeks.
He added: “There will be a lot of legal resistance from companies that have a long history of taking taxpayers’ money to run cases like this and thwart the will of the people, the will of Parliament. We are prepared for that.
“We’re going to dig in for the fight and, you know, we’re going to make it work. We have a huge flowchart of things we need to do to deal with this with the left-wing lawyers.”
Asked if he could respond with a review of the European Convention on Human Rights, Mr Johnson said: “We will look at everything. Nothing is off the table.”
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