Fury over £1bn gravy train

Around 15,000 pen-pushers have pocketed taxpayer-funded redundancy handouts worth an average of £60,000 each, it was revealed last night.

Yet hundreds of new bureaucrats and temporary office staff have been taken on in their departments after their departures.

The shocking on-going gravy train will disgust millions of private-sector workers threatened with losing their jobs in the current recession. Many redundant employees are being offered only minimum compensation while many agency staff – including those among the 850 job cuts at the Mini car plant this week – are axed with nothing.

Detailed figures for Civil Ser vice “exit schemes” were dug out by the Conservatives yesterday through written questions in the House of Commons.

Shadow Communities Minister Justine Greening, who obtained the facts, said: “It appears to be a massive waste of taxpayers’ money that the Government has spent close to £1bn letting thousands of staff go, with huge severance packages, while at the same time recruiting thousands of new staff.

“Worse, departments have made virtually no assessment of whether this would save them any money or not. No company would be able to get away with this kind of waste in staff recruitment.”

The figures showed those pocketing the best golden handshakes were at the Foreign Office where redundancy payments averaged £139,000. At the Home Office, the average pay-off was £100,000.

In total, more than £900million of taxpayers’ money was spent on Whitehall redundancy payments during the years 2006-9.

Nearly half of the total was swallowed up by staff quitting the Department of Work and Pensions. It paid £400million to let 8,500 staff go. At Defence, £180million was spent making 2,300 civil servants redundant. Figures also showed new staff were being taken on by departments laying people off with luc rative handouts.

The Department of Health took on 445 new staff between 2005 and 2007 while laying off 148 staff at a cost of £11million. The Home Office spent £42million on 350 redundancies, yet took on 2,000 staff. And the Department for Communities and Local Government spent £45million laying off 426 civil servants.

It took on 1,624 new staff. Many of the redundancies are understood to have been made under an efficiency drive ordered by Gordon Brown.

He accepted recommendations by Sir Peter Gershon, a private-sector boss – for saving £20billion over five years cutting 80,000 jobs. But the programme has been widely criticised as Whitehall departments have failed to detail many genuine savings. Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “A ludicrous amount of taxpayers’ money has been spent on these payoffs.

“This shows that Government rhetoric around delivering savings to taxpayers is nothing more than hot air.

“The average company could never afford these pay-offs, and most people would never receive them.

“The total lack of accountabil ity in our Civil Service means that Whitehall continues to spend our hard-earned cash like water with zero consequences.”

A Cabinet Office spokeswoman said: “With headcount falling for 16 consecutive quarters and annual efficiency gains worth £26.5billion, the Civil Service continues to meet the challenge of doing more with less, becoming leaner while remaining the driving force behind excellent public services that are available to all.”