GOVERNMENT WASTE

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The Ministry of Defence have blown £1.5million on five useless fire engines. The specialist trucks have sat idle for nearly three years because they don't carry enough water to meet regulations on emergencies. They were bought by the MoD's Defence Fire Risk Management Organisation (DFRMO), the same body that sets the water requirements. To add to the farce, one of the vehicles, which cost nearly £300,000 each, recently tipped over during trials of new tyres after testers got the pressure wrong.

The fire engines were designed to fight blazes at small RAF airfields and acquired in April 2008. An MoD source claimed they have never been used to tackle a fire. He added, "The MoD can't sell them on as they are specially designed and built. They procured these trucks, went through a full testing programme, then realised they can't carry enough water and foam. But it was too late, they'd already bought them." DFRMO was set up in 2007 after the Army assumed responsibility for fire-fighting throughout the Armed Forces. (Source: The Sun, Mar/11)

Up to £300million of taxpayers' money has been wasted on swine flu jabs that were never needed. Ministers ordered 90million doses of a vaccine last year at a cost of £540million as panic over the illness gripped the country but as the 'pandemic' failed to materialise it soon became clear that the order was far too large. The Department of Health tried to get out of the enormous contract but the drug firm, GlaxoSmithKline, refused to back down. The Government announced it had signed a compromise deal that caps the number of shots of Pandemrix at 34.8million but, astonishingly, at twice the price first agreed.

It means the Government will pay for two-thirds of the original deal but only receive just over a third of the doses. The mild nature of the illness meant only 5.1million doses have been used. The deal was criticised by the Tories and pressure groups, who said it proved the Government had mismanaged the seven-month outbreak. The Department of Health ordered enough vaccine to cover the entire population, with three-quarters to be supplied by GlaxoSmithKline.

But it did not have a break clause in the contracts signed with GSK - unlike with the drug firm Baxter, which had its order cancelled for all but nine million of 36million doses. The cost of the original GSK order has never been revealed but at £6 a dose it could have reached £540million. The contract is now being capped at 34.8million doses, including those already received, with a one-third cut in the price. The Department of Health also announced there would be no cancellation fee.

Under the agreement, the Government will also purchase an as yet undefined amount of the H5N1 bird flu vaccine as well as courses of GSK's anti-viral flu treatment Relenza. Health Secretary Andy Burnham insisted that 'significant savings' had been made. He said, "I am pleased we have reached an agreement that is good value for the taxpayer and means that the department has retained a strategic stockpile to protect the UK population without incurring a cancellation fee." (Source: Daily Mail, Apr/10)

Defence chiefs have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on art while troops face equipment shortages in war zones and decrepit housing at home. In 2004/05, MoD civil servants bought a set of paintings by Zil Hoque called Nimbus I, II, III, IV at a cost of £160,000. They also bought a set of four paintings by Louise Cattrell that cost £72,000, all excluding VAT. The following financial year, the department spent almost £53,000 simply on maintaining its art collection.

Since the beginning of the Iraq war, officials have bought 3,150 chairs for £1,000 each and 134 widescreen televisions costing £348,000. Since 2005 the MoD has also wasted £7.7 million by losing spare parts in transit. Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the Army, wrote recently that spending on modern art demonstrated the "cultural divide" at the MoD. Gordon Brown has faced repeated complaints from troops that pay and housing are unacceptable. (Source: Daily Telegraph, Jan/08)

In ten years, £5 billion has been lost through fraud and error. Prisoners, students and those with jobs and money in the bank have all enjoyed payouts to which they were not entitled. Since 1997, more than £17 million has been wrongly paid to prisoners, who are not eligible for many benefits during their incarceration. Students have received £33 million while those who are in hospital for the long term, and are not entitled to Jobseeker's Allowance or Income Support, were handed £10 million. More than £1 billion has gone in benefits to those who have jobs and are not entitled.

Prisoners are not entitled to Jobseeker's Allowance, worth up to £57.45 a week, as they are not available for work. Nor are they eligible for income support, worth the same amount, or pension credit. Help with housing costs is payable only to those on remand, awaiting trial or sentencing. Inmates are not usually eligible for incapacity and disability benefits, the state pension, carer's allowance, industrial injuries benefit or maternity allowance. The sums involved suggest that thousands of prisoners continue to receive handouts through fraud or error after they have been jailed.

MPs concluded that the government had little idea of how much was owed by claimants who had been overpaid. Benefits Minister James Plaskitt said, "Fraud and error was left untackled before 1997 because it wasn't even regularly measured. Since then we have slashed in half losses to fraud and error in Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance, saving taxpayers around £3 billion. A continuing, hard-hitting benefit fraud campaign is running alongside a new strategy aimed at taking out a further £1 billion of error." (Source: Daily Mail, Oct/07)

Labour's constant tinkering with the names of government departments has cost taxpayers almost £2million. Figures show £30,000 was spent changing the Department of Trade and Industry to the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry for just one week in 2005. The DTI reverted to its original name when its new title earned it the nickname “Dippy”.

Meanwhile, the Department for Transport became the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions in 1997 and the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions in 2001. It became the Department for Transport again in 2002 after changes costing £50,000.

The Department for Social Security was changed to the Department for Work and Pensions at a cost of £232,000. The biggest expenditure was £1.5million for creating the Ministry of Justice out of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, formerly the Lord Chancellor’s Department, and part of the old Home Office. The costs came from moving staff, changing letterheads and publicity material and updating websites. (Source: Daily Express, Jun/07)

Capgemini, the company involved in the bungled tax credits system, has been rewarded with a £3.5 billion boost to its contract. It will pocket £8 billion for providing computer support to HM Revenue and Customs instead of the £4.5 billion it had been expected to earn. Capgemini was hired to supply the means-tested tax credits and manage the Pay As You Earn scheme, self-assessment tax forms, child benefit and child trust funds. But computer errors resulted in billions of pounds of overpayments to claimants.

In 2003/2004 and 2004/05, a third of all tax credit awards were overpaid at a total cost of £4 billion. Some £3 billion of has been written off and the Government has conceded that losses are likely to carry on running at £1.2 billion a year. With seven years left to go on the company's-contract, experts warned that the IT bill could rise still further. A Government spokesman said the rising costs of the IT system was due to the need for major new projects and the rising number of people submitting their tax returns on-line. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Mar/07)

A £2billion project to fit Army Land Rovers with new radios is in chaos because the equipment is so heavy it could cause them to roll over and crash. Safety experts have slapped a 40mph speed limit on vehicles fitted with the Bowman radio system making them "totally unusable" in a war zone. Military chiefs now face spending a fortune modifying up to 10,000 Land Rovers to take the weight of the "high-tech" system which replaces the old and insecure Clansman radio.

Bungles by high ranking civil servants and officers have already caused Bowman to be delayed by eight years at the cost of troops' lives. Six Military Police murdered in Iraq were unable to radio for help to nearby Paras because they were using the unreliable old system. Now Bowman faces further delays as experts decide whether to make it lighter or the Land Rovers sturdier.

A senior military source said, "This is a huge cock up. Armoured Land Rovers are in constant use wherever the Army go. A 40mph limit is laughable. You have to have the ability to drive yourself out of trouble in somewhere like Basra, and that means going as fast as you can." The Ministry of Defence said, "Troop safety is of prime importance which is why there is a 40mph limit."

From trampoline experts to walking advisers, hundreds of public sector non-jobs are advertised by councils every day, despite warnings that budgets may have to be slashed by as much as 40% to tackle our huge deficit. The out-of-control hiring spree that continues shows the enormity of the challenge the coalition Government faces in its attempts to rein in Britain’s growing debt. When Labour came to power in 1997, state spending accounted for 40% of Britain’s economy.

Thirteen years later, they left a country in which that figure had risen to 52% and the bloated public sector increased by almost another one million employees. That army of new workers has fuelled the rise of the notorious non-job, hugely generous public sector wage packets for an often incomprehensible work description. Alarmingly for David Cameron, the hiring spree is not only a feature of Labour-run councils, but exists in Conservative-controlled local authorities as well.

Nationwide, non-jobs being advertised include an artist-in-residence in an area that is already one of Britain’s cultural hotspots, a ‘weekend explainer’, whose job description specifically stipulates that the chosen candidate must be available for birthday parties; and a dance co-ordinator responsible for expanding the local authority’s ‘dance infrastructure’. (Source: Daily Mail, Jul/10)