GOVERNMENT WASTE

More than £57m in benefits were paid to dead people in 2006. The junior Work and Pensions minister James Plaskitt said 98% of overpayments occurred when death occurred too late to stop an automated payment. The most overpayments, £34.4m, were made for pensions, with £13.3m paid in income support. Mr Plaskitt said the 2005-06 payments did not include housing benefit or council tax benefit and that overpayments were also made "when a claimant dies and it becomes apparent from probate records that the information provided in the original claim was inaccurate."

The £57m included £8.1m paid out in pension credit, £0.1m in jobseeker's allowance and £1.6m in incapacity benefit. The year's total represented 0.075% of total benefit expenditure. Mr Plaskitt said efforts were being made to reduce the amount being paid to dead people, using daily updates from the Office of National Statistics instead of weekly updates. Details about the overpayments to dead people came after the department revealed that £2.6bn was overpaid in benefits during the same year due to fraud and error. (Source: BBC News, Feb/07)

Two Home Office interpreters are set to win more than £1 million in compensation after being paid to 'do nothing' for 15 years. A tribunal ruled the women had effectively been redundant since 1990 when the Home Office first decided to out-source interpreting to freelancers. But no one bothered to reassign the pair and while they were contracted to work 41 hours a week, they were paid £25,000 a year to 'do nothing' or asked to do 'basic clerical duties' such as filing to fill their time.

They could have stayed in their 'non-jobs' until retirement but in 2005 they wrote to then Home Secretary Charles Clarke to complain and both women were sacked a week later. They are now claiming compensation totalling more than £1 million after the ruling in their favour. Both women are also seeking an order from the tribunal that the Home Office must find them jobs. The bill to the Home Office could total £2.3 million for compensation and legal costs. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Feb/07)

Two satellite phones stolen in Iraq cost the Foreign Office almost £600,000 in bills and it took about 18 months before the phones were cut off, despite a junior staff member in the Foreign Office telephony unit querying the huge bills. The National Audit Office said neither senior staff nor the Iraq Policy Unit bothered to look into it and continued to pay the itemised monthly bills. One bill included calls to a South Pacific number totalling £289,991. Action was finally taken after the service provider also queried the level of calls.

The phones were among 10 sent to Iraq in 2003, but an internal Foreign Office inquiry failed to establish exactly when or where they were stolen from. It concluded that they had probably never been issued officially and "it was likely that they had been stolen early in 2004 from the stock of phones held in Baghdad or Basra". One phone stopped working in March 2005 and the other three months later. The bill also included calls on a third phone which was rented in 2004 and switched off one month after it was stolen. (Source: BBC News, Jul/06)

£50billion a year is being wasted by the Government. And without the waste, Chancellor Gordon Brown could chop 10p off income tax or abolish the £19billion council tax AND the £31billion corporation tax. The scale of squandered cash was exposed in a report by a new low-tax campaign group, The TaxPayers’ Alliance. Chairman Andrew Allum said, “Our research shows the Government could have cut £50billion in 2003 without closing a single hospital, firing a single teacher or cutting pensions. Returning the wasted £50billion to its rightful owners, the British taxpayers, would make each household on average £2,000 better off.” The TPA aims to force the Government to lower taxes, as similar groups have abroad and it warned public spending is spiralling out of control, with 450,000 more State workers than in 1998.

And it said £9billion could have been saved in 2003 by stopping public sector inflation soaring to 8.4%. Billions more went on bureaucrats, the railways, pointless grants, subsidies, failed projects and work. The TPA also slams small-scale waste, like a £100,000 study on how to open a plastic bag and £70,000 to change the name of Arts Council of England to Arts Council England. The non-partisan group of senior economists hopes to recruit 100,000 members before the next election. Mr Brown has ordered his own probe into all government spending on inspectors, regulators and pen-pushers.

How £50bn goes down the drain

£9bn
Public services running costs have risen by 10.2%, but output is up by only 1.7%. Closing the gap saves £9bn.

£6.5bn
Axing the entire Department of Trade and Industry, which is accused of doing little other than hindering business, would save £6.5bn.

£4.1bn
The cost of Whitehall’s ever-increasing bureaucracy has soared. The TaxPayers’ Alliance says checking the spending will save £4.1bn.

£3.2bn
Massive benefit fraud was exposed in a shock report by the National Audit Office. Stopping the cheats, plus errors, would save £3.2bn.

£2.5bn
The Rail Regulator found that Network Rail spent £1bn on work it "did not need to do" and completely wasted another £1.5bn.

£1.8bn
A minimum £1.8bn of our contribution to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy bails out farmers in France and other Euro nations.

£1.7bn
Writing off failed projects, including radar, and bungled communication and computer systems, costs the Ministry of Defence £1.7bn.

£1.7bn
Reducing sickies by public sector workers, who take off 50% more time than private sector staff, will save £1.7bn.

£1.2bn
A growing army of Government inspectors and regulators cost us £12bn last year. This could easily be cut by £1.2bn.

£1.1bn
Axe many of the duties of local education authorities now that money goes straight to schools, a simple saving of £1.1bn.

£1bn
The Health Department says the cost of illnesses and infections caught IN hospital is £1bn. Better hygiene would save that cash.

£200m
At least 100,000 foreign “health tourists” cost the NHS a massive amount. Simple measures could save at least £200m.

The savings proposed by the the TaxPayers’ Alliance which are listed above are only a part of the £50billion waste they have uncovered. The group says they have identified more than 500 cases of profligate Government spending. They include vast sums splurged on luxury offices, huge overspends, flabby adminstration, and yet more quangos. The TPA has also set up an email hotline for whistleblowers in the public services: waste@taxpayersalliance.com

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