TAXPAYERS MONEY

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Twenty top civil servants in the Home Office have been given top of the range iPods to provide them with lessons in leadership. In a pilot scheme the department has spent almost £9,000 on the gadgets as part of a “constant” way of finding new means to give staff training. A Home Office spokeswoman defended the initiative, saying that the department was always seeking the most effective way of providing learning and development for its staff. She said, “As with other modern learning aids, video iPods provide the opportunity for flexible learning and the cost is extremely competitive compared with the rates for classroom training for senior staff." (Source: Ananova, May/07)

Paintings, drawings and sculptures worth tens of thousands of pounds have vanished from Government buildings. Many have been stolen, while some, including an 8ft square sculpture, appear to have been lost. Others have been damaged beyond repair. None were insured. All are part of the Government Art Collection, used to decorate Whitehall departments, courts and embassies, paid for by taxpayers. Experts say it is impossible to put a cost on the missing pieces as the collection is not professionally valued and the GAC refuses to reveal prices it paid. However, most items in the collection are thought to be worth at least £1000 each. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Mar/06)

Ministers may have squandered £300 million on an unnecessarily advanced police radio system. Police forces favoured cheaper, localised systems but the Government pushed ahead with the national Airwave network. Now Parliament's spending watchdog says the system, which will cost £1.5 billion over 19 years, may not bring the predicted benefits. "Airwave might be more sophisticated and expensive than it really needs to be," the Commons Public Accounts Committee said. "Compared with a series of regional procurements which would have provided more limited inter-operability, but including inter-operability with other emergency services, Airwave will cost an additional £300 million.

It is significant that individual police authorities and the fire service cited the cost of Airwave as their reason for being unwilling to subscribe to it." The new system allows police from different areas to communicate with each other but it does nothing to allow officers to contact firefighters on their patch. "It is now nearly ten years since a Home Office review recommended a joint approach to the procurement of new systems for the police and fire services," the Committee's report notes. "But the emergency services within a particular area or region are still unable to communicate easily with each other during major incidents, and a solution is still a long way off."

The Home Office is taken to task for failing to cost alternatives to the deal with O2, formerly the mobile communications arm of BT and the Government has faced legal challenges over the citing of the masts needed to carry the new service.

In 1995 the Ministry of Defence threw £32m of taxpayer's money down the drain when it paid for a computer system that it knew was useless. The computer project, codenamed Trawlerman, because of its sensitive nature and function, needed to be highly secure, a goal that was achieved, but one that was to render the entire project a write-off. Because of its tight security, it was discovered, at the end of the project, that it would be impossible to integrate Trawlerman into any other MoD systems and was thus, effectively, unusable.

The whole project was therefore scrapped, but not until the MoD had completed its user trials and commissioning phases and had handed the £32m over to its suppliers. With the system designed and implemented as per the MoD's specification, there was little else that they could do. So the tax payers of Britain are £32m worse off, the suppliers (alleged to be Data Sciences, later acquired by IBM, ICL, Bull and Lynwood) are laughing all the way to the bank.

A brand new £2.1 billion army radio system is so dangerous troops have to be issued with health warnings before they can use it. Soldiers issued with the new Bowman radio system will be told never to use it on full power, for fear of receiving harmful doses of cancer-linked radiation. Troops will also be warned to stay at least two metres away from radios in armoured Land Rovers and other military vehicles while the system is being switched on. A senior Army source said, "This is basically the new showpiece bit of kit for the British Army - and it is a disaster.

It is eight years late in being introduced, has cost the British taxpayer millions in extra funding and now, if not used properly, presents a safety hazard to tens of thousands of British soldiers. Not being able to use the radios at full power will limit their range and standing two metres away while a system is switched on is just not practicable in a war situation. In 2004 our forces in Iraq were being hit by ambushes regularly in Al Amarah and Basra. They should not have to worry about whether their radios are giving them radiation poisoning."

Army top brass have now decided to cancel a wholesale trial of Bowman in Iraq, partly because of the problems. The 1st Battalion, The Staffordshire Regiment, were due to go into action in the flashpoint town of Al Amarah in southern Iraq with the new radios in their armoured Warrior vehicles. That plan has now been scrapped because of delays in training troops to use the radios safely, although a few units may still test the system in Basra on a much smaller scale.

The latest problems follow an earlier disaster when it was found that the new system is also too heavy for the British Army's armoured "snatch" Land Rovers, widely used by our troops throughout the world. Land Rovers fitted with Bowman had to stick to a 40mph speed limit because at higher speeds the extra weight would result in the vehicles rolling. Yet driving at speeds of up to 80mph out of an ambush is vital for troops being attacked by insurgents throughout southern Iraq.

The weight blunder means that thousands of Land Rovers are now having to be modified at a cost of millions to the British taxpayer. Problems with radiation levels first came to light when soldiers using the portable version of Bowman reported receiving burns when it was set at full power. As a result experts from the National Radiological Protection Board, who monitor radiation level, were brought in and warned that the system should not be used at full power while being carried.

Tests found that the equipment gave out doses of radiation which exceeded safety guidelines when at full power and while being switched on. Excess radiation can result in burning and damage to DNA, which could result in potentially deadly cancers. A Ministry of Defence spokesman confirmed both safety warnings over the use of Bowman were in place. He added, "No final decision over whether troops will use Bowman in Iraq has yet been made. It has been decided not to deploy the Staffordshire Regiment with Bowman wholesale because there has not been enough time to train everyone on how to use the system." (Source: Sunday Mirror)

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