Wasted, £5.5bn of your cash on failed schemes
AN incredible £5.5billion of taxpayers’ money has been wasted by Whitehall in only two years because of blunders and incompetence.
Government departments have squandered £87 of public money every second on a string of failed projects and compensation payouts.
The huge figure would pay for the training of almost 100,000 nurses or 9,000 doctors.
The wastage includes a £2million bill for flights for failed asylum seekers that had to be cancelled because they used Human Rights laws to appeal against deportation. Elsewhere, £10 Christmas bonus payments were wrongly paid to benefit claimants twice – landing the Department for Work and Pensions with overpayments totalling £626,000.
The Ministry of Defence wrote off a staggering sum of almost £2billion – including £11million on two new RAF drones which crashed during tests.
The incredible scale of Whitehall’s waste has been revealed as ministers press ahead with huge cuts. And the ‘scandalous’ figures will horrify hard-up households who are being asked to tighten their belts.
Last night, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: ‘The Government are cutting services and programmes that affect people across the country to save money, yet they are wasting
taxpayers’ cash like this. It is frankly scandalous. The Government needs to wake up. Enough is enough.’
Whitehall’s waste emerged as millions of people are facing inflation-busting rises in council tax.
The avoidable spending was calculated from an analysis of the end-of-year accounts from Whitehall’s 20 departments.
An investigation of the documents uncovered examples of extraordinary incompetence, mistakes, overpayments, write-offs, cash payouts and legal fees.
Many blunders involve ministries forking out massive sums on computer systems that were shelved before they were used or buying equipment that was left to gather dust.
The biggest money-waster in the two years to March 2016 was the Ministry of Defence, which wrote off £22million on a deal to repair RAF Typhoon fighter jet engines which was then axed, while Work and Pensions wasted just under £1billion and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills £601million.
Tory MP Charlie Elphicke, a member of the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee – Parliament’s spending watchdog – said: ‘These shocking figures underline the importance of making sure that Government departments spend taxpayers’ money properly and wisely. This money belongs to hardworking people and it is vital every penny is dealt with carefully.’
The £1.9million wasted on cancelled flights for failed asylum seekers took place during Theresa May’s last year in charge at the Home Office. Officials booked seats before legal challenges against deportation – meaning they had to be abandoned.
Taxpayers have now forked out £5.2million in scrapped flights in three years.
X-Ray equipment worth almost £1million to screen passengers for tuberculosis at Gatwick and Heathrow airports was scrapped after a Government policy change, while around £2million went up in smoke when the Department for Farming and Rural Affairs ditched a complex computer system.
An administrative error at the British Library meant the Department for Culture, Media and Sport overpaid £264,115 to authors when their books were loaned.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Those in charge of holding the purse strings need to be acting more responsibly with taxpayers’ money – that means cutting out wasteful spending, clamping down on spurious compensation claims or recovering money they are owed.
‘For too long we have seen too much taxpayers’ money frittered away.’
thE Mail reveals today that thanks to a truly bizarre combination of blunder, muddle and incompetence, civil servants managed to waste an average of £87 of your money every sECOND over the past two years – a total of £5.5billion.
New RaF drones crashed during testing, hundreds of air tickets bought for the deportation of failed asylum seekers had to be cancelled without refund following legal challenges and the Department for Work and Pensions overpaid Christmas ‘bonuses’ to welfare claimants to the tune of £626,000. (Question: Why on earth are benefit claimants receiving bonuses?)
then there are the botched fighter jet maintenance contracts and the It systems that don’t work.
such arrant waste, skewed priorities and squandering of precious resources is, quite simply, an insult to hard-pressed taxpayers. they deserve better than this Whitehall farce.