Blunders by Whitehall cost £4,000 every minute

WHITEHALL blunders cost taxpayers £1.9billion last year, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Ministers and officials blew almost £4,000 a minute on failed projects, botched contracts and compensation payouts – up 12 per cent on the previous year.

The worst offender was the Department of Work and Pensions, which wrote off £330 million overpaid to benefits claimants. Transport chiefs paid £134million to Agility Trains because failures by Network Rail to re-lay tracks meant new rolling stock could not operate.

Almost £2.5million was squandered on deportation flights for asylum-seekers that had to be cancelled due to court rulings, and £39million was wasted on medicines that became out-of-date.

Jeremy Hutton of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘This level of waste is beyond the pale. Government departments must take some responsibility.’

A Government spokesman said last night: ‘We have taken action to reduce the write-off of difficult-to-recover debts. We continue to deliver savings for taxpayers.’