MOD civil servants receive millions in payouts
Posted - 27/01/2012
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has revealed that it has spent tens of millions on payouts to security cleared civilian staff that it recently laid off.
It has made £75 million of payments to 2,500 civil servants made redundant in the past three months, who received £30,000 each on average, with an MOD spokesman claiming these job losses were necessary to tackle the "black hole" in the department's budget.
He also stressed that civilian staff generally received lower redundancy payouts than military personnel and that, whereas the department's civilian workforce is being reduced by 33 per cent, Armed Forces manpower is only being cut by 17.5 per cent.
Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy asserted, however: "David Cameron is culling the army in their thousands while spending millions on civil service payoffs.
"He needs to get his priorities straight. People worried about the impact of the cuts on families and the front line will be angry at this news."
The MOD recently announced that 4,200 Armed Forces personnel will lose their jobs in the next tranche of redundancies, which the Unite union has warned could also result in 2,500 industrial civil servants with security clearance also being redundant.