Ministry of Defence Civil Servant Bonuses

[olddutch]

Official MoD figures showed a total of £287,809,049 has been paid out in bonuses to civil servants since 2003, the year Britain went to war in Iraq.

£47 million was paid out in bonuses to MoD staff in Britain this year alone

The figures have sparked anger among the families of soldiers who have been killed fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Can this Government expenditure be properly justified and, if so, how ?

[anotheoldgit]

A quote from the Daily Mail:

/// The pen-pushers also won extra cash for hitting targets for promoting diversity and improving health and safety./////

Improving who's health and safety, definitely not the troop's.

[Gromit]

The Civil Servants are just doing a job. They are told what the policy is and are given targets to reach for a bonus payment. The problem is not the Civil Servants efficiently doing their jobs, it is that the policy they have been given to implement is flawed.

At a time when we have two wars on the go, the MoD slashed 23,000 jobs since 2005.

[jake-the-peg]

It's been pointed out that some of these payments are for MOD people who go to Afghanistan

I think I'm right in saying troops get Active Service payments - seems only fair that they should too

[buildersmate]

For a kick-off this is not pay rises we are talking about - it is bonuses.
Most MOD civil servants have had the opportunity to earn a bonus by delivering fully against the targets set in their annual appraisals. The system has been running for about 6 years and is deeply unpopular with the Unions. In the early years there were accusations of unfairness because the quality of the recommendations for bonus awards and the moderation system was simply unable to produce an award system that was seen as fair by the majority of employees. It has now degenerated into a system that awards a basic bonus to virtually everyone just for meeting fairly standard targets. A smaller number of staff receive an enhanced bonus. Indeed the only staff who receive nothing are those subject to performance recovery action.
Average amounts received are quite modest - a few hundred pounds at most.
Anyone who thinks that the success (or not) of getting a few more helicopters into Afghanistan is down to every civil servant in the MOD is barking mad and just doesn't understand anything about how complex organisations with multifunctional departments work. Gromit hit the nail on the head. Indeed it isn't the civil servants primarily who run the supply chain operations - it's the men/women in uniform, with some civil servants working alongside.
The MOD has taken people out of its organisation over the last years, though looking at straight headcount is misleading because there is a massive amount of outsourcing going on, resulting in civil servants being TUPE'd across to work for contractors, who are taking on much of the non-core support services activities.

[Sandy-Wroe]

These bonuses weren't on the same scale as those banker's award themselves. It worked out at a few hundred pounds to fairly lowly paid civil servants. Nothing more.

[buildersmate]

Precisely. Yet more frustrated mothers of dead soldiers being wound up by the The Scum, with the Tory Party jumping in on the bandwagon. They'll act differently when in power from next year.

[horselady]

Like Redhelen, I'm a civil servant and I have a payrise and bonus coming up. £20-ish a month rise and £800 bonus. It is the very senior grades who get the big bonuses and if every single civil servant volunteered to forego it this year, it certainly would not be handed over to the armed forces budget. My son-in-law is in Afghanistan and I see both sides of this, but the way the press is making it sound, I'll be reluctant to ever believe what I read in the papers again(!)