Huge bonuses for civil servants in �500M farm fiasco

[Gromit]

The farm payments fiasco, which will cost more than �500 Million to put right has incurred a further �1/2 Million in peformance payments for the civil servants administering it.

"Civil servants responsible for the farm payments fiasco, which the Government has admitted caused severe financial hardship to farmers last year, were paid �572,000 in performance-related bonuses.

Failures by the Rural Payments Agency, which failed to pay English farmers their subsidies by the EU's legal deadline last year and is struggling to meet deadlines this year, could eventually cost up to �500 million, MPs estimate."

[kwicky]

Margaret Beckett the minister responsible in DEFRA for this fiasco was recently promoted to Foreign Secretary. Par for the course I suppose?

[nantyboy]

Gromit,
I think you will find that these bonuses are paid to most other government departments and in lots of cases after tax amount to no more than a couple of hundred pounds. They merely a way of the government topping up lowly paid civil servants below infation wage increases.
If this is typical of the wider civil service it will be left to the lowly paid staff to sort out the **** ups of their out of touch superiors.