Home Office staff get £780k bonuses

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

As public sector workers face a two- or three-year pay freeze, the debate continues over redundancy compensation for civil servants, and police forces across the country prepare to lose officers in forthcoming cuts, it has been revealed that £779,000 will be given to Home Office staff as bonuses relating to their work in 2008.

The Commons home affairs select committee heard from immigration minister Damian Green that around four per cent of the Home Office's salary budget would go on these bonuses but he insisted senior civil servants were in fact taking a cut because last year's bonuses of £1.4m were more than double this year's.

Promising to look into cutting such payments still further, Green said: "8.6 per cent of the pay bill had been set aside for performance bonuses but only four per cent is being spent, which is less than half. They will get less money than they did last year."

Committee chairman Keith Vaz said the figures did not represent a pay cut and said that such bonuses should not happen automatically. And Tory MP Aidan Burley said: "Surely a bonus is not compulsory, it is discretionary?"

A Home Office statement said: "The previous administration… decided that senior civil service bonuses for 2009/10 – ending in March this year – should be paid and the current administration endorsed that decision."