By Richard Johnstone | 31 January 2014
A committee of MPs has accused the Home Office of being ‘irresponsible’ for paying out more than £6.5m in staff bonuses in 2012/13 despite pressure to cut budgets across Whitehall.
The home affairs select committee said that 40% of all Home Office staff received some kind of bonus in the year. Bonus payments to 11,672 staff were worth £6,524,712.18 in aggregate. This equates to an average payment of £559, equivalent to 1.7% of the median Home Office salary of £32,799.
MPs said current financial pressures on the Home Office, alongside increased public scrutiny of bonuses, meant it was irresponsible of the department to continue to pay out such significant sums. The extra payments also came despite poor performance in some areas, such as the monitoring of police procurement, The work of the permanent secretary report added.
Permanent secretary Mark Sedwill had shown leadership in not being among the 18 senior staff who received bonuses in 2012/13, MPs said, and committee chair Keith Vaz said others in the department should follow his lead.
‘We should end the culture of rewarding failure,’ Vaz said.
But a Home Office spokesman said: ‘The Home Office is succeeding in cutting crime, reducing immigration and securing the UK from terrorism at the same time as reducing expenditure.
'Staff who make exceptional contributions to the work of the Home Office are eligible for special one-off payments – the majority of staff given payments during 2012/13, the year of the London Olympics, received less than £500.'
Elsewhere, the report emphasised that procurement remains a ‘fundamental problem’ for the Home Office, with the picture of police procurement particularly dismal.
The department only had the ‘sketchiest idea’ of what is being done to improve police procurement across the country, where there is an estimated £474m to be saved through more efficient practices. This is despite the fact that the department is relying on efficiencies in police procurement to deliver much of its financial savings in the government’s deficit reduction programme.
Vaz said there was a ‘shocking lack of support’ for chief constables and police and crime commissioners on how best to procure for their forces.
‘The government needs to issue guidance immediately in order to ensure that both, the police have the best equipment and the public get value for money,’ he added.
‘There is an urgent need for all Home Office contracts to be made more transparent and efficient. It is futile to continue to pay vast amounts of money to large companies who do not perform. Smaller deals will allow the government to root out those who do not deliver.’
